Move Over Internet Explorer, Welcome to the Edge

One of the more exciting features of Windows 10 is the new web browser it will be introducing: Microsoft Edge. Many folks gave up on Internet Explorer years ago and are now devout followers of Google Chrome, Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple Safari. Microsoft Edge, formerly known as Project Spartan, aims to change all of that. In addition to new features detailed below such as page annotation, integration with Cortana, new-page tab and reading mode, Edge supports more standards (which means pages will ultimately work better), is faster and works universally across platforms such as your phone, tablet and PC.

Page Annotations

If you’ve ever wanted to draw or scribble something on a webpage and share it with a friend, you can now in Edge. This is one feature that isn’t available as part of the other browsers you are accustomed to. Additionally, you can include these as part of your reading list to save articles for later.

Hey Cortana

We detailed some of the coolest features of Microsoft’s personal assistant, Cortana, in another post, “Cortana: Microsoft’s Answer to Siri and Ok, Google” so check it out to get up to speed. When appropriate, Cortana will be available in the toolbar to provide you with relevant information. You can also right click on selected information and Cortana will assist you with additional search. Probably the coolest thing is that you can do all this information directly from the page without opening a new tab.

New-tab Page

In addition to the features you are familiar with such as the ability to see thumbnails of most-visited sites, re-open closed tabs, and see site suggestions, Edge will display app suggestions, weather, sports scores and video suggestions when you click the “new-tab” button.

Reading Mode

This has been available for a while in other browsers but is now also available in Edge. Essentially, reading mode let’s you clear the clutter (ads, sidebars, etc.) so you can focus on what’s important: the main text and images. It will also take advantage of Bing Translator to make the page available in your preferred language.

Browser Extensions

Extensions have long been available as part of other browsers and even IE supported them to an extent but now Edge will use the same JavaScript and HTML standards used by Chrome and Firefox which means programmers will only have to do minimal programming for their pages to work with Edge. The extensions weren’t released as part of the general release of Windows 10 on July 29 but will be available later.

To the Edge and Back

Edge stills lacks some of the features we’ve grown to love in other browsers such as the ability to go incognito and pin tabs. So, you may not want to abandon your favorite browser just quite yet but it’s definitely worth taking a spin around the block.