Microsoft Edge Dev channel updated with new surf game, ability to move share button, more

Arif Bacchus

Late this afternoon Microsoft announced the release of build 82.0.432.3 for the Edge Insider Dev Channel. You’ll find some slight changes in this version of Edge such as the introduction of a new surf game, and improved reliability. Here’s everything you need to know.

Before getting into anything, we will mention the new Edge Surf game, which you can access via edge://surf/ if you’re on Edge version 82 onwards. Like the dinosaur game in Chrome, this now the offline game for Microsoft Edge.

It’s a bit of an homage to Microsoft’s old-school SkiFree game that shipped on older versions of Windows, and you can play with a keyboard, mouse, touch, or gamepad. The object of the game is to ride the waves as far as you can while avoiding obstacles and the Kraken. Microsoft’s William Devereux has a nice description of it here, complete with screenshots.

  • Reach the end of the course as fast as you can. Collect coins to help you achieve an even shorter time. The course is always the same—can you find the shortest possible route?
  • Surf through as many gates as you can in a row! Your streak will reset if you miss a gate, but you can keep playing until you run out of lives.

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Now, we’ll move on to what’s new in this release. On this front, there are some slight changes. You’ll find a new ability to put the Share button next to the address bar. You’ll also now find that the Edge setting to allow extensions from other stores will now sync across your devices. There is also a new management policy for IT Admins that will disable the Share button. Elsewhere, this release adds extra security to the Payment info Settings page by requiring the OS-level password in order to edit or delete cards. You can see the other new features below:

  • Added the ability to hide the Home button by right-clicking it.
  • Added support for Windows Information Protection.
  • Added a management policy to control the automatic creation of on-premises work or school profiles (profiles with a DOMAINNAME format instead of a [email protected] format).

But going back to this Edge release, there are also some reliability changes. Here, Microsoft fixed an issue where clicking a favorite on the Favorites management page sometimes caused a crash. Other changes here include an important fix for an issue where webpages that show javascript dialogs sometimes cause a crash. Some of the other fixes can be seen below, with the full list available through Microsoft here:

  • Fixed an issue where filling out forms in webpages in an InPrivate window sometimes crashes the browser.
  • Fixed an issue where editing a Collection when Collections sync is enabled sometimes crashes the browser.
  • Improved the reliability of Edge installation to reduce “side by side configuration is incorrect” errors after installing an update.
  • Fixed an issue where entering Immersive Reader sometimes crashes the tab.
  • Changed the color of text on inactive tabs to be more readable.
  • Fixed an issue where enabling Collections sync sometimes changes the title of synced Collections to “Syncing…”.
  • Fixed an issue where videos on certain websites like Twitter don’t play properly and instead show an error.
  • Fixed an issue where rotating a PDF after drawing on it with ink sometimes corrupts the drawing.

Finally, there are the known issues. The favorites duplication issues, error with STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION., Edge windows becoming all-black still persists. The same goes for the problem where users with multiple audio output devices sometimes don’t get any sound from Edge, and where there is a noticeable line between the browser UI and the web contents.

Overall, the new surf game may well be the real highlight in this release, and it’s definitely a nice throwback to the 90’s. Let us know in the comments if you’re having fun with this game.