Microsoft Edge 108 has been released for Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 7, macOS and Linux with several improvements and tons of security fixes. One of the important security fixes in this release is related to a vulnerability “Type confusing in V8” which is being widely exploited in the Chromium engine.
According to the release notes, Edge 108 fixes the security issue (CVE-2022-4262) which originated from the Chromium engine. For those unaware, Chromium powers Microsoft Edge, Chrome and other browsers, so any vulnerability discovered in the Chromium platform affects all browsers.
Microsoft Edge 108.0.1462.42 comes with two notable features: New Graph APIs and an updated Defender SmartScreen library. The new Graph APIs allow administrators to create, manage and publish their site lists for Internet Explorer mode in the cloud. Graph APIs for Cloud Site List Management is included with the update.
As mentioned, the Microsoft Defender SmartScreen library is getting a big update for Microsoft Edge for Linux (already available on Windows and Mac). Microsoft says the Defender integration has been rewritten for the browser which ensures more reliable protection.
Likewise, the updated Defender integration also introduces better proxy handling and there are several related bug fixes. Edge’s Defender SmartScreen library also leverages Microsoft Edge’s built-in network stack.
Sleeping Tabs are doing a great job, says Microsoft
In a related announcement, Microsoft shared some new stats supporting Sleeping Tabs, one of the Edge’s exclusive features that reduce memory usage by putting tabs to sleeping on inactivity. According to the software giant, this feature is working as expected.
In fact, Microsoft Edge reduced memory usage by 1.38 billion tabs in September itself after the company automatically turned on the feature for users. This new data provided by the software giant confirms that the performance gain is noticeable and everyone should be using sleeping tabs.
“Sleeping a tab saves 83% of its memory on average, so sleeping your high resource tabs can relieve memory pressure without slowing down your workflow in Microsoft Edge,” the company stated in a new blog post.
The sleeping tabs feature is included in Edge 108 or older versions and it is available for download on all desktop platforms, including Windows and Linux.