In late 2018, Microsoft announced that Windows 10's default Edge browser would use the open-source Chromium platform as a base. Since Edge is now built on Chromium, Microsoft has been actively contributing to the open-source platform and the under-the-hood improvements benefit both Edge and Chrome.
Microsoft Edge comes with its own set of exclusive features such as Collections, Privacy protection, and a nifty feature that lets you send multiple tabs to another window directly via the context menu.
Google Chrome has already added the ability to send a single tab to a new Window, but unlike Microsoft Edge, it cannot send multiple tabs.
Send tab to a new window in ChromeAs Microsoft Edge and Chrome now share the same code base, a Chrome engineer made the uncommon request of asking a Microsoft engineer to port their Edge-only feature to Chromium.
The Microsoft engineer accepted Google's request with “I'll take ownership of this issue then” comment on Chromium's bug reporting platform.
Microsoft has already published a patch to add a feature that would let you move more than one tab to a new window from the tab context menu:
"Adds support for moving multiple tabs to a new window from the tab context menu. It also correctly handles pinned tabs, preserving their pinned state in the new window. Since multiple tabs now can be moved, the string was changed to pluralize “tab” to “tabs” when necessary," the Chromium patch reads.
Part of Microsoft's patch for ChromeOnce this patch is implemented, Chrome users will be able to move multiple tabs to a new window at once. Multiple tab support will likely be available on Chrome Canary in the coming weeks before Google ships it to the stable builds.
Microsoft actively involved in the development of ChromeWhile this may be the first time we have publicly seen a Google developer ask a Microsoft developer to port an Edge feature to Chrome, Microsoft has already been an active contributor to Chromium's development.
"Edge has made more than 2,000 upstream changes in Chromium. Many/most of these are changes in things like Accessibility, Web Platform, performance, etc. Things that are "UX features" are somewhat rarer. But certainly not unprecedented," Microsoft's Edge developer Eric Lawrence told BleepingComputer.
This is not lost on the Chromium developers who posted congratulations to Microsoft Edge's first Stable release on January 15th, 2020.
"While Chrome, Edge, Samsung Browser, Opera, Brave, etc. remain highly competitive products with differing perspectives and priorities, we've succeeded nonetheless in collaborating effectively on the underlying platform engine in chromium. Microsoft has now landed 1659 patches to chromium, 408 in dev tools-frontend, 293 in v8, and 23 in webrtc, most of which will provide value to users of any chromium-based browser."
Other improvementsIn related news, Microsoft Edge engineers are working on multiple Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) improvements for Chromium.
As per a patch, Microsoft is looking to add Windows 10's support to Chrome-generated PWAs shortcut menu, so you can right-click on a PWA pinned to the taskbar and perform a key task within the web app.
Similarly, Microsoft said on Github that it plans to add title bar customization (custom color) to Progressive Web Apps' title bar.
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