Microsoft Tech

Using Internet-Scale Data to Guide Product Planning

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This article is part of a web development series from Microsoft tech evangelists and engineers on practical JavaScript learning, open source projects, and interoperability best practices including Microsoft Edge browser. Thank you for supporting the partners who make SitePoint possible.

There are so many potential projects we could spend our time on, but like most engineering teams, we have limited time. Since our time is finite, how do we go about deciding which features, bugs, or enhancements should get this valuable resource? Ultimately, it comes down to a variety of inputs, and one of the most important inputs is data. Come learn about some new tools that we’re making public, to help you see how this data plays into the decision-making process. Check out the Platform Data section to access the data we use to plan the future of the web platform and use it to inform your own development.

We use data gathered from various large-scale crawlers to see which front-end APIs are actually used on real sites across the web. API Usage not only allows you to see which APIs are the most used, but also which sites are using them and how they’re being used.

The API Catalog compares the type system of top browsers. When combined with specification data, this reveals overlaps and differences between each browser’s implementation. We make this data publicly available to encourage collaboration between browser vendors and the web community to build a more interoperable web platform.
This video is from Microsoft Edge Web Summit, a free conference organized and staffed by the engineers building Microsoft Edge and Chakra. You can find a full day of technical talks covering the EdgeHTML rendering engine, the open-source Chakra JavaScript engine, and developer tools. You can hear what’s next for the web platform that powers Windows 10, straight from the engineers who build it, and you can get an inside look at powerful techniques and new tools to make your life as a developer just a little bit easier.

We encourage you to test across browsers and devices, including Microsoft Edge–the default browser for Windows 10 – with free tools. Also, visit the Edge blog to stay updated and informed from Microsoft developers and experts.