14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has already released the Chromium-powered Microsoft Edge browser, but at the same time, the legacy version of the app is still bundled with Windows 10 for compatibility reasons.
This way, companies that built apps running on Microsoft Edge legacy can continue to use them, even if a new browser is now available for the operating system.
But as discovered recently, some of the services out there are now in a rush to drop support for Microsoft Edge legacy, and once of the first to do it is none other than WhatsApp.
Beginning recently, WhatsApp Web, the browser-version of the instant messaging service that allows users to chat with their contacts from a computer through their mobile devices, blocked access of users running the legacy version of Microsoft Edge, forcing them to either update to the Chromium-powered successor or switch to the likes of Chrome and Firefox that are both supported.
Chromium-powered Microsoft Edge available cross-platform
While the decision to drop Microsoft Edge legacy isn’t necessarily surprising since it was expected to happen sooner or later anyway, it does come a little bit sooner and could potentially cause problems with the WhatsApp apps that were built on this browser. In other words, there’s a chance these apps stop working, so switching to another client or using the official WhatsApp desktop version might be the only way to go.
In the meantime, Microsoft is betting big on the Chromium-powered version of Microsoft Edge. Thanks to the new engine, Edge expanded beyond the world of Windows 10, so it’s now available on Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and macOS. A Linux version has also debuted recently for testing purposes, and it’s believed that the stable build could land in the first months of the next year.