This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: Microsoft Edge Blog.
Building an extension has never been easier. Rapid adoption of AI-assisted coding is enabling developers to build extensions faster than ever. We have seen that momentum on the Edge Add-ons site. More developers are building, iterating, and submitting extensions, which is great for the ecosystem and ultimately gives users more choice. It also creates a challenge: how do we keep up with the pace at which the ecosystem is growing, while maintaining a high bar for quality?Speeding up extension reviews
We know time matters to developers. Whether launching an extension, fixing an issue, or making improvements, waiting for a review can slow progress. Last year, we introduced an expedited review process for high-quality and high-value extensions. Since then, submission volumes have continued to increase, and our review pipeline has experienced additional strain, causing an increase in extension review turnaround time. At the same time, at Edge we have always held a very high bar on quality. So, the challenge in front of us was to reduce the turnaround time for extension updates while ensuring the quality of extensions is maintained. To address this challenge, we've introduced automation for many of the repeatable validation checks that are part of the review process and streamlined how reviews move through our pipeline. This doesn't change our review standards or reduce the checks an extension must pass. Instead, it helps us identify known policy violations and security issues more consistently while allowing reviewers to spend more time on complex cases that benefit from human judgment. The result is a more efficient review process that helps extensions move through the pipeline faster while maintaining the high quality and security standards developers and users expect from the Edge Add-ons site. For developers, this mean bug fixes and new features reach your users sooner. Our objective is to make Edge the easiest place to build, publish, and grow an extension. Faster reviews are just one part of that investment. We continue to look for ways to reduce friction across the developer journey while maintaining a trusted marketplace for users.Recognizing quality as it improves
As more extensions become available on the Edge Add-ons site, helping users discover extensions they can trust is equally important. The Featured badge has long helped users identify high-quality extensions in the Edge Add-ons site. It serves as a trust signal, highlighting extensions that demonstrate a strong commitment to quality, reliability, security, and user experience.
The Featured badge is awarded to select extensions that align with Best practices for extensions. Our evaluation considers more than 60 quality signals across multiple dimensions of an extension. Today, much of our evaluation process is automated to make it more consistent, objective, and scalable as the ecosystem expands.
But quality is not static. As we continue to refine our badging criteria, and as developers continuously improve their extensions by fixing issues, refining experiences, and responding to user feedback, we automatically update badges on the Edge Add-ons site.
And now, to more quickly recognize quality improvements, we're refreshing Featured badges every 15 days.
With this more frequent cadence, high-quality extensions can earn recognition sooner, and developers receive faster feedback on their investments in quality. At the same time, users benefit from a more up-to-date view of the extensions that meet our quality standards.
Our goal is simple: make it easier for users to find extensions they can trust while ensuring developers who invest in quality are recognized more quickly.