Jun 23 2020 09:16 AM - edited Jun 23 2020 03:17 PM
Jun 23 2020 09:16 AM - edited Jun 23 2020 03:17 PM
Hello Insiders,
We're excited to callout a milestone for our Microsoft Edge Insider community: we now have over 10,000 members on our Insider forum! We're taking this opportunity to reflect on the past year while staying focused on the future. Continue reading to learn more about this and the special treat that we have for our Insider community.
Our mission is to make the web a better place for everyone, not only through technical improvements, but also by bringing more transparency and customer-focus into browser development and usage. One avenue for accomplishing that was joining the open-source community. So far, we've made over 3,000 commits to the Chromium Project codebase, and are adding more by the day. Another key aspect has been pulling back the curtain and inviting you to the table by launching our Microsoft Edge Insider program on April 8th, 2019.
We started with one preview channel a year ago, and grew; our team now continuously ships code to three channels – Canary, Dev, and Beta. In that time, you've humbled us with your collective dedication to helping us build a better browser. We are deeply grateful for all of the time that whether that means fearlessly trying new features, highlighting areas of opportunity, or diligently reporting bugs.
When we launched this community, we committed to giving you a browser that raised the bar for security, performance, and reliability. Our team has worked tirelessly to deliver results, bringing you features like Collections, InPrivate mode, and customizable tracking prevention. Making the web more accessible is also a driving force for our team, so we’ve implemented Immersive Reader, Read aloud, and increased visibility in our UI. Your feedback—on these features and others—has driven countless changes and improvements, from small UI/UX changes like recoloring the Favorites folders yellow, to large performance enhancements. Now it’s our turn to thank you for those contributions.
It's been a joy to build relationships with you all along the way, both as individuals and as a community. Your humor, observations, and technical prowess keep us laughing and on our toes. To show our appreciation for your contributions, we've designed twelve exclusive digital avatars just for you!
(Caption: a dozen hyper-linked avatar images featuring animals from the Microsoft Edge surfing game.)
Recognize these tiny friends? They’re part of a host of characters from our hidden game within Microsoft Edge. As our Insiders, you were the first ones to discover and play the game, so we wanted to give a nod to that Easter Egg fun. Click each image to securely download it, or click here to access all of them together. (If you’re using them in small avatars, you can also use this version without text.)
You are welcome to enjoy them however you'd like: use them as your profile avatars on social media, set them as your desktop wallpaper, or hang them up in your office. (We just ask that you don't alter the images themselves.) So go ahead, laminate one and put it on your fish tank – we won't judge. Show us where these sea-faring friends travel to by dropping us a line on Twitter at @MSEdgeDev.
While we appreciate moments like this, we aren’t slowing down; we’re still committed to building an even better browsing experience. You can look forward to more features on the way, like vertical tabs, a Pinterest integration, and Password Monitor, along with increased compatibility across devices. Our team is also keeping our Enterprise customers in-mind, and is working on adding more GPOs and productivity-boosting functionalities. However, we're constantly improving the nuances of our existing features – like PDFs, sync, and media casting. It's important that we truly get these right, and we greatly appreciate your troubleshooting and feedback during our iterations.
If you've come across this post from our "What's New" page, then we invite you to join our vibrant community of Insiders on this Tech Community forum. Signing up is easy, and it allows you to engage directly with Microsoft Edge CMs, PMs, and engineers. You can also join the conversation on Twitter and Reddit, where we post announcements and host AMAs.
We're just getting started and are more eager than ever to hear your voices. No matter where you are on the web, we want to make it easy to provide feedback through Microsoft Edge. You can make a feature suggestion or report a bug through the browser itself using our "Send feedback" tool, located under Help and feedback in the "…" menu, or by holding Shift+Alt+I on Windows 10 devices. So please continue to let us know what you think, and we will continue to center your needs in our product decisions.
Thanks again for being on this journey with us and we can't wait to see what the coming year brings. We hope you enjoy the avatars!
- The Microsoft Edge team
Jun 23 2020 02:13 PM
Jun 23 2020 02:16 PM
@Dennis5mile Of course, thanks for being a part of this community! And good news: vertical tabs are on our list of upcoming features.
Fawkes (they/them)
Project & Community Manager - Microsoft Edge
Jun 23 2020 03:12 PM
@Deleted Thanks for sharing and congrats on the milestone!
This is super swag! Looking forward to test/use the latest and greatest Microsoft Edge features!
Jun 23 2020 03:26 PM
@nuno silva Thank you so much! Awesome, can't wait to have you try them out.
Fawkes (they/them)
Project & Community Manager - Microsoft Edge
Jun 24 2020 04:17 AM
@Deleted Thank you so much for the swags! Love them! It feels so honored to be a part of this community since day 1, and testing Canary builds since the day it entered on Windows 10.
Excited for what is in store for us ahead! ;)
Jun 24 2020 05:37 AM
Thank you @Deleted and this is exciting journey and glad to see Microsoft Edge is such a exciting browser.
I wish in future roadmap, there would be Microsoft Edge's own engine which would be better than Chromium, so there would standalone project from Microsoft which would be a lot better than Chromium.
Jun 24 2020 01:13 PM
Jun 24 2020 04:55 PM
@Deleted Thanks! I'm proud to be part of this community! By the way, what is the status on Fluent Design? It's been in conversation for a while now and we just want to know where you're at.
Jun 25 2020 01:52 AM
what happens to the insiders channel since the oficial browser has been released in live versions of windows? bc I really want to use the dev as my principal browser, maybe if you all develop a button in the oficial release where you turn him into one of the insiders channel, maybe in info tab @Deleted
Jun 25 2020 05:30 AM
Awesome! Love free swag. @Deleted
Jun 25 2020 06:31 AM
Jun 25 2020 07:10 AM
Jun 25 2020 10:14 AM
@Dennis5mile @Deleted @pbilk
I'm also waiting for vertical tabs! What build will it come in? Edge 90.0.538.0? LOL
Jun 25 2020 12:00 PM - edited Jun 25 2020 12:44 PM
Brilliant! Big shout out to @MissyQ for communicating and gathering as much feedback from us insiders. Congrats on this huge milestone! :party_popper:
Jun 25 2020 12:34 PM
@Tequeromt Great news: we're planning to continue the MSFT Edge Insider program, including its three preview channels, for the foreseeable future! We truly value our Insiders' feedback and contributions, so we want to ensure continuous opportunities to share and engage with each other, independent of the Stable channel release. :)
Fawkes (they/them)
Project & Community Manager - Microsoft Edge
Jun 26 2020 02:05 PM - edited Jun 26 2020 02:22 PM
@Deleted
Thanks for these amazing avatars and congratulations for having 10,000 members on the Microsoft Edge Insider Community.
I have been an Edge follower and user since it was released on Windows 10, the thing was that I never used another browser as a primary browser from when I started using Edge because of its exclusive features such as inking on web pages, tab preview, Reading View, etc. Over the years, Microsoft Edge was making changes but the biggest change was its transition from EdgeHTML and Chakra Engine to the Chromium Engine which made Edge faster and took advantage of features that Chromium gives. Microsoft has added many features then and is still adding new great features which made me eager to be an Edge Insider and also encouraged me to come back to the Windows Insider Program making me happy again to help shape Microsoft developers to make products for users greater than ever. I would like to thank the Microsoft Edge dev team to make the web easier to use and for bringing a lot of new innovative features. As always, I am excited and waiting for the new features to come.
Thanks again
Jun 26 2020 02:48 PM
@cjc2112 We don't have any new updates to share, but you all will be some of the first to know if/when we do! (I've talked about this with our devs, and there are a surprising number of confounding factors that they would need to account for with Fluent.) Thanks for your interest and patience. :)
Fawkes (they/them)
Program Manager & Community Manager - Microsoft Edge