Microsoft Edge - new browser of choice

It is the era of the web and Microsoft is getting ready for the party. Edge (former Spartan) - new browser - will be pre-installed on all Windows 10 devices on both PC and mobile platforms. Its big news since browser market had been steady for a while with Chrome and Firefox sharing the market.

Recent data shows that people tend to spend less time using browser on their mobile phones. That’s about to change now, with Microsoft’s new, lightweight and easy to use new browser. Apart of Microsoft, Mozilla is also struggling with scarce browser usage and tries to compete with Apple for best browsing experience.

New browser will feature border-less frames as well as minimalistic, easy to navigate view. It is a lot like Internet Explorer, just a lot more simplified. Among the clear advantages over other browsers, Edge has powerful JavaScript engine and full HTML5 support. Experts say it may not immediately put Microsoft among winners in browser market, but it is certainly on the way there.

here are some main features of the new browser:

Search bar of the new browser is well thought through and allows you to find what you are looking for without going to the website. Once search has been entered, suggestions including recent search history will pop up.

Hub is a collection of all your favorite sites, downloads and reads. All the data is there in one place.

Edge will let you take notes, similar to when you are reading a paper. You can highlight directly on the page, add stuff and share with your friends. It’s a creative space and the cool thing is it automatically saves your notes to OneDrive.

Reading has been made easy and fun - you can save articles for later time, choose reading layout (basically you can turn it into a book – a feature already known by Apple users) with custom fonts and colors and adjust styles. Saved articles will be synced with all devices, so you can read something you liked later on the train.

Cortana is a part of browsing experience, suggesting search result before a user even begins to enter them. For example, when looking for a café, Cortana will pop up with information regarding location, opening hours and a possible reservation form. It will run in the background and filter down all the data for you. No more going to webpages and clicking around.

Chrome is a big thing in the browser market, some say it is number 1 browser. It has a lot of powerful features, including superb performance, great design and support for widely spread web service like Gmail. The main issue is, however, user privacy and that’s where Chrome is facing potential decline in user activity.

Although Firefox lost its battles to Google, new release of 2015 has come out packed with features, giving Firefox hope to return back among strongest browsers.

At the moment it is still unclear if Edge will replace Internet Explorer and for now predictions are new Windows 10 machines will still have IE pre-installed. The reason for doing so is to give consumers a chance to view content not supported by modern browsers, so called legacy sites that are still running under old technology setup. It is, however, big milestone for Microsoft and certainly something to look for in the future.