Microsoft Edge Scrolling

• Microsoft Edge Scrolling Jerky
• Microsoft Edge Scrolling Zoom

Microsoft is now one of the largest contributors to the Chromium engine after rebuilding its own Edge browser to this platform, so it makes sense for the company to bring the best it has to offer to this new world.

In other words, some of the features that Microsoft developed for the original version of Edge are now in development for all Chromium-based browsers to use, including Google Chrome itself.

And living proof is a new scrolling feature that made its debut in EdgeHTML a long time ago and which Microsoft and Google just brought to the latest Chrome Canary version via an experimental flag.

It's called impulse-style scroll animation and it's supposed to make scrolling overall feel more natural in the browser. Despite being created by Microsoft, it would make its way to all platforms where Google Chrome is offered, including Windows, Linux, Mac, and Chrome OS. The Android version of Google Chrome is projected to receive the same update too.

First and foremost, what's the impulse-style scrolling animation? Microsoft has a detailed description of the original feature in Edge:

• Infy Scroll is an extension in beta that can auto-load the next page and let you add customized infinite scrolling to websites. It's also compatible with the AutoPagerize Database, which means it supports thousands of websites automatically.
• However, 'Microsoft Edge scrolling personality' breaks the core functionality on my kiosk. So I have proceeded to disable it on the local administrator account.
• Microsoft is continuing to work hard on its revamped Edge browser, and has just implemented a change that will make for smoother scrolling when viewing websites and using the scrollbar.

'EdgeHTML has a specific style of scroll animations that give it a personality not found on other platforms. The main idea is that each 'tick' of the mouse wheel tries to mimic a physical-based world where content starts moving quickly (an impulse) and then slows due to friction. One of the benefits of this approach is that the scroll feels more responsive due to the quick ramp-up at the start.'

What users don't know is that Microsoft has already ported this feature to the Chromium version of Microsoft Edge, and this is why the scrolling feels better in the new browser than in Chrome. Users can try it out by installing the Canary and Dev builds of the new Edge, and the same feature should soon make its way to the beta builds. Of course, it'll be part of the stable version of Edge as well.

Get Edge like smooth scrolling. Install SmoothScroll from the Chrome Web Store. After you install the extension, you need to customize its settings first. The correct set of settings that get you Edge like smooth scrolling in Chrome were posted by Reddit user u/dkepsilon. Go to the extension's settings and replicate the values you see below.

As per this reddit thread, enabling the new scrolling animation is already possible in the latest version of Chrome Canary.

So the first thing that you need to do is update Chrome Canary to the latest version. This tutorial has been tested on version 81.0.3998.0, so make sure that you are running at least this version before trying to enable the flag.

Once the update is installed, type this in the address bar of Google Chrome Canary:

It goes without saying that this feature is still the experimental stage, so it could take a while before it's fully refined. Google is yet to announce the new scrolling improvement in Chrome, so an ETA as to when it could graduate to the stable release is not yet available.

Of course, if you want to try out all of Microsoft tweaks for the Chromium engine, you can always install the testing builds of Edge, as this is typically the browser that receives Redmond's experimental features first.

Back in 2019 when Microsoft announced that it would rebuild Microsoft Edge browser based on the Chromium engine, the company also promised it would retain the look and feel of the original version of the browser that was bundled with Windows 10 since 2015.

And while most of Edge Legacy has already moved to the Chromium-based successor, the transition is still under way, with some features still under development to work exactly as they did in the previous version of the browser.

One of them is the scrolling, which as many Windows 10 know already, was absolutely amazing in the legacy version of Microsoft Edge. Everything was super smooth and fluid, and Microsoft wants the same experience to come to the Chromium browser as well.

Microsoft Edge Scrolling Jerky

Of course, this means that other Chromium browsers could benefit from the improved scrolling as well, including Google Chrome, but that's a completely different story,

In the meantime, as Microsoft works on bringing the old scrolling to the new browser, certain things could be broken down, and this is the case of the latest version of Edge Dev that introduces such a bug.

Ore specifically, scrolling on trackpads or touchscreens in the latest Edge Dev doesn't work exactly as expected, and Microsoft describes it as a wobbling effect. This only happens on some sites, it says, and while a fix is in the works, you can very well disable the experimental scrolling to bring things back to normal.

Microsoft Edge Scrolling Zoom

'Some users are seeing 'wobbling' behavior when scrolling using trackpad gestures or touchscreens, where scrolling in one dimension also causes the page to subtly scroll back and forth in the other. Note that this only affects certain websites and seems to be worse on certain devices. This is most likely related to our ongoing work to bring scrolling back to parity with Edge Legacy's behavior, so if this behavior is undesirable, you can temporarily turn it off,' Microsoft says.

Disabling the new scrolling system means you'll just have to stick with the standard Chromium scrolling, but given the new one experiences issues, this is most likely the better way to go. Of course, this is just a temporary workaround until Microsoft manages to get the scrolling feature right, so you can revert the changes once this happens.

Disabling the Edge Legacy scrolling behavior in the Chromium successor is possible. All you need to do is turn to a dedicated flag that lets you do the whole thing. So the first thing you need to do is type the following code in the address bar to launch the advanced flags screen:

It's called impulse-style scroll animation and it's supposed to make scrolling overall feel more natural in the browser. Despite being created by Microsoft, it would make its way to all platforms where Google Chrome is offered, including Windows, Linux, Mac, and Chrome OS. The Android version of Google Chrome is projected to receive the same update too.

First and foremost, what's the impulse-style scrolling animation? Microsoft has a detailed description of the original feature in Edge:

• Infy Scroll is an extension in beta that can auto-load the next page and let you add customized infinite scrolling to websites. It's also compatible with the AutoPagerize Database, which means it supports thousands of websites automatically.
• However, 'Microsoft Edge scrolling personality' breaks the core functionality on my kiosk. So I have proceeded to disable it on the local administrator account.
• Microsoft is continuing to work hard on its revamped Edge browser, and has just implemented a change that will make for smoother scrolling when viewing websites and using the scrollbar.

'EdgeHTML has a specific style of scroll animations that give it a personality not found on other platforms. The main idea is that each 'tick' of the mouse wheel tries to mimic a physical-based world where content starts moving quickly (an impulse) and then slows due to friction. One of the benefits of this approach is that the scroll feels more responsive due to the quick ramp-up at the start.'

What users don't know is that Microsoft has already ported this feature to the Chromium version of Microsoft Edge, and this is why the scrolling feels better in the new browser than in Chrome. Users can try it out by installing the Canary and Dev builds of the new Edge, and the same feature should soon make its way to the beta builds. Of course, it'll be part of the stable version of Edge as well.

Get Edge like smooth scrolling. Install SmoothScroll from the Chrome Web Store. After you install the extension, you need to customize its settings first. The correct set of settings that get you Edge like smooth scrolling in Chrome were posted by Reddit user u/dkepsilon. Go to the extension's settings and replicate the values you see below.

As per this reddit thread, enabling the new scrolling animation is already possible in the latest version of Chrome Canary.

So the first thing that you need to do is update Chrome Canary to the latest version. This tutorial has been tested on version 81.0.3998.0, so make sure that you are running at least this version before trying to enable the flag.

Once the update is installed, type this in the address bar of Google Chrome Canary:

It goes without saying that this feature is still the experimental stage, so it could take a while before it's fully refined. Google is yet to announce the new scrolling improvement in Chrome, so an ETA as to when it could graduate to the stable release is not yet available.

Of course, if you want to try out all of Microsoft tweaks for the Chromium engine, you can always install the testing builds of Edge, as this is typically the browser that receives Redmond's experimental features first.

Back in 2019 when Microsoft announced that it would rebuild Microsoft Edge browser based on the Chromium engine, the company also promised it would retain the look and feel of the original version of the browser that was bundled with Windows 10 since 2015.

And while most of Edge Legacy has already moved to the Chromium-based successor, the transition is still under way, with some features still under development to work exactly as they did in the previous version of the browser.

One of them is the scrolling, which as many Windows 10 know already, was absolutely amazing in the legacy version of Microsoft Edge. Everything was super smooth and fluid, and Microsoft wants the same experience to come to the Chromium browser as well.

Microsoft Edge Scrolling Jerky

Of course, this means that other Chromium browsers could benefit from the improved scrolling as well, including Google Chrome, but that's a completely different story,

In the meantime, as Microsoft works on bringing the old scrolling to the new browser, certain things could be broken down, and this is the case of the latest version of Edge Dev that introduces such a bug.

Ore specifically, scrolling on trackpads or touchscreens in the latest Edge Dev doesn't work exactly as expected, and Microsoft describes it as a wobbling effect. This only happens on some sites, it says, and while a fix is in the works, you can very well disable the experimental scrolling to bring things back to normal.

Microsoft Edge Scrolling Zoom

'Some users are seeing 'wobbling' behavior when scrolling using trackpad gestures or touchscreens, where scrolling in one dimension also causes the page to subtly scroll back and forth in the other. Note that this only affects certain websites and seems to be worse on certain devices. This is most likely related to our ongoing work to bring scrolling back to parity with Edge Legacy's behavior, so if this behavior is undesirable, you can temporarily turn it off,' Microsoft says.

Disabling the new scrolling system means you'll just have to stick with the standard Chromium scrolling, but given the new one experiences issues, this is most likely the better way to go. Of course, this is just a temporary workaround until Microsoft manages to get the scrolling feature right, so you can revert the changes once this happens.

Disabling the Edge Legacy scrolling behavior in the Chromium successor is possible. All you need to do is turn to a dedicated flag that lets you do the whole thing. So the first thing you need to do is type the following code in the address bar to launch the advanced flags screen:

Microsoft hasn't provided any ETA as to when it could fix the scrolling in Edge. The next stable release is due in mid-May, while new Dev builds land every week as per the standard release schedule. It remains to be seen when this bug would be corrected, but in the meantime, the aforementioned workaround comes in handy to continue using Edge Dev without the scrolling problem.