Mendix Business Modeler and Windows 10 Edge Browser (First Glance)

This will be a quickie. I just wanted to document what I've seen very briefly.

I launched one of my apps I'm working on that is using Modeler 5.15.1. The Modeler started right up and had no problems opening the project. I ran the project locally using the default database and again no issues. I then connected using Chrome (my default) and navigated around the application to see that all of the installed widgets were working fine, and they were. I made a change and committed, so no problems there.

Then I went to the new Edge browser installed in Windows 10. Right away I could see a lot of improvements to the browser in regards to my application. Dropdown menus, fonts and layouts, css enhancements, Dropzone widget, Auto-fill widget, etc. were all looking as good and polished as they do in Chrome or Firerfox. Previously we avoided supporting IE because the UI was impacted negatively enough to warrant it bothersome.

In this application, we leverage IFRAME to display a PDF stored as a File Document within the form page. IE fell apart with this in the past. Firefox has a host of other issues with its built-in pdf viewer and this feature, and Adobe has messed up the entire UI with their new Reader DC (do not recommend!). Not to go too deep down that path but even installing other plugins like NitroPDF limited the in-browser rendering of the files.

I was pleasantly surprised to see how well Edge handled the rendering of the PDF...at first glance. Finally it seemed to be error free. That was until I loaded a new PDF and tried to view it. Like IE, it scaled the image to native which is WAY larger than the viewer parameters forcing the user to scroll around the PDF. There is no way to zoom in or out from what I could see rendering it still useless. And Edge doesn't have plugin support...yet. It's coming but it isn't there yet.

My recommendation is that upgrading your work machine doesn't appear to cause any issues with using the business modeler (I will be doing more testing over the coming months and I left my primary laptop on 8.1 pro for the foreseeable future). However, be prepared for the inevitable issues when using Edge and connecting to your applications. Mostly it does work better than IE, but if you use IFRAME you might still be left with a sub-par experience. Stick with Chrome or Firefox if you can for now until those plugins are enabled in Windows 10.