Here's Microsoft's updated roadmap for Chromium-based Edge features for the enterprise
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Late last week, Microsoft officials said they were ready for IT pros to start kicking the tires of the coming Chromium-based Edge browser. But it wasn't until today, July 16, that we got some updated details about what Microsoft is doing for businesses with its new browser.
In a new blog post, Microsoft officials said the Dev Channel for Chromium-based Edge ("Chredge") now has enterprise features enabled by default. It's ready for evaluation and is supported by "detailed deployment and configuration documentation," officials said. Microsoft is offering full support for deployment in pilot and production environments at this point through its commercial support channels.
Dev channel builds, which are updated weekly, including offline installers and ADMX files are available to anyone to try at https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com/enterprise.
Microsoft made available an updated Enterprise Roadmap as part of its post today. (I included a screengrab of it in this post above.) This new roadmap expands on a Chredge roadmap that officials made public at Microsoft Build earlier this spring.
On the list of features available to evaluate today in both the Canary (daily) and Dev (weekly) channels are IE Mode; offline installers for the Win 10, 8/8.1/7, Server and MacOS variants; the ability to sign in with Azure Active Directory accounts and get single sign-on and support for multiple profiles; integrated PDF support; more than 180 group policies; COnditional Access and Application Guard protection on Windows 10; availability in 10 languages; and webview integrated with the Microsoft dev stack.
In "controlled rollout" starting today and over several weeks, Microsoft will be adding the new Microsoft Search (its new unified search service); enterprise new tab page with access to Office 365 docs and sites; and the ability to sync data securely across devices using "secure compliant clouds."
Coming in an unspecified "future update" is the ability to use Information Protection on Windows 10; support for 110 languages; integrated deployment and configuration with System Center Configuration Manager and Intune; and PDF support for digital signatures and Microsoft Information Protection.
I asked Microsoft when the company plans to open up the Beta channel for Chredge, which will provide users with feature updates every six weeks. A spokesperson said Microsoft had no comment at this time. I'm wondering whether the Beta version is what Microsoft will make available whenever it finally makes Chredge generally available.
In December 2018, Microsoft officials said they were redoing Edge so that it would be built on top of Chromium in the name of improving compatibility across the web. Chromium is an open-source browser implementation that is used as a base by several browser developers, including Google (with its proprietary Chrome browser), Vivaldi, Opera, Yandex, Brave, and more. Chromium-based Edge is available to testers on Windows 10, Windows 8.1/8, Windows 7 and macOS.