Microsoft Edge Explainers

Welcome! This repo is home to "explainers" and related documents originating from the Microsoft Edge team.

Jump to section: Active Explainers | Alumni | DevTools | Other documents | Withdrawn

Introduction

Explainers are documents focused on describing a user/ developer/ customer problem (at a high level) and exploring potential solutions. These documents are starting points for engaging in discussion with you and other members of the community. Explainers should address their stated problems in clear and easy to understand language. Proposed solutions should be easy to follow and not too deep in technical details. When you read an explainer, we hope the stated problem is compelling and you can form an opinion for whether the proposed solution would address the problem.

Please provide feedback

We are looking for feedback! Are the stated problems relevant to you? How have they impacted your experience? Do the proposed solutions seem reasonable? Do they follow good web principles? Would they solve a problem you currently have? (We love to hear that; tell us more about your scenario!) Do you have related use-cases we hadn't considered?

We appreciate you taking the time to offer feedback; it helps to improve the explainers, validate the problem and solutions they describe, and show evidence that there is potential momentum to move an idea to the next stage. We desire to see all our explainers make the journey to become cross-browser supported web standards.

Start a new issue here, or join in the discussion on existing issues. We also welcome PRs on the explainer documents themselves. Note: we use labels to filter the issues to specific explainers.

Have a product bug?

If you're looking to file a product bug on Microsoft Edge and the bug is unique to Edge, please use the in-browser "Send Feedback" tool (Alt+Shift+i in Windows, or "..." > "Help and feedback"). If the bug reproduces in another Chromium-based browser, please file the issue upstream in the Chromium bug database. Thanks!

Active Explainers 📣

These are the proposals we are currently investigating in this repo. Use the links below to read the explainers, review the current issues, and file new issues specifically for the given explainer(s). We hope they will all "graduate" and begin their journey along the standards-track as they gain sufficient interest; each explainer has a "status of this document" section that indicates what standards venue they expect to go to next (if known). When they graduate, we move them into the Alumni section below.

Explainer	Feedback	Group
CSS Gap Decorations	New issue...	CSS
CSS ::tooltip Pseudo Element	New issue...	CSS
Enterprise Platform Authentication Broker API	New issue...	Identity
Handwriting CSS attribute	New issue...	CSS
Pen Events	New issue...	Editing
Pen Action	New issue...	Editing
Delayed Clipboard Rendering	New issue...	Editing
Iframe Media Playback Pause	New Issue...	HTML
Call Stacks in Crash Reports	New issue...	Performance
PerformanceNavigationTiming User Agent Launch	New issue...	Performance
Trust Token Issuer Redemption Statistics	New issue...	Privacy
Browser Binding Context	New issue....	Privacy
Acquisition Info	New issue...	PWA
ApplicationData.LocalFolder Access	New issue...	PWA
Document Subtitle	New issue...	PWA
Ratings & Reviews Prompt	New issue...	PWA
System Status Icon for installed web apps	New issue...	PWA
URL Protocol Handler Registration for PWAs	New issue...	PWA
Web Install API	New issue...	PWA
Widgets	New issue...	PWA
Calling Notifications	New issue...	Web Applications
Web Haptics API	New Issue...	Web Applications
Split Tab Navigation	New Issue...	Web Applications
Set Default Audio Output Device	New issue...	WebRTC
Handwriting attribute	New issue...	HTML
IndexedDB getAllRecords()	New Issue...	IndexedDB
Mulitple Stylesheets Per File (@sheet)	New Issue...	CSS
Link Rel Local Reference	New Issue...	HTML
HighlightsFromPoint	New issue...	CSS
Digital Goods	New issue...	Web Applications
Search Providers Reset	New issue...	WICG
Contextual Logging With Console Context	New issue...	WHATWG
Expose resource dependency in Resource Timing	New Issue...	Web Perf
Allow SVG `use` to reference entire files	New issue...	SVG
Gamepad Event-Driven Input API	New issue...	Gamepad
JS Self-Profiling API: Conditional Marker Exposure	New Issue...	Performance
GetSelectionBoundingClientRect()	New Issue...	DOM

Brainstorming 🧠

These are proposals that are still really early in their lifecycle. We might just be thinking about the problems, starting to get rough ideas of what solutions might look like, or just want to throw an idea out to the world to see if there's more people with similar problems. Once we get a handle on the possible solutions and directions we'll move these to the "Active Explainers" section above.

Explainer	Feedback	Group
Materials in Web Applications	New Issue...	PWA
Performance Control of Embedded Content	New Issue...	Web Perf
Animation Smoothness	New Issue...	Web Perf
Event Phases For Reliably Fast DOM Operations	New Issue...	Web Perf
Delayed Messages API	New Issue...	Web Perf

Alumni 🎓

Awesome! These explainers have moved on to bigger and better things! We've archived the original explainers here for posterity and updated their document status section to help you find where the latest discussions are happening. Please continue to participate and follow the links below to the current standards communities. Thanks for your continued interest!

Current Explainer	Current Venue	Archive link and date
CSS Anchored Positioning	W3C CSS Working Group	2022-10-30
PARAKEET with Noisy Ranking	Web Incubator Community Group	2022-04-19
focusgroup for HTML and CSS	Open UI Community Group	2022-04-09
Web App Link Handling Manifest Options	Web Incubator Community Group	2021-09-28
EyeDropper API	Web Incubator Community Group	2021-08-03
Virtual Keyboard Policy	W3C Editing Working Group	2021-07-29
Masked LARK	Web Incubator Community Group	2021-07-11
Accessible Confirmation of Action	Web Incubator Community Group	2021-06-23
MACAW	Web Incubator Community Group	2021-04-07
Enabling popups	Open UI Community Group	2021-03-22
PARAKEET	Web Incubator Community Group	2021-03-04
Virtual Keyboard API	W3C Editing Working Group	2021-03-02
Canvas Formatted Text	Web Incubator Community Group	2020-09-23
Window Controls Overlay for Installed Desktop Web Apps	Web Incubator Community Group	2020-07-08
PWAs as URL Handlers (updated proposal here)	Web Incubator Community Group	2020-05-28
EditContext API	W3C Editing Working Group	2020-03-17
Bidirectional WebDriver Protocol	WebDriver incubator of the W3C Browser Testing and Tools Working Group	2020-03-13
Web Ink Enhancement: Delegated Ink Trail Presentation Aided By The OS	Web Incubator Community Group	2020-02-27
Viewport Segments Property (formerly Window Segments Enumeration API)	Web Incubator Community Group	2020-02-26
@media queries for HDR video in Media Queries Level 4	W3C CSS Working Group	2020-01-17
Improved Client-side Video Editing	Web Incubator Community Group	2020-01-08
CSS Custom Highlight API Module Level 1	W3C CSS Working Group	2019-12-10
highlightsFromPoint API	W3C CSS Working Group	2025-01-24
Import Assertions	ECMA TC39 Task Group	2019-11-08
'shortcuts' member of Web App Manifest	W3C Web Applications Working Group	2019-11-04
'spatialRendering' for spatial audio query in Media Capabilities	W3C Media Working Group	2019-10-02
ARIA Virtual Content	Web Incubator Community Group	2019-09-27
CSS Modules V1	Web Incubator Community Group	2019-08-08
System Colors section of CSS Color Module Level 4	W3C CSS Working Group	2019-08-05
'hdrMetadataType' for HDR query in Media Capabilities	W3C Media Working Group	2019-07-29
Native GLTF proposal	W3C Immersive Web Community Group	2019-07-15
Open UI (Standardized Form Controls)	Web Incubator Community Group	2019-05-15
'forced-colors' of Media Queries Level 5	W3C CSS Working Group	2019-04-19
'forced-color-adjust' of CSS Color Adjustment Module Level 1	W3C CSS Working Group	2019-04-19
HTML Modules	Web Incubator Community Group	2019-02-26
CSS color-mix() function	W3C CSS Working Group	2023-07-17
Audio Stream Category	W3C Web Real-Time Communications Working Group	2023-07-17
Storage Access API	W3C Privacy Community Group	2023-07-17
Primitives for Enlightened Experiences on Foldable Devices (CSS parts)	Web Incubator Community Group	2023-07-17
Exporting IDs from shadow roots for cross-root ARIA	Web Incubator Community Group	2023-09-22
writingsuggestions attribute	WHATWG	2024-03-12
PointerEvent DeviceId	W3C Web Incubator Community Group	2024-01-11
Gamepad Trigger Rumble	W3C Web Applications Working Group	2024-04-10
AudioContext Interrupted State	W3C Audio Working Group	2025-04-22

DevTools 🧰

⭐Our DevTools explainers have moved to their own repo for improved tracking and update frequency!⭐

For explainers that were hosted in this repo, an achived copy remains here, and the related explainers link to their new location.

Other Documents

A collection of explainers documenting platform enhancements (not web developer-facing features), implementation designs, and other public documents related to the construction of Microsoft Edge.

HTML

HTML Modules intent-to-prototype
JSON Modules intent-to-prototype
Synthetic Module Record design document

Media

Hardware-offloaded Audio Processing explainer
Media Cache Reduction explainer

Privacy

Auditing Privacy on the Web a principles document describing our commitment to privacy through the principles of transparency, control, respect, and protection for our users.

Testing & Trials

Microsoft Edge Origin Trials Guide

User Interaction

Impl Threaded Scrollbar scrolling intent-to-implement

Web Performance Measurement

Frame Timing use cases

Withdrawn

When at first you don't succeed… don't give up! We're no longer pursuing the solutions described in these explainers at this time, but that doesn't mean the problem isn't worth solving. Have an idea for an alternate solution? We'd love to hear your feedback!

Explainer	Notes	Date
Set and Reset Clip	This feature proved technically infeasable during implementation due to shortcoming in the underlying Canvas technology stack, namely that Skia only had a way to restrict clip but not to expand it. Given additional compelling use cases, or changes in the implementation stack, this proposal could be re-considered.	2022-04-21
Custom Dialog on Close	This design conflicted with the philosophy of keeping tab close as fast as possible. Work is ongoing to describe a way to meet the needs that this design aimed to address.	2020-03-25
Arbitrary Text Fragments	We are now directing our efforts into providing feedback on the similar proposal ScrollToTextFragment already being incubated in the W3C Web Incubator Community Group.	2019-10-31
Password Reveal	Rather than working on this HTML controls feature in isolation, we have rolled this effort into the larger Open UI project of the Web Incubator Community Group in an effort to provide a standardized set of form controls for the web, including password.	2019-06-17
Range innerText		2023-07-17
Enabling Custom Control UI	Originally driven by Microsoft, the project has since been handed off to the Open UI project and implementation handled by Google	2023-07-17
Time-limited Permissions		2023-07-17
Cache API Response Metadata		2023-07-17
First Run Permissions Prompt		2023-07-17
Version History		2023-07-17
Confirmation of Action	This effort is being pursued in a similar proposal, AriaNotify	2023-11-13
PerformanceNavigationTiming Protocol Launch		2024-04-22
Extending Long Tasks API to Web Workers	Rather than extending the Long Tasks API to monitor long tasks in web workers, we propose introducing the Delayed Messages API	2025-06-09

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NOUIY/MSEdgeExplainers

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