Cross platform Edge?
After having installed W10 Fall Creators Update and Edge on Android, I gave continuum a spin. Soon I raised my eyebrows and asked myself: why and how?
"...One of the most common requests we hear from people who use Microsoft Edge on Windows 10 PCs is 'we want our browser experience to move to our phones'..."
Seriously? I do have Firefox installed on Android, for occasional testing. Maybe in a few Edge iterations I will understand what I missed all that time.
"...You’re standing in line at a coffee shop. Your right thumb is stre-t-ch-ing to drag out words on your phone’s keyboard while you squint to read the text on the web form you’re filling out. It’s amazing what’s possible today—but don’t you wish your phone could magically send that task to your Windows 10 PC where you could luxuriate in a big screen and hardware keyboard?..."
I'm envisioning myself in that line, even though I always get my coffee at home. So where would that Windows PC be in the coffee line? Do I share that PC with others in line?
"...But what makes Microsoft Edge really stand out is the ability to continue on your PC, which enables you to immediately open the page you’re looking at right on your PC—or save it to work on later...."
As developer I see some challenges with "continuing on another device" like how to transfer security tokens, session cookies, session state, deep link into a modern SPA website, etc. to name a few. I'm pretty sure these issues will be overcome in the future when the use case of continuum is so eminent.
"...One of the most common web developer questions we’re expecting is – what engine are you using? Did you port EdgeHTML to iOS and Android?..."
Exactly the question I had in mind! It turns out Microsoft uses a platform specific rendering solution, which is a strength as well as weakness (in the long run):
- EdgeHTML engine on Windows 10
- WKWebView control from WebKit engine on iOS (due to iOS restrictions)
- Blink rendering engine from the Chromium browser project on Android (so a bulky app)
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