For those who don’t know what this is about – Edge is the successor to Microsoft Explorer. MS says it built it from scratch, along with the usual marketing talk about taking the best from all the other browsers and delivering the best user experience and comfort. Windows 10 is generally doing very well, with a 5% share worldwide and as much as 7% in the Czech Republic, yet Edge is used by almost nobody. Is it really that bad? I’ve had Windows 10 since yesterday and I’m trying to use Edge, so what are my impressions so far?
- Visuals – Edge fits in with the look of the new system from Microsoft. Everything responds to mouse hover or a swipe of the finger, the emphasis is on clean lines and everything is styled in shades of gray. I like the dark theme, which suits it, but the light one is nice too.
- Rendering engine/core – just as the W10 core itself is a bit unstable, Edge has its own bugs as well. In more complex situations various elements overlap, while other browsers render them correctly.
- Active development – I first tried Edge sometime in early August, when I installed W10 for the first time. Since then it hasn’t changed much. It’s probably not a key product for MS; the point is simply to get rid of the Internet Explorer brand, which was rejected by the IT world for the very same problem. When I check the version in the settings, I get the feeling that even that hasn’t changed. And I’m afraid the next update won’t come until W10 Mobile is released – but maybe then development will pick up.
- A revolution? I read an opinion that this browser is so revolutionary and progressive that most people won’t understand it, let alone laypeople who have no interest in exploring or understanding software architecture. I partly agree; it is a different approach to browsing the web, but I don’t think it goes its own way to that extent.
- Searching with other search engines – there’s no longer any need for complicated setup in the system. Edge has several search engines built in, and any of them can be set as the default.
- Tabs get recycled. If you return to one after a longer time, it reloads, because the old version is no longer in memory. Yet this could be solved much better – by saving a snapshot of the page to disk. I don’t like this at all, but it’s true that I have plenty of RAM, and not everyone has a machine like that.
- Videos only play when the window is maximized or restored. If you hide the window with the minimize button, video playback stops too, yet the video keeps loading, so on a data-capped connection your FUP keeps running down. Really interesting logic.
- There are no extensions. They will come to the browser in the future, though, even to its mobile version. But I don’t miss extensions that much; I liked them most in Firefox, and in Chrome they’re necessary because, for example, life on Chrome OS would be impossible without them, but on a full-fledged system there are apps for everything. Hopefully they’ll be secure when they arrive.
- Sync – It’s surely there or will be, but I can’t judge it yet since I don’t have Edge anywhere else. I’m looking forward to the final W 10 Mobile so I can put it on my Lumia.
Unfinished features/limitations:
Overall, Edge is a pleasant browser that bets on minimalism and follows the motto “beauty lies in simplicity“. It’s not quite a competitor to Chrome, but it’s the right direction after years when the words Internet Explorer would fill most people with dread. I still have to keep Chrome installed, because some things simply don’t work in Edge. If it didn’t keep shutting down completely, I would stick with it. I tried googling to find out what causes it, but I didn’t find anything anywhere.