With Internet Explorer finally making its way to the technology trash heap, Microsoft is now all-in on Edge, and that was clear at Build 2021 this week, where Redmond championed its browser's performance stats. But what really caught my eye was the announcement that developers will be able to offer progressive web apps (PWAs) in the Microsoft Store.
Edge: The Fastest Browser on Windows 10?
I've heard this claim before, even going back to IE versions, but Microsoft’s Edge development team seems pretty confident that two new features in particular will boost its browser over the competition: startup boost and sleeping tabs. (“Microsoft Edge will be the best performing browser on Windows 10 when Microsoft Edge version 91 releases later this week!” Microsoft boasts in a blog post; emphasis theirs.)
Sleeping tabs are pretty self-explanatory. When you have several background tabs open and loaded with web content, Edge stops using system resources for them—in part by stopping ads from running on tabs that don’t have the focus. Microsoft claims that sleeping tabs will be further improved this month "with up to 82% memory savings based upon internal data collected on our preview builds."
I should note that sleeping tabs are not unique to Edge: Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Vivaldi all have some form of the technology. But in Edge, notably, you can change Sleeping tab settings to choose how long after inactivity the tabs should wait before sleeping.
Startup boost, on the other hand, is not something we’ve heard about in every other browser. It works by running some Edge code in the background at Windows startup, saving you the wait for these processes to get going when you open the browser.
WebView2
The main news about WebView2 is that it’s now included with WinUI 3—the latest native user experience framework for building Windows apps. Previously, apps had to use the legacy Edge web rendering code, but WebView2 uses the newer Chromium-based Edge rendering underneath. WinUI is part of Project Reunion, which goes from version .5 to .8 at Build 2021. That project is intended to unify the various programming frameworks, allowing older Win32 apps to be updated with new Windows 10 features and hardware support. Developers can get started with Project Reunion using a Visual Studio Template.
PWAs in the Store
One smallish bullet point in Microsoft’s Build blog posts caught my eye: "PWAs join the Microsoft Store." What that means is that websites that function as applications—think webmail or online productivity tools—can become even more like real apps.
Using PWAs is simple for the end user, but not particularly visible. In several major web browsers—including Chrome, Edge, and other Chromium-based browsers as well as Safari—you go to a website that’s been coded as PWA-capable, and choose a menu option saying you want to treat the site as an app. That means you'll lose the clutter of the browser window that's not relevant to the site-app's functioning, and in Windows the site's taskbar entry changes to the site icon rather than the browser icon, and it appear in your Start menu’s app list—as an app.
In Chrome, you go to, for example, Install Outlook in the three-dot menu, and the conversion takes place. Thereafter, if you land on that site, the menu will say Open in Outlook. (Mind you, I’m just talking about the web version of Outlook, not the full-blown Office application).
In Edge, the process is a little clearer: When you first land on a PWA-capable site, you go to the Apps menu choice and select Install this site as an app. Firefox unfortunately doesn’t offer PWA support in its desktop browser, but it does in its Android browser.
What Microsoft is doing is to make PWAs full app citizens by including them in the app store. Google does allow PWAs in the Play Store and on Chrome OS, but the Mac App Store and both mobile platforms’ app stores don’t.
But possible is one thing, easy is another. Microsoft has also come out with a PWA Builder site that tests your site for PWA-required features, such as a service worker and a start page. After that, you submit the site/app to the store. Besides simply being findable and installable from the store, PWA app developers get the advantages of detailed analytics about their app’s usage and health.
Of perhaps just as much user benefit is that it seems Microsoft will be dogfooding this PWA capability. Earlier this year, Windows Central’s very reliable Zac Bowden reported that the company would be ditching its quirky Mail app for a PWA version of Outlook.com, which can’t happen soon enough as far as I’m concerned.