Microsoft's Build 2022 conference introduces what's new and what's coming to Microsoft Edge in the near future.
The latest development of WebView2
The first is that WebUI 2/UWP is about to be fully rolled out. WebView2 will be generally available for WinUI 2/UWP in the next few months, whether extending native apps with web features, or building full-page web UIs, WebView 2 will be ready. In addition, with .NET MAUI generally available, WebView2 can also meet web content needs. Microsoft also intends to bring WebView2 to more platforms in the future, including Xbox and Hololens.
Migrating to Microsoft Edge and WebView2 also yields better performance, in experiments conducted by Cerner Corporation , using Microsoft Edge WebView2 reduced rendering time by 85% and CPU usage compared to running their solution with Internet Explorer 33%, and memory usage decreased by 32%.
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)
With the evolution of the modern web and a wealth of new web standards, PWAs now have access to some features that were previously only possible in the context of native applications. Microsoft Edge offers some updates on PWAs to make it more powerful on the Windows desktop. These updates include enabling new APIs for protocol handling by default , and improving notifications so that they are marked as coming from the app itself, rather than the Microsoft Edge browser.
In addition, the way users manage the PWA will be easier. Users can find PWAs alongside native apps in the Microsoft Store, and Microsoft Edge also has a new App Center experience and adds app sync across devices for a better user experience.
Finally, Microsoft is improving the developer experience for PWAs by partnering with PWABuilder . The revamped PWABuilder site includes a new PWA Starter project and a new VSCode extension: PWA Studio, which make the entire process of creating a PWA and publishing it to the Microsoft Store smoother for developers.
Browser DevTools Improvements
The DevTools developer toolbar in Edge browser has been simplified with more customization and learning options. The new simplified UI introduces a new compact and customizable activity toolbar . The activity bar uses unique tool icons to simplify navigation, and developers can customize it with any of more than 30 tools to personalize the toolbar.
The simplified UI will also introduce more features, including support for a tooltip overlay that provides specific information about a panel simply by hovering over it. The new DevTools UI can be tried out via the "Focus Mode" experiment, which is currently available in all DevTools channels.
In addition, Edge introduces a new set of powerful tools that simplify memory and performance investigations in DevTools , and enable secure debugging in production using source maps from Azure Artifacts Server.
For more on Microsoft Edge, you can peruse on the Microsoft blog .