• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, April 8, 2019

Microsoft on Monday officially released to developers the first test builds of its open source Chromium-based project for its Edge browser on the desktop for Windows 10.

In December Microsoft said developers would redesign their Edge browser and build it on top of Chromium, which is an open-source browser implementation that other browsers use to build their platform. Google released the source code with the launch of its Chrome browser in 2008. Browsers like Vivaldi, Opera, Yandex, Brave and others use it as a base for their platform, according to one report.

Microsoft also has begun to make contributions to the Chromium source-code project in the areas of accessibility and touch.

“We’re working directly with the teams at Google and the broader Chromium community on this work and appreciate the collaborative and open discussions,” wrote Joe Belfiore, corporate VP of Windows at Microsoft, in a blog post.

The idea is for both Chrome and Edge to run better on Windows. It should make online advertisements run more efficiently in both browsers.  

Microsoft calls the test builds Canary and Developer. Both offer daily or weekly updates to the changes to Edge. These are designed for developers to get an early look at the changes.

Edge, when complete, will fully support existing Chrome extensions, and it will support features such as favorites, browsing history, and extensions to sync across Edge.