EdgeHTML is a proprietary

browser engine A browser engine (also known as a layout engine or rendering engine) is a core software component of every major web browser. The primary job of a browser engine is to transform HTML documents and other resources of a web page into an interacti ...

from

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

that was used in

Microsoft Edge Legacy Microsoft Edge Legacy (often shortened to Edge Legacy), originally released as simply Microsoft Edge or Edge is a discontinued Proprietary Software, proprietary cross-platform software, cross-platform web browser created by Microsoft. Released ...

, which debuted in 2015 as part of

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...

. EdgeHTML is a fork of the MSHTML (Trident) engine of

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated as IE or MSIE) is a deprecation, retired series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were u ...

. It is designed as a

software component A software component is a modular unit of software that encapsulates specific functionality. The desired characteristics of a component are reusability and maintainability. Value Components allow software development to assemble software ...

that enables developers easily to add web browsing functionality to other apps. In 2018, Microsoft began rebuilding Edge as a

Chromium Chromium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in Group 6 element, group 6. It is a steely-grey, Luster (mineralogy), lustrous, hard, and brittle transition metal. Chromium ...

-based browser, which meant that EdgeHTML would no longer be used in the Edge browser. This transition was completed in April 2021. Past this date, EdgeHTML does, however, continue to be supported and used in Universal Windows Platform apps.

History

Microsoft first introduced the EdgeHTML rendering engine as part of

Internet Explorer 11 Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) is the eleventh and final version of the Internet Explorer web browser, by now retired. It was initially included in the release of Windows 8.1, Windows RT, Windows RT 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 on October 17, 2013 ...

in the Windows Technical Preview build 9879 on November 12, 2014. Microsoft planned to use EdgeHTML both in

and ''Project Spartan''; in Internet Explorer it would exist alongside the Trident 7 engine from Internet Explorer 11, the latter being used for compatibility purposes. However, Microsoft decided to ship Internet Explorer 11 in

as it was in Windows 8.1, leaving EdgeHTML only for the then new Edge egacybrowser. EdgeHTML was also added to Windows 10 Mobile and the second Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview. It was officially released on July 29, 2015, as part of Windows 10. Unlike Trident, EdgeHTML does not support

ActiveX ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide W ...

. It also drops support for the X-UA-Compatible header, used by Trident to determine in which version it had to render a certain page. Microsoft also dropped the usage of Compatibility View-lists. Edge will recognize if a page requires any of the removed technologies to run properly and suggest to the user to open the page in Internet Explorer instead. Another change was spoofing the user agent string, which claims to be Chrome and

Safari A safari (; originally ) is an overland journey to observe wildlife, wild animals, especially in East Africa. The so-called big five game, "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, African leopard, leopard, rhinoceros, African elephant, elep ...

, while also mentioning

KHTML KHTML is a discontinued browser engine that was developed by the KDE project. It originated as the engine of the Konqueror browser in the late 1990s, but active development ceased in 2016. It was officially discontinued in 2023. Built on the ...

and

Gecko Geckos are small, mostly carnivorous lizards that have a wide distribution, found on every continent except Antarctica. Belonging to the infraorder Gekkota, geckos are found in warm climates. They range from . Geckos are unique among lizards ...

, so that web servers that use user agent sniffing send Edge users the full versions of web pages instead of reduced-functionality pages. EdgeHTML's rendering was meant to be fully compatible with the rendering of the Blink and

WebKit WebKit is a browser engine primarily used in Apple's Safari web browser, as well as all web browsers on iOS and iPadOS. WebKit is also used by the PlayStation consoles starting with the PS3, the Tizen mobile operating systems, the Amazon K ...

layout engines, used by

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, an ...

and

, respectively. At the time, Microsoft stated that "any Edge-WebKit differences are bugs that we’re interested in fixing." Breaking from Trident, the new EdgeHTML engine was focused on modern web standards and interoperability, rather than compatibility. The initial release of EdgeHTML on Windows 10 included more than 4000 interoperability fixes. On August 18, 2015, Microsoft released the first preview to EdgeHTML platform version 13 as part of Windows 10.0.10525, though it was still labeled as version 12. In subsequent updates, the support for HTML5 and CSS3 was extended to include new elements. EdgeHTML 13.10586 was released in multiple versions of Windows. On November 12, 2015, the ''New

Xbox One The Xbox One is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. Announced in May 2013, it is the successor to Xbox 360 and the third console in the Xbox#Consoles, Xbox series. It was first released in North America, parts of Europe, Austra ...

Experience''-update for the Xbox One included EdgeHTML 13.10586, replacing Internet Explorer 10 in the process. It was released to

as part of the November Update on the same day. On November 18, 2015, the update got rolled out to Windows 10 Mobile users in the Insider Preview. Finally, Microsoft rolled out the same update to Windows Server 2016 as part of Technical Preview 4. On December 16, 2015, Microsoft released the first build of ''Redstone''. In January and February 2016, 4 other builds followed, all laying the foundational work for EdgeHTML 14. On February 18, 2016, Microsoft released the first version of EdgeHTML 14 as version 14.14267. This version of the engine contained almost no changes in standards support yet, but contained fundamental work for Web Notifications, WebRTC 1.0, improved

ECMAScript ECMAScript (; ES) is a standard for scripting languages, including JavaScript, JScript, and ActionScript. It is best known as a JavaScript standard intended to ensure the interoperability of web pages across different web browsers. It is stan ...

and CSS support and also contained a number of new flags. Further, Microsoft announced that it was working on VP9, WOFF 2.0, Web Speech API,

WebM WebM is an audiovisual media file format. It is primarily intended to offer a royalty-free alternative to use in the HTML video and the HTML audio elements. It has a sister project, WebP, for images. The development of the format is sponsored by ...

, FIDO 2.0, and Beacon API. EdgeHTML has often been compared to

due to its standards support and lack of compatibility with WebKit.

Releases

References

{{Internet Explorer Internet Explorer Browser engines Microsoft Edge Windows web browsers

History

Releases

See also

References