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”
Tag Archives: Edge
Aw, snap! What if Every Tab Crashes?
For a small number of users of Chromium-based browsers (including Chrome and the new Microsoft Edge) on Windows 10, after updating to 78.0.3875.0, every new tab crashes immediately when the browser starts. Impacted users can open as many new tabs as they like, but each will instantly crash: As of Chrome 81.0.3992, the page will showContinue reading “Aw, snap! What if Every Tab Crashes?”
Livin’ on the Edge: Root Causing Regressions
As we’ve been working to replatform the new Microsoft Edge browser atop Chromium, one interesting outcome has been early exposure to a lot more bugs in Chromium. Rapidly root-causing these regressions (bugs in scenarios that used to work correctly) has been a high-priority activity to help ensure Edge users have a good experience with ourContinue reading “Livin’ on the Edge: Root Causing Regressions”
Livin’ on the Edge: Dude Where’s My Fix?!?
Yesterday, we covered the mechanisms that modern browsers can use to rapidly update their release channels. Today, let’s look at how to figure out when an eagerly awaited fix will become available in the Canary channels. By way of example, consider crbug.com/977805, a nasty beast that caused some extensions to randomly be disabled and marked corrupt: ByContinue reading “Livin’ on the Edge: Dude Where’s My Fix?!?”
Updating Browsers Quickly: Flags, Respins, and Components
By this point, most browser enthusiasts know that Chrome has a rapid release cycle, releasing a new stable version of the browser approximately every six weeks (2022 Update: now every four weeks). The Edge team adopted that rapid release cadence for our new browser, and we’re already releasing new Edge Dev Channel builds every week.Continue reading “Updating Browsers Quickly: Flags, Respins, and Components”
Edge79+ vs. Edge18 (Edge Legacy) vs. Chrome vs. Internet Explorer
Note: I expect to update this post over time. Last update: April 14, 2023. 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”
Demystifying ClickOnce
As we rebuild Microsoft Edge atop the Chromium open-source platform, we are working through various scenarios that behave differently in the new browser. In most cases, such scenarios also worked differently between 2018’s Edge Legacy (aka “Spartan”) and Chrome, but users either weren’t aware of the difference (because they used Trident-derived browsers inside their enterprise)Continue reading “Demystifying ClickOnce”
Streaming Audio in Edge
This issue report complains that Edge doesn’t stream AAC files and instead tries to download them. It notes that, in contrast, URLs that point to MP3s result in a simple audio player loading inside the browser. Edge has always supported AAC so what’s going on? The issue here isn’t about AAC, per-se; it’s instead about whether or notContinue reading “Streaming Audio in Edge”
Cookie Controls, Revisited
Update: The October 2018 Cumulative Security Update (KB4462919) brings the RS5 Cookie Control changes described below to Windows 10 RS2, RS3, and RS4. Note: Most of the content about “Edge” in this post describes Edge Legacy– modern Edge is based on Chromium and behaves mostly like Chrome. See more discussion of 3P cookies in 2022’s NewContinue reading “Cookie Controls, Revisited”
Cookies and Concurrency, Redux
In yesterday’s episode, I shared the root cause of a bug that can cause document.cookie to incorrectly return an empty string if the cookie is over 1kb and the cookie grows in the middle of a DOM document.cookie getter operation. Unfortunately, that simple bug wasn’t the root cause of the compatibility problem that I wasContinue reading “Cookies and Concurrency, Redux”
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