The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update is just around the corner. It brings with itself a number of new features including accessibility improvements, hardened security, full support for the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), new capabilities for the Windows Device Portal, and enhancements to Windows AutoPilot management tools.

Now, Microsoft has announced some changes in tow for its Edge browser as well, claiming that webpages will load and render "significantly faster" in the Fall Creators Update.

The firm says that with EdgeHTML 16 in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, it has enabled independent rendering for more sites, which boosts their performance. This has been done by adding full support for the following three types of elements:

"select" control

"canvas" element

certain "svg" elements

This has lead to performance improvements in various scenarios including content processing, iterative operations, and scrolling via the rendering thread even when the main thread is busy. Transitioning rendering to a separate thread has also increased the efficiency on multi-core CPUs.

The company states that this allows applications to effectively utilize their allotted frames in script-driven animations, which are present in complex visualizations and games.

With EdgeHTML 16, Microsoft is also introducing independent rendering support for some SVG elements, such as Markers, Masks, and Patterns. As a result, sites which utilize these elements will load a lot faster in the Fall Creators Update.

In addition, the introduction of independent rendering will also result in enhancements for 2D canvas elements. Microsoft says that its telemetry data showed that the presence of 2D canvas elements was the primary reason behind independent rendering being disabled on various websites.

The firm claims that it tested EdgeHTML 15 and EdgeHTML 16 on two identical Surface Book devices, and the latter showed a 43% improvement over the other, thanks to independent rendering. Microsoft states that you can preview these changes and notice the improvements in "recent" Windows Insider builds, ahead of the general availability of the Fall Creators Update.