To better band together with the tech community and be more transparent in its operations, Microsoft has turned to open-source development to foster stronger relationships with developers while making improvements to its own products as well.
Now, Microsoft is bringing what makes its Internet browser tick to the rest of the world. The browser formerly known as Internet Explorer which was much disdained by developers and users alike, Edge is the company's rebirth of Windows 10's window to the Web.
Microsoft Edge is the Windows 10 default browser, and powering the sleeker, faster browser is what was once Microsoft's proprietary JavaScript engine, Chakra. In a recent JavaScript conference, Microsoft announced that it will indeed be sharing Chakra to the open-source community on GitHub starting anuary 2016.
JavaScript, a 20-year-old coding language, has become an increasingly integral tool crucial to the modern Web and in many other applications such as mobile apps, cloud services, databases and gaming.
As for Chakra itself, "outside of the Microsoft Edge browser, Chakra powers Universal Windows applications across all form factors where Windows 10 is supported -— whether it's on an Xbox, a phone or a traditional PC. It powers services such [as] Azure DocumentDB, Cortana and Outlook.com," Microsoft's Gaurav Seth describes it in a speech.
Of course, when Chakra is released to the public in early 2016, it will initially be available only for Windows. Microsoft's team does say, however, that it is committed to bringing Chakra to other platforms in the future.
Does that mean we could be seeing Microsoft's Edge available for Apple's Mac OS X and iOS, or even Google's Chrome OS and Android? We wouldn't hold our breath for it in 2016, but with Microsoft's recent moves, it could be a very real possibility. If anything, Edge has been proven to run the Web faster than on the latest versions of Chrome Canary, Firefox Alpha and even Microsoft's own Internet Explorer 11.
