Microsoft announced that it’s now ready for a slightly more stable beta release. Windows 10 and MacOS users can now snag the beta, which is more suited to regular users than the experimental Canary and Developer Edge builds. It’ll be updated every six weeks, compared to the daily and weekly refreshes for the other releases.
Today’s announcement means Edge is one step closer to an official public launch, which is an important milestone that Microsoft needs to reach before the new Edge can be bundled as the default browser on Windows 10. Microsoft says the Edge previews so far have been downloaded over one million times, with over 140,000 pieces of feedback being submitted by testers. Microsoft is super happy with these numbers and is pleased with the progress the new Edge has made so far.
Microsoft says this channel is considered to be the most stable channel for testers, and will be updated on average about every six weeks with new features and changes once they have been tested in the Canary and Dev channels, which are updated on a daily and weekly cadence. So the beta channel is suitable for those who want to use the new Edge now, but don’t want to continue waiting for the stable release, which is still months away.
Microsoft also says that it has contributed over 1,000 commits to the Chromium project since development on the new Microsoft Edge began. So far, joining the Chromium project has proven to be nothing but good news for everyone involved, as there are many improvements in the pipeline coming to both Chrome and Edge now that Microsoft is contributing to the project. One such improvement is better battery life on Windows, which is a complaint many Chrome users have had for a while now.
