In another effort to win over developers working on multiple platforms, Microsoft is creating RemoteEdge, a version of its flagship Edge web browser that will work in a non-Windows environment.
Using an HTML5-based client, the virtual version of Edge will stream via Microsoft Azure to Mac, Linux and other PCs and devices. It was announced during Microsoft’s Edge Web Summit earlier this week, and will be available for free later this month.
With extensions–including the much-anticipated AdBlock–now available to preview in Edge, Microsoft also used the summit to demonstrate how easy it is to modify extensions designed for other browsers so that they work in Edge, by replacing a few lines of code. The company is working on a tool to easily port those extensions over to Edge.
Other bells and whistles coming to Edge include the ability for developers to create web notifications that show up inside the Windows 10 Action Center.
Microsoft is also sharing a trove of its web platform data with developers, including information about the most widely-used APIs across the web, and a tool that compares major browsers’ API sets with existing web standards.
All these changes are aimed at attracting developers and users more enamored with other browsers, including the most popular, Google’s Chrome.
While Edge’s market share remains small, it’s now in use on over 150 million active devices each month, according to Microsoft. Edge attracted more users in its first seven months of existence than Chrome did in the equivalent time frame, the company claims.