Microsoft Edge Add-ons: A 2021 Lookbook

[Naga_Chaitanya]

Happy New Year again, everyone! We hope 2022 is off to a great start for all of you!

Looking back, 2021 has been an eventful year for Microsoft Edge Add-ons. We were able to work on many aspects of the Edge Addons ecosystem, including the extensions catalog, extension user experience, developer publishing workflow and more.

Here is a peek into our 2021 journey.

Starting with our users, one of the key user asks was to get more extensions onto the Microsoft Edge Add-ons website. Between Build 2021 and New Year’s Eve 2022, Edge Add-ons site catalog grew by 2x, in terms of the size of our extension catalog. Thanks to the thousands of developers who helped us achieve this growth and continue to help us cater to our users better!

To give you a glimpse of our current extension catalog, we have curated below, a list of 2021’s top* extensions from the Microsoft Edge Add-ons site­­­­­­.

Top* extensions from Enterprise developers:

1. Cisco Webex Extension - Microsoft Edge Addons
2. Grammarly for Microsoft Edge - Microsoft Edge Addons
3. Tampermonkey - Microsoft Edge Addons
4. Microsoft Editor: Spelling & Grammar Checker - Microsoft Edge Addons
5. Norton Password Manager - Microsoft Edge Addons

Top* extensions from Individual developers:

1. Dark Reader - Microsoft Edge Addons
2. BetterTTV - Microsoft Edge Addons
3. Global Speed - Microsoft Edge Addons
4. Enhancer for YouTube™ - Microsoft Edge Addons
5. Violentmonkey - Microsoft Edge Addons

(*Based on total download count, excluding extensions from ad blockers, password managers and shopping assistant categories)

Apart from growing our catalog, we also added many developer-centric and user-focused enhancements to the Edge Add-ons ecosystem.

Here’s a quick recap of the product / ecosystem updates we made in 2021:

January:

• [DEVELOPERS] Extension certification report link: An extension developer can view and download the extension certification report from their Partner Center dashboard, containing the result of the extension review and relevant details.

February:

• [DEVELOPERS] Extension Store listing localization: Developers can choose a subset of languages instead of manually entering each language in the listing details on Partner Center & the ability to use the same marketing assets across all markets/marketplaces.

April:

• [DEVELOPERS] Manifest v2 to v3: To reduce fragmentation of the web for all developers, and to create better web compatibility for our customers, we plan to support the Declarative Net Request API and other changes proposed as part of Manifest V3
• [DEVELOPERS] Opportunity for developers to get their extension featured on the Microsoft Edge Add-ons home page

May:

• [DEVELOPERS] Extension submission: Developers can track their extension submission review status from the Partner Center & view past updates, the status of submissions, and manage extensions on Partner Center.
• [USERS] Themes: Launched new & custom themes to the Edge Add-ons site.

June:

• [DEVELOPERS] Launch of Growth Campaign to help & support our Extension Developers to build & add to Edge Add-ons ...
• [USERS] Launch of 4 week “Install-To-Win” Incentive Program for Extension users, where they had an opportuni...

July:

• Listed the 7 highly user rated extensions on Microsoft Edge Add-ons website that enhance browsing ex...
• "Install-To-Win" Sweepstake Week-2 Winners Announcement
• [USERS] Consumers can see the active user count of an extension on the Edge Add-on store listing page.
• [USERS] The updated extension menu on the address bar of Microsoft Edge allows users to hide & pin their extensions

August:

• [DEVELOPERS] Launch of new feature to Add & Manage new users from an Organisation to simplify the login method on...
• [DEVELOPERS] Introduction of REST API to automate publishing & updation Microsoft Edge Add-ons
• [DEVELOPERS] Sign into Microsoft Partner Center using GitHub credentials

September:

• List of 10 most downloaded Microsoft Edge Add-ons during “Install-To-Win” Sweepstakes
• August’s top trending Edge Add-ons
• [DEVELOPERS] Extensions Analytics Dashboard: Extension developers can view their extension's usage, adoption, and in-market performance

October:

• [DEVELOPERS] Launched a Community with Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors, help them learn the process of building extensions
• [DEVELOPERS] Featured a curated list of extensions developed by student developers

December:

• [DEVELOPERS] Roadmap & Released Features documentation were launched to showcase the upcoming and live feature updates on Microsoft Edge Add-ons ecosystem.
• [USERS] Each extension category is now powered by our AI recommendation engine to display popular and relevant extensions for each locale / country / geo-location.

Your feedback & testimonials are our motivation, as we continue to evolve our Edge Add-ons ecosystem in 2022 and beyond.

Here are some of your testimonials about the Edge Add-ons ecosystem:

THANK YOU once again, for the fantastic year! We are grateful to each of you for the continuous feedback & contribution to the Edge extension ecosystem.

You can keep in touch with us at #EdgeExtensions here. If you have any questions or feedback on Microsoft Edge Add-ons, please share them here.

View 2021’s recap for Microsoft Edge for developers here.

We look forward to yet another exciting journey in 2022.

Cheers!

[#2]

Your change to the extensions button in the toolbar with its dropdown menu completely ruined Edge usability for me. I was just at the point of deciding to move to Edge as my browser, when you made that change and killed it. I look back in every now and then to see if you've done anything to fix the issue I repeatedly raised (and got quite a few likes for each time, so it's not just me) but you've done NOTHING to restore the extensions UI to even vague usability.

I have around 30 extensions installed (would be more, but your wrecking the UI for using a lot of extensions stopped me from completing the migration). The toolbar has room for around 10 extension tool buttons when leaving the address bar long enough for use. BEFORE the change, all the extension buttons NOT selected to be on the toolbar were in a menu at the top of the MORE... menu dropdown. 6 tool buttons pre line, sized and spaced just as in the toolbar. NO repeats of the ones visible in the toolbar cluttering it up, all just a small move of the pointer away, and able to be re-ordered just like the ones in the toolbar to e.g. put the ones most regularly used at the top. This made it VERY quick and easy to access every extension button to left and right click them.

You killed that, lamely following Google.

Now instead there's just the extensions button dropdown UI which has all 30, the 10 already visible in the toolbar cluttering up the list, making the not-in-the-toolbar ones I want harder to find; only ONE per line so I not only have to move MUCH further than the max. 4 lines as was before, but I actually have to scroll down to find the majority: and they are only ordered alphabetically by name - with many extensions having funny names I can't always remember the first letter of - and unable to be re-ordered.

The extensions toolbar button and its dropdown are fine for MANAGING extensions, but it is far, far too clumsy a UI for actually USING extensions for users with 20 or 30+ extensions.

I can't use desktop Edge any more, which also means I won't use Android EDGE either on my phone as I need browsers on laptop and phone that work together. You have completely KILLED it for me when you tore up the previously great UI for using a lot more extensions than fit on the toolbar.

If you ever want me to consider using Edge again you need to provide a usable UI for USING lots more extensions than fit on the toolbar. Best, for me, would be to restore the area at the top of the more ... menu as was - able to be turned off or on, and with the current extensions button also as an option. Or have an extra 'toolbar overflow' button and its dropdown menu which the user can pin more extension buttons on (and re-order) as with Firefox. Or at the very least, allow the extensions in the extensions toolbar button dropdown to be re-ordered by the user, which would still leave it cumbersome and clumsy but just about useable.

And I've sent this via feedback and in the Canary/Dev tech community threads many, many times since the extensions button first appeared and the old UI disappeared in Canary. NOTHING has been done. I conclude you consider the proportion of users who want to use lots of extensions so small we are not worth the effort and are therefore not part of you targeted userbase. Frankly I'm soon going to stop even the occasional check back in and re-installation of Edge just long enough to check for progress on this one issue.

[#3]

Hi Naga, as you seem to be an active employee in this area, it would be good if you could look at responding to all the comments under https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/articles/introducing-shopping-with-microsoft-edge/td-p/187008... as it seems the person behind this announcement has either left microsoft or left the project (seemingly unfinished with lots of bugs). Cheers