Microsoft has once again expanded its list of obsolete features in Windows. This time, it’s not familiar apps like WordPad or Maps, but a series of web components dating back to Windows 8 and the first version of Edge.
The company reports that these components will officially be given deprecated status. This marks the beginning of their slow demise. The list includes Legacy Web View, the HTML and JavaScript apps from Windows 8 and 8.1 that later became UWP apps, and the first generation of Progressive Web Apps. The developer tools from the original Edge browser are also disappearing from this list. All these features are built on EdgeHTML. That was the engine behind the classic Edge, which was replaced by the Chromium variant in 2020.
For users, little will change for the time being. Microsoft emphasizes that the components will not be removed from Windows immediately and will continue to receive security updates for the time being. However, developers should not expect any new features. In its documentation, the company states that the components will eventually stop receiving updates and will disappear in future versions of Windows.
Chromium-based Progressive Web Apps as an alternative
Microsoft is pointing developers to alternatives such as WebView2 and modern Chromium-based Progressive Web Apps. This is in line with the company’s broader strategy of ridding Windows of old technologies that are hardly used anymore, while at the same time accelerating the transition to modern and more secure web standards. For software developers, this means that they will eventually have to adapt or migrate their applications to remain compatible with new versions of Windows.
The announcement is part of a broader clean-up operation. In addition to WordPad and Mixed Reality, protocols such as NTLMv1 and tools such as WMIC and PowerShell 2.0 are now also on the list. With this addition, Microsoft is showing that the clean-up operation goes much further than removing nostalgic utilities. The foundations on which previous attempts at web integration were built are also gradually disappearing from the operating system.