Microsoft unveils upgrades to Edge browser, rolls out new tools for developers

Microsoft has announced a slew of new launches for developers and clients on the first day of BUILD 2019, its flagship developer conference that is taking place in Seattle.

Apart from new collaboration and productivity services across apps and the web, Microsoft will be delivering artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to Microsoft 365 along with new open source technologies and developer tools for the Azure and Windows platforms.

Microsoft partners such as Starbucks, JP Morgan, Spatial and Epic Games will also showcase new solutions to cater to intelligent and customer-centric experiences, the company said in a statement.

In order to create opportunities to build on the Microsoft Graph, the company has generalized the availability of Microsoft Graph data connect. The service allows organisations to bring together productive business data from the Microsoft Graph in a secure fashion and at scale owing to the Azure Data factory.  

“This balances customers’ demands for a new class of insight-powered applications — those driven by at-scale datasets,” said the statement. 

Microsoft also launched the Fluid Framework, a platform designed to help developers build shared and interactive services and apps on the web. The company claims the framework allows for co-authoring on the web at a speed higher than the industry average. 

Microsoft also emphasised on fixing the issues around its Edge browser by announcing a slew of changes, including a new mode that integrates Internet Explorer into Edge. This, the company said, will allow businesses to run legacy Internet Explorer apps in a new browser.

For data privacy on the Edge, Microsoft announced three levels of controls that restrict how third parties track data footprints on the web. Edge will also get a collections feature where users can collect, organise, export and share content via Office integration. However, the new features will be released at a later date when the next version of the Edge is launched.

Taking into account the role that the internet and data play in democracies and elections, Microsoft said it will launch ElectionGuard, a free and open-source software development kit that can provide security and public verifiability for elections, along with tools to create accessible voting systems.

The  ElectionGuard SDK, which will be available on GitHub this summer, was developed in partnership with several leading election technology providers to pilot the service, the company said.

The company will also launch Microsoft 365 for Campaigns for high-end security capabilities that will be available in June. The first client will be the federal office in the US.