I spent an hour or so this afternoon reading the Edge Team's July 14th "Ask Me Anything" transcript on Reddit. The transcript is long -- 2,700 comments and counting -- but it is fascinating. The Edge Team's comments are highlighted with a blue tag, and so they are easy to pick out from the clutter.
The Reddit forum is a bit less dominated by Edge (Classic) users than is this forum -- a significant number of the folks commenting are Firefox users, and Chrome users are also well represented -- but I looked to the Edge Team's responses primarily because I was most interested in what I could gleam from the Edge Team.
Among the things I gleaned from the transcript that are relevant to the issues raised on this forum:
(1) The Edge Team has submitted over 500 suggestions to the Chromium Project, which in turn suggests to me that Microsoft's commitment to open source is a real commitment.
(2) The Edge Team's comments suggest that (a) Microsoft intends to enforce Coalition for Better Ads standards going forward; (b) Microsoft does not intend to block ad-blockers; and (c) Microsoft favors extensions for ad-blocking rather than native ad-blocking.
(3) The Edge Team is committed to implementing Tracking Protection, with user-selected levels of protection.
(4) Microsoft intends to continue to support IE 11 as an independent browser during its current planned life (primarily to satisfy enterprise customers), but prefers that consumers use "IE tabs" to access websites requiring IE11 to function properly.
(5) Microsoft will not "fork" Edge Chromium, and (in general) changes made to the Chromium platform will be released to the public as part of the Chromium Project. Exceptions exist: the IE tabs code will not be made public.
(5) Microsoft anticipates supporting a Linux release as a matter of principle, but is not yet willing to commit to port Edge Chromium over to Linux ("We don't have any technical blockers to keep us from creating Linux binaries, and it's definitely something we'd like to do down the road. That being said, there is still work to make them "customer ready" (installer, updaters, user sync, bug fixes, etc.) and something we are proud to give to you, so we aren't quite ready to commit to the work just yet.")
(6) The Edge Team is working closely with the Fluent Design team, so we can expect Edge Chromium to conform to Fluent Design practices/standards.
(7) It looks like Edge Chromium will allow users to sync (1) extensions and (b) Office 365 settings, as well as the settings now synced by Edge (Classic).
(8) Microsoft is actively participating in the Chromium Project and referred Reddit users to the Chromium Project's "bug list" for more information about specific planned browser-native functions/features directly related to Chromium improvements.
(9) Microsoft has no intention of supporting Flash after 2020.
I think that the Reddit "Ask Me Anything" would prove to be interesting reading for those of you who are interested.
