Microsoft’s Edge Browser Will Not Support Silverlight

When Microsoft announced that it would replace its old Internet Explorer browser with a brand new one, everyone was intrigued to say the least. Dubbed Edge, the new browser is a breath of fresh air for Windows users, as most of them were are now forced to switch to more popular alternatives such as Chrome or Firefox if they want to enjoy a fast browsing experience.

Edge has little in common with Internet Explorer, especially since it will not feature any ActiveX-based extensions, which means that Microsoft’s own Silverlight media player plugin will not be supported. The Microsoft Edge development team stated the following in a blog post:

“The reasons for this have been discussed in previous blogs and include the emergence of viable and secure media solutions based on HTML5 extensions. Microsoft continues to support Silverlight, and Silverlight out-of-browser apps can continue to use it. Silverlight will also continue to be supported in Internet Explorer 11, so sites continue to have Silverlight options in Windows 10. At the same time, we encourage companies that are using Silverlight for media to begin the transition to DASH/MSE/ CENC/EME based designs and to follow a single, DRM-interoperable encoding work flow enabled by CENC. This represents the most broadly interoperable solution across browsers, platforms, content and devices going forward.”

It’s worth mentioning that legacy browser applications will still support Microsoft Silverlight in Edge, but this shouldn’t matter much as Silverlight has already been abandoned by most websites in favor of modern solutions such as HTML5. A good example of this is Netflix, who ended Silverlight support in 2013 before moving to HTML5.

Thank you Techspot for providing us with this information.