Microsoft Edge releases version 100 with PDF updates and protection

Recently Google hit version 100 general availability (GA) and celebrated with a new logo (among other updates). Now, it’s the turn of Microsoft Edge to reach the same version number. Microsoft Edge 100 has reached GA with a few exciting updates regarding PDFs and added protections.

There are a couple of notable updated features included in this latest release. The first one to be aware of is that the browser will use a three-digit User-Agent string instead of the usual two-string. This may cause some websites that haven’t updated their parsers to break. To remedy this, Google has included an option in edge://flags to freeze the major version number at 99 instead of rolling over to 100.

Another update is that when users open specific URLs for Microsoft 365 programs, it will launch apps automatically for other services using Microsoft 365 Applications Protocol Activations. Policies can control this behavior if it becomes annoying.

One of the better enhancements was made to preserve the integrity of memory. This is achieved by protecting the system from indirect calls to memory. This feature is only available to Windows 8 and newer, as it’s an enhancement to hardware-enforced stack protection. There are also numerous other security improvements made to CVEs.

There are also two separate updates affecting PDFs in this latest release. Edge 100 includes a lightweight PDF reader to preview files without the need for third-party apps. This is especially useful for viewing PDF documents from email attachments. You will also be able to use digital signature validation directly from this reader without needing other programs.

There are many new features in the latest update of Microsoft Edge 100. You can find the full release notes here. The update is rolling out automatically throughout the next few days. However, if you notice a delay, you can manually update your Edge version to 100.0.1185.29 from the settings menu in your browser.