Microsoft is currently hard at work at rebuilding Edge from the ground up using Chromium, with a developer preview expected within the coming weeks. Up until now, however, we've not seen anything regarding the new web browser, codenamed Anaheim internally. Today, that all changes as screenshots from an internal canary developer build of the browser have leaked online, giving us a good look at the work Microsoft has put into the new browser so far.
Thanks to the screenshots, we can see that the new version of Edge looks very similar to the latest developer builds of Chromium, and rightly so, as work on Anaheim has not long started. Because the new browser is based on Chromium, however, this browser is much further along than the original version of Edge was in the same amount of development time. I fully expect this UI to evolve and become its own thing by the time Edge ships to the public.
The screenshots also reveal work Microsoft has put into a new Edge start page, that lets you change your layout, and enable or disable a number of things on the start page like image of the day, and most visited websites. There's also a new Extensions store, that's sporting all the same extensions you can expect to find on Chrome. Microsoft plans to release a public preview for its new Anaheim browser as soon as this spring, likely within the next few weeks in fact.
Microsoft's first Anaheim preview won't include all the features it has planned for the browsers, but will rather be more developer focused, and will improve over time with new features and stability improvements before being released officially later this year. What are your thoughts on the new version of Edge? Let us know in the comments.
