In a Microsoft Edge Dev Blog post on the official Windows site, Microsoft has detailed the dozens of changes which will fundamentally differentiate the upcoming Edge Web browser from Internet Explorer.
The update is a follow-up to the original post that went up in February, and fleshes out more details by breaking down just how different Edge will be from IE. The post focuses primarily on the Web rendering engine that controls how the browser will interpret content displayed on any given page and how, opposed to IE, Edge will run on an almost entirely fresh platform built with performance in mind.
A few of the more recognizable features being ditched in the transition from Internet Explorer to Edge include the loss of ActiveX, DirectX Filters, and VBScript, all of which are storied, almost inexorable parts of what makes up the IE experience.
By leaving these scripting languages in the dust, Edge will be a leaner, meaner, cleaner Web browser that should be able to rival the speed and performance benchmarks of its most immediate competition.
“Not supporting these legacy technologies in Microsoft Edge has a number of benefits: better interoperability with other modern browsers, improved performance, security and reliability, and reduced code complexity, just to name a few,” said the Microsoft Edge team. “And just like all good developers, ours love to delete code — over 220,000 lines of code in MSHTML have been removed from Microsoft Edge HTML!”
According to the article, by ditching these features the company believes Edge will be able to eke out an advantage over the likes of Firefox or Chrome simply because of the young nature of its development, which has been kept more in line with the way people use the Web today.
