Yesterday Microsoft held the Edge Web Summit 2017 event in Seattle for web developers.
Over the course of the one day event, members of the Microsoft Edge Development team did presentations on the technology around Microsoft's fledgling browser. Among the subjects covered following a kick off keynote by Charles Morris, the Principal Program Manager Lead for Microsoft Edge, they talked about their process in building Edge, browser safety in Edge, Progressive Web Apps, Service Workers, JavaScript with ChakraCore and TypeScript, Linting the web, two dimensional CSS layouts for the web, Pay APIs for Edge, and the dev tools available for Edge.
Of course, there were other sessions on the schedule plus attendees could participate in hallway sessions where they could engage with team members and learn more about these various technologies.
During the keynote, Morris mentioned two areas that I thought were very interesting to hear.
First off he revealed that Microsoft Edge is actively used on more than 330 million devices each month. Since Windows 10 is running on more than 500 million devices this certainly confirms that not everyone on Windows 10 is using Edge - but we already knew that.
However, if you go back to April 2016, when Microsoft told us the browser was being used actively on 150 million devices, this new number means that Edge usage has more than doubled in that period of time and grown by 180 million monthly active devices.
While this is not record breaking gains it is growth and that is what Microsoft is looking for when it comes to their brand new browser.
Another area of growth for Microsoft Edge that I have covered regularly is the Edge Extensions library and Morris also discussed this during his keynote. The last time I wrote about new extensions for Edge was back in August when the list grew to a total of 47 extensions in the Windows Store.
According to Morris that inventory will expand to 70 extensions in the near future as they continue to work with and partner with developers to add their extensions to the library.
A check of the Windows Store page for Microsoft Edge extensions shows that 18 of those new extensions are already listed to bring the total available to 65 as of today.
This is probably the biggest growth spurt for Edge Extensions since the capability debut with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update last August.
Morris invited extension developers to head over to the Microsoft Edge Extensions document page to learn more about porting their own extensions to Edge. The message I picked up from his keynote comments is that they want to expand the submission process to grow the inventory of extensions in the Windows Store.
The more extensions that become available for Microsoft Edge, especially the popular ones, the more usage will continue to grow as many users simply do not want to lose extension functionality in other browsers like Chrome and FireFox.
In this gallery I will introduce you to the 18 new extensions that have been added to the Windows Store since I last documented new extensions for Edge. Hopefully the number of new extensions begins to increase in such a manner that we can no longer cover every single addition as it is added but resort to just highlighting the best of the collection.
Among these 16 additions there is a new ad blocker, Twitch tools, mouse gestures, security tools, IP and domain information, and a place to keep your loyalty card information.
----------
But, wait...there's probably more so be sure to follow me on Twitter and Google+.
