Microsoft Edge: Internet Explorer Replacement in Windows 10
Say goodbye to Microsoft Internet Explorer and hello to Microsoft Edge.
Shown
off at the annual Microsoft Build developer conference, the Edge
browser will be available for Windows 10 when it is released this
summer.
Edge
is designed to take on Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari, and Mozilla’s
Firefox — and to once again make Microsoft the king of Web browsers.
We saw and even used Edge before when it was called Project Spartan, but this is the first time Microsoft has divulged the browser’s official name.
Edge
isn’t just some Internet Explorer knockoff. The browser is a completely
new piece of software and comes with a host of new features.
In addition to its name, Microsoft also debuted a new tab page for Edge.
Joe
Belfiore, a corporate vice president in Microsoft’s Operating Systems
Group, said that Internet Explorer’s new tab page, the page you see when
you open a new tab in the browser, is opened 1 billion times a day, so
Microsoft wanted to help people get the most out of Edge’s new tab page.
When
you open a new tab, you’re met with a universal search bar that lets
you perform a search using Microsoft’s Bing or enter a Web address.
Below that is a list of your most visited websites.
If
there is an app for one of your top sites, you see a “Get the app”
button that takes you to the Microsoft Store, where you can download it.
Under
that is a collection of news stories from various sources, and to the
right is a “Featured apps” list for downloading. At the far right of the
page is a list of some of your favorite information from Microsoft’s
personal assistant Cortana, Microsoft’s answer to Apple’s Siri and
Google Now.
Like
Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox, Edge supports browser plug-ins.
But rather than making developers create the plug-ins from scratch, Edge
will support plug-ins from Chrome and Mozilla with just a few
modifications, making it easier for developers to bring their existing
extensions over.
We
previously talked about some of the more interesting features coming to
Edge, such as the ability to annotate webpages by writing directly on
them with a stylus, as well as a reader mode that cuts extraneous
information from a webpage.
Cortana
also works with Edge’s search feature. So if you have an upcoming
flight, and you search for your airline, Cortana will automatically pull
up your flight information in a separate browser pop-up box.
Edge
is a massive departure from Internet Explorer in both form and
function, and from what we’ve seen, it’s an extremely promising
browser.
As
Belfiore said during his presentation,”The E button in the [Windows]
task bar … now has a completely different and better meaning than it has
for a while.”
Courtesy: Yahoo
