Tag Archives: compatibility

Improving Privacy by Limiting Referrers

Updated July 31, 2020 to reflect changes planned to ship in Chrome 85 and Edge 86. As your browser navigates from page to page, servers are informed of the URL from where you’ve come from using the Referer HTTP header1; the document.referrer DOM property reveals the same information to JavaScript. Similarly, as the browser downloads theContinue reading “Improving Privacy by Limiting Referrers”

Restrictions on File Urls

Last Update: October 1, 2025 For security reasons, Microsoft Edge 76+ and Chrome impose a number of restrictions on file:// URLs, including forbidding navigation to file:// URLs from non-file:// URLs. If a browser user clicks on a file:// link on an https-delivered webpage or PDF, nothing visibly happens. If you open the Developer Tools console on the webpage,Continue reading “Restrictions on File Urls”

Edge79+ vs. Edge18 (Edge Legacy) vs. Chrome vs. Internet Explorer

Note: I expect to update this post over time. Last update: Sept 29, 2025. Compatibility Deltas As our new Edge Insider builds roll out to the public, we’re starting to triage reports of compatibility issues where Edge79+ (the new Chromium-based Edge, aka Anaheim) behaves differently than the old Edge (Edge18, aka Spartan, aka Edge Legacy)Continue reading “Edge79+ vs. Edge18 (Edge Legacy) vs. Chrome vs. Internet Explorer”

Script-Generated Download Files

As we finish up the next release of Windows 10, my team is hard at work triaging incoming bugs. Here’s a pattern that has come up a few times this month: Bug: I click download in Edge Legacy: …but I end up on an error page: Womp womp. If you watch the network traffic, you’llContinue reading “Script-Generated Download Files”