An insider builds a chrome dress in Edge clothing

Last December, Microsoft announced its intention to get rid of Edge's HTML and JavaScript entrails in favor of Chromium shortly after the release of anonymous reports. At the time, Windows VP, Joe Belifore, had pointed out that Edge's mobile versions used open-source roots. So it made sense to do the same thing on the desktop. Now, Microsoft is ready to show the fruits of its work: Edge Insider versions are ready to be downloaded on a Windows 10 PC near you.

The Edge team said in its blog post published today that the new versions are available in two experimental release channels: Canary and Dev. None of these channels, however, are sure to be stable – they are not even labeled "beta" and a beta has no release date yet. The good news for Edge users is that these early versions can be run side-by-side with the Edge version that comes bundled for easy testing.

The Canary channel, like the Chrome channel of the same name, consists of nightly versions that have passed the automated tests. Anything that enters the Canary Islands channel will feature new features, bug fixes and potentially new bugs. Qualified versions entering the development chain will be published weekly. These are intended for Web developers who need to validate the new features supported on their web applications.

Microsoft has also been slow to brag about Edge accessibility features. The company claims that Edge is the only browser to get a perfect score on the HTML5Accessibility browser benchmark. Fortunately, Microsoft does not keep all its secrets, and the Edge team announced that it was going to send several improvements upstream of the Chromium project. This is potentially good news for people who use assistive devices to use the Internet.

Users can also expect better integration with Microsoft services, support for encrypted media extensions, and support for Windows Hello. Gerbils interested in PCs running Windows 10 can download one of the preview versions of Microsoft. Anyone who finds a bug in these new versions of Edge is encouraged to submit a bug report to Microsoft's problem tracking system.