Microsoft Edge 100 is here with PDF previews and memory integrity protection

Google Chrome 100 hit general availability (GA) with a new logo just a couple of days ago, and now, it is time for Microsoft Edge to reach the same version number; sans an updated logo. Microsoft Edge 100 has now hit GA with some improvements for how PDF files are handled as well as some protections against memory-based vulnerabilities.

Microsoft has highlighted five notable feature updates in the release notes. The first, of course, is that the browser will now pass a three-digit User-Agent string. The company has noted that this may cause certain websites with buggy parsers to break, so there is also an option in edge://flags to freeze the major version number to 99 instead of letting it go to 100.

Secondly, opening some URLs for Microsoft 365 services such as SharePoint and OneDrive will launch apps directly for organizations which are using Microsoft 365 Application Protocol Activations on trusted Microsoft cloud storage services. IT admins can use policies to control this behavior.

Another improvement is related to preserving the integrity of memory by protecting indirect calls to it. This is an enhancement to hardware-enforced stack protection, which is only available on Windows 8 and later. These are not all the security-related improvements though, Edge 100 also has security updates for nine CVEs that you can view here.

Finally, there are two updates related to how the browser handles PDF files. Edge 100 can take advantage of a lightweight PDF reader to preview files. It works with PDF attachments in Outlook Desktop and local PDF files in File Explorer. You can also leverage a policy to enable validation of digital signatures in PDFs without using any third-party integration.

There are lots of other policy updates and you can find details about them in the release notes here. Microsoft Edge should automatically update to version 100.0.1185.29 throughout the course of the day, but if it doesn't, you can manually trigger the update by clicking on the three-dots menu on the top-right of the browser window and then navigating to Help and feedback > About Microsoft Edge.