With the good comes the bad. There is a thing called code debt, which is the concept of features that do not make the cut when a radically new version of a software is released.
Well, we have a similar case here, of good and bad.
While Microsoft announced a slew of features in the pipeline for the new Chromium powered Edge, the browser will actually miss out on an important feature that many a user enjoyed — particularly those with love for reading books on their Windows 10 machines.
Yes, that of reading EPUB files on Microsoft Edge.
Earlier this year, the company removed the Books section from the Microsoft Store, taking away the ability for users to buy books, or even read existing books after July. But while this meant that users could not download books, they were still able to read these publications natively on Windows 10.
Thanks to the handy EPUB reading abilities that were added to the Edge web browser.
As it turns out, these are going away too.
Microsoft makes this clear in this new support page that it has put up, confirming that it is removing support for the EPUB file format in Microsoft Edge some point in the future. There is no clear date when that is happening, but the launch of the Chromium powered Edge is as good a guess as any.
This new flavor of the browser replaces the current UWP app, and it looks like Redmond has no intention to bring back this capability.
It is end of support for this neat little feature, folks.
Of course, since the UWP version of Edge is still included with Windows 10, reading EPUB books on the browser should not be an issue for a while longer. But you can bet the farmhouse that there will be no further improvements and enhancements in this regard from here on.
Sad.
