As you know, the new Chromium-based version of Microsoft Edge will not support the EPUB document format. But the company support for this format in Edge classic. Now, when trying to read a document of the appropriate format, the message "Download the .epub application to continue reading" is displayed.
Therefore, the system will no longer support e-books using the .epub file extension. The company offers to download programs for reading this format in the Microsoft Store.
Microsoft said that over time they will expand the list of applications that support this e-book format. Thus, in Redmond they follow the path of Cupertino, because βappleβ operating systems also support EPUB by default.
As for the timing, it is quite logical to assume that EPUB support will be phased out after the expansion of the number of applications in the Microsoft Store. By the way, earlier the company stopped supporting e-books in Microsoft Edge and closed the bookstore, returning the money to users. The functionality of these electronic publications is based on a secure version of the EPUB document. But it still remains unclear why Redmond decided in principle to abandon EPUB in Edge. As with PDF files, the browser does a good job of displaying them. Apparently, these are some measures to optimize business processes.
At this point, it's not clear if native EPUB support will appear in the new Edge and other Chromium-based browsers. Although extensions allow you to implement this, there is no native support out of the box yet.
Source: 3dnews.ru