What is the transition plan from old Edge to Chromium Edge?

Copper Contributor

This might be a bit early, but what's the roll-out plan for Edge-Chromium when it's ready for General Availability?  I assume that we'll have to support two version of Edge (current, and Chromium) for a limited amount of time...any insights on how long that period could be?  Is Microsoft going to end support for Edge the day that they launch Edge-Chromium?   I have my doubts...

 

What are others planning?  

10 Replies
We will not roll out the new version of Edge until it is fully ready, until then we will still ask most users to stay on the current version of Edge that comes with Windows 10. This is a great question, @josh_assad.
Elliot

@Elliot Kirk Please do something about IE. Having IE + Old Edge + New Edge will be too much for most users.

I can understand the frustration about needing to support all these different browsers. I will make sure this feedback gets to the right ears.
Elliot

Thanks @Elliot Kirk !

When new Edge *is* ready, will it be a clean cut-over though?  Or will both versions of Edge continue to be supported for some length of time?

@CodeDJ We stopped supporting IE 2 years ago. Any user that comes to our website from IE gets an IE not supported page and cannot proceed beyond that point. We check the agent header and if we detect Windows 10 we recommend they use Edge. Otherwise, we suggest Firefox to them.

 

I thought support for IE has been end of life for a while now. Surprised people would still support it except on older legacy sites that are no longer maintained.

@josh_assad Keep in mind businesses will usually wait 6-12 months before releasing a Windows 10 update to their employee's. Assuming New Edge gets embedded with a Windows 10 release update, I would expect to still have to support the old Edge for at minimum of 12 month, and probably 24 months as businesses will have to assess things. Also keep in mind some computers cannot upgrade to the latest editions of Windows 10 (some are still on old builds since their hardware doesn't support newer builds of Windows 10), so those people will need to be supported until they are no longer using their outdated computers.

 

So you may be supporting several versions for while still even after release. Hopefully with Chromium the management of this will be very small. Since they share the same engine as Google Chrome, I would think that building a web site for Chrome means building it for New Edge at the same time, with little to no code changes. But old edge will still be around for awhile.

@Phillip Frabott 
From Microsoft: "Internet Explorer 11 is the last version of Internet Explorer, and will continue to receive security updates, compatibility fixes, and technical support on Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10."

Many of our clients who move a little slower to adopt point at the above and use the Windows 10 End of Life date as the end of IE11 support.  Windows 10 is scheduled to end in October 14, 2025.  We don't plan to support IE11 for that long, but we currently still have to support it, and ending that support is a major change management exercise.

@josh_assad 

 

Sounds good. I thought Microsoft has IE on the EOL list back at the beginning of 2016. We had a hard stop date at work of October 2017. I don't find very many sites that are usable anymore with IE so it furthered my thought that it was EOL. If thats the case, then I would assume the same 2025 support date would be required for Old Edge support as well.

@Phillip Frabott Sure. I meant it more from an end user standpoint. The fact that a user can still open IE that comes pre-installed with Windows 10 is in itself a problem. I understand it's there for Enterprise users. I am hoping there are other ways to support them vs. pre-installing it in all versions of Windows.

@CodeDJ Totally agree with you. In all honesty, I think Microsoft needs to just remove IE from the OS as soon as possible. Unfortunately its still needed for several parts of Windows 10 to function which isn't very good. But hopefully it will happen soon. One can wish...

 

Perhaps IE can be an exclusive for Enterprise licensed copies of Windows 10?