Microsoft Edge browser

The Chromium-based Edge is evolving and Microsoft is also contributing to the open-source Chromium platform. According to recent developments noticed by us, Microsoft is working on native captions support for Chromium and improved inking support for web apps.

Microsoft says it’s adding ‘Native Styling Support’ for WebVTT captions on Windows 10 so that webpages in Chromium support Windows’ caption Settings. According to Google, WebVTT stands for Web Video Text Tracks format, and it has been implemented in the browser to allow sites to supply closed-caption or subtitle metadata for videos.

Microsoft is working on a new change that overrides site styling for captions with any user preferences. In other words, users will be able to style WebVTT captions. For example, Windows 10 Settings app will let you customize caption transparency, style, size effects, background colour and other options.

“For web video content that uses the WebVTT standard to include a caption payload for HTML5 content, this change will apply the caption styling preferences the user explicitly sets in the OS Settings app on Windows 10 or macOS,” Microsoft stated.

Inking improvements

According to a new proposal, Microsoft is working on another interesting change to enable Web Ink Enhancement.

The Redmond firm says inking experience fails to deliver expected latency, but Microsoft believes inking could be aided by the OS:

“Operating system compositors typically introduce a frame of latency in order to compose all of the windows together. During this frame of latency, input may be delivered to an application, but that input has no chance of being displayed to the user until the next frame that the system composes, due to this pipelining,” the company stated.

The change would allow web apps to achieve latency parity with native apps on supported systems like Windows 10 and ChromeOS.

About The Author

Mayank Parmar

Mayank Parmar is an entrepreneur who founded Windows Latest. He is the Editor-in-Chief and has written on various topics in his seven years of career, but he is mostly known for his well-researched work on Microsoft's Windows. His articles and research works have been referred to by CNN, Business Insiders, Forbes, Fortune, CBS Interactive, Microsoft and many others over the years.