Security and performance enhancements are always welcome in a web browser, but tab management and multitasking are equally important. Microsoft understands that tab overload or tab duplication is an important user problem and Edge engineers are actively looking into new ideas.
In recent versions of Chromium, Microsoft has been gradually making a number of tweaks to address tab overload and duplication. For example, Microsoft recently proposed important changes to the Chromium’s default tab retention/restoration architecture to address reliability concerns and improve its performance.
In addition to tab retention, Microsoft is also experimenting with ‘tab previews’ feature in Edge Canary. This will allow users to preview the content of the tabs without visiting the tab.
In a Reddit thread, Microsoft confirmed that it’s still working on tab previews to reduce tab overload. Once released, you’ll be able to hover over an individual tab that is not in focus to see a quick thumbnail preview. It’s likely that Microsoft’s implementation will be better than the tab previews included in Google Chrome.
“Switching between tabs is definitely an important user problem we are actively looking into, and having duplicate tabs can be both a cause and symptom of having lots of tabs open,” Microsoft added.
Microsoft has also promised Fluent Design, scrolling, touchscreen, general performance, and other optimizations for Edge.
Edge for Android will get better
Microsoft finally confirmed that it’s still investing in the mobile version of the browser. The priority right now is to get it aligned with the desktop counterpart to share the same code base across all devices.
Once the migration work is complete, Microsoft will begin pushing new features and improvements to Chromium Edge for Android.
Unfortunately, Microsoft is not yet ready to share a time frame for the big Edge update on Android, but more information will be out ‘soon’, according to a Microsoft engineer.
