Microsoft Putting Edge on Chromium Will Fundamentally Change the Web

The web as a desktop platform

Electron is a framework that allows developers to wrap web code (JavaScript, HTML, and other bits) in a native coating, giving them access to system-level APIs like notifications, file system, and so on, making it simple to deploy on Windows, macOS, Linux and anything else with one language.

Electron today, however, comes with a sizable disadvantage: it’s based on the Chromium browser, which means it’s bundled with an entire instance for each application that uses it on your machine. Having Slack and Chrome open, for example, spawns two isolated Chromium instances, both consuming resources to do much the same thing.