Actually, new preview builds are hardly worth mentioning in the beta phase. Microsoft has incorporated a change in the new Windows 11 preview 22000.346, which scares some users – possibly also the competition watchdog. We are talking about the “microsoft-edge:” protocol that the company wants to nail down to its own edge browser.
Microsoft even writes this openly in the Release-Notes to the update: “We fixed an issue where OS functionality could be improperly redirected when microsoft-edge: links are invoked.” In other words, that the programmers have fixed a problem in which operating system functions could be improperly redirected when “microsoft-edge:” links were called.
These are actually normal web URLs that call up various system programs and apps in particular. Examples are the weather, news or searches from the start menu. Instead of “https: //meine.url.tld/”, Microsoft calls “microsoft-edge: https: //meine.url.tld/”, for which no browser is entered and would therefore be responsible for opening, so the explanation of the Open source tools EdgeDeflector. This amalgamation with the Edge browser bothered some programmers who then developed such a tool. It intercepts such calls and replaces “microsoft-edge:” with “https:”; According to its own description, EdgeDeflector simply entered itself as a URI handler for it.
Edge browser more tightly sour
The Windows 11 update has now put a stop to this. This is remedied by newer tools such as MSEdgeRedirect, which intercept calls in the system in the background, read out the command line parameters and forward them to the standard web browser. This should work more stably than the EdgeDeflector approach. However, such a tool has to run in the background. And of course you have to trust these tools.
It would be desirable for Microsoft to move away from its position and not want to advance the Edge browser in the statistics by simply ignoring the default browser set for the system applications. It is still unclear whether this “feature” will be included in the final Windows 11 update. While it is likely, Microsoft may back down as well.
(dmk)
