It's been a little over a year since Microsoft first launched extension support for its Edge browser with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. In that time, the roster of extensions, featuring big names like LastPass and AdBlock, has steadily grown, but it's been a slow process, to say the least. But, as it turns out, that's a deliberate feature of Microsoft's plans for its extension ecosystem.
In a new blog post marking one year since the arrival of extensions, Microsoft says its slow pace is part of an overall plan to build a "thoughtfully curated ecosystem." That allows Microsoft to maintain a "high bar for quality" as it tests the reliability and performance of new extensions. From Microsoft:
We are extremely sensitive to the potential impact of extensions on your browsing experience and want to make sure that the extensions we do allow are high-quality and trustworthy. We want Microsoft Edge to be your favorite browser, with the fundamentals you expect – speed, power efficiency, reliability, security. Poorly written or even malicious add-ons for browsers remain a potential source of privacy, security, reliability and performance issues, even today. We want users to be confident that they can trust extensions in Microsoft to operate as expected.
Currently, Microsoft says the number of extensions available in the Windows Store has grown to more than 70. That roster will keep steadily growing, particularly as Microsoft improves its APIs to enable more powerful extension features. That's something Microsoft says it has been particularly focused on over the past year, and it has led to the release of new APIs for things like enabling communication between extensions and UWP apps.
Is there a particular extension you're still waiting for in Edge? Let us know in the comments!
