Microsoft Edge On Windows 10: the Browser That Will Finally Kill IE

An anonymous reader writes: Windows 10 launches today and with it comes a whole new browser, Microsoft Edge. You can still use Internet Explorer if you want, but it's not the default. IE turns 20 in less than a month, which is ancient in internet years, so it's not surprising that Microsoft is shoving it aside. Still, leaving behind IE and launching a new browser built from the ground up marks the end of an era for Microsoft. “Knowing that browsing is still one of the very top activities that people do on a PC, we knew there was an opportunity, and really an obligation, to push the web browsing experience and so that’s what we’ve done with Microsoft Edge," Drew DeBruyne, director of program management at Microsoft told VentureBeat.

Comments

I found this bit quite funny

[Anonymous Coward]

You might be wondering, why didn’t Microsoft put Cortana in a different place in Edge; why the address bar? DeBruyne spelled it out for us: “Second to the start menu, it’s probably the most trafficked place in the Windows user interface.”

So why did you remove the start menu in windows 8?

Re:I found this bit quite funny

[vux984]

So why did you remove the start menu in windows 8?

Lol, well said.

However, to be fair to MS, they didn't "remove it" they revamped it. They rightfully identified that there was a ton of functionality jammed into it, and that it was a shitty UI for most of it, while simultaneously its primary design driver was a vestigial hierarchical folder structure from Windows 95 that really was quite hideous and unusable, and rarely used.

Every one used the start menu to shutdown, to get to control panels etc, to access frequently used and pinned apps, and to search.

shutdown? because that's where it was. No real need for it to be there relative to anywhere else.
control panels same thing. So they moved them (and also added them to right click start menu).
pinned apps... you can still create taskbar menus and pin apps etc in win8.

search -- there's two types of search:
-- type one ... "power user quick launch" . For example type cmd to launch command or pow to launch powershell, etc etc... the win7 start menu worked well for this

-- type two -- actual search. Where you want to find something that you don't know what its called, or to find a document. Having your whole search interface in a small popup in the corner that was liable to disappear on you at random was silly and useless. The win7 start menu sucks for real search.

Finally... heirarchical start menu browsing... was clumsy in Windows 95 and all but useless in a modern PC. Nobody used it unless they had to, and browsing multiple levels of nested folders was clumsy.

The start screen in windows 8 ... was better for search. And the other commands were relocated. The problem with windows 8 was simply that the new locations were non-obvious. (how do I shutdown?) And the "type one" quick search-launch functionality was now really clutzy switching to a full screen app for quick launch makes no sense. (And really the whole 'go full screen' was a mistake. The old start menu was broken... but the new one was also broken, better in some ways, but worse in most.

But they were looking for a solution to a definite problem. Anyone who honestly looks at the windows 7 start menu has to acknowledge that it does too much, and does MUCH of it poorly. It needed attention.

Unfortunately windows 8 was a step in mostly the wrong directions. Too touch centric. Too much key functionality hidden off screen. Charms bar was just bad. Not having window border controls for mouse users was just bad. Defaulting to using 'modern ui' for viewing pictures etc was just bad. 8.1 cleaned up a lot of that, but it was still not ideal. Too much was driven by the tablet/mobile design rather than really trying to solve the problem for desktop users in a way that made sense for desktop users.

Windows 10 (build 10240) seems like a pretty good compromise so far. There's still plenty I don't like, but I think its a genuine step forward from 7 rather than a step sideways.

Windows, IE and Lifecycles

[Anonymous Coward]

You can point your finger at Microsoft, Windows and IE and point out a lot of problems. One thing they do a pretty good job of however, is supporting their systems for a long time. Contrast with Apple... my company bought me an iPad in 2010 shortly after the first version came out. Less than 3 1/2 years later, no more iOS updates were available on it (5.1.1 was the last version) and over time apps stopped supporting this version of the OS.

Microsoft supports their OS's for a decade or more and even unsupported versions tend to just keep working. IE was a leading edge browsers for quite a while before they got mired down in ActiveX controls and other issues that caused it to become a huge security hole and recently I began preferring it over Firefox again. I am actually looking forward to trying out Windows 10 and the new browser... we'll likely be using both this time in 2025.

Re:Will Edge be ported to Windows 7?

[wile_e_wonka]

I guess you haven't found the "tablet mode" feature.

Any ad blockers for it yet?

[wonkey_monkey]

Hey Cortana, how can I block ads when I'm using Edge?

Re:I don't want to 'feel' it, I want it to be real

[Anonymous Coward]

'feel' is being use as an emotive marketing term to engage the buyer more.

If they're being truthful then the way they'll make it 'feel' responsive, fast, and lightweight is by *being* responsive, fast, and lightweight, but enough so that you actually notice the difference to before and to competitors. So fingers crossed.

Trust and safe though are more about brand. Doing away with the IE brand and calling it edge rather than IE12 is dumping their old baggage - the history of bugs (ActiveX etc) and the fact it's frankly too boring, old and corporate. They get to give it an fresh new look, and the promise of no bugs because they're starting again with the lessons of the past. Of course they have to actually keep it secure now, otherwise the trust will call away and it'll become IE12 in all but name.

'personal' and 'productive' is just pure marketing blurb. It's perfect for the end user because it's personal to them and it's perfect for business because it's productive. Completely meaningless. Any browser that provides bookmarks can be called 'personal' and any browser that actually functions is 'productive'.

on again with the fishy practices

[choupette]

I just installed windows 10 yesterday as an upgrade to windows 8.1.

it kept all my settings, in a very accurate way except for one : it replaced my browser with edge. So at the first reboot I launched chrome, and it whined about not being my defaut browser, so I clicked the "make chrome my defaut browser" button, and a window came, recapitulating my prefered apps for music / videos / etc, I thought to myself that it was thoughtful to show me all those settings, but I had other things to do, so I closed that window.

Well, next reboot, same problem : chrome wasn't my default browser, you actually have to go to the bottom of the window that pops up, and the deselect edge for your prefered browser at the bottom of the window. So I finally did it.

I thought about the same thing : " ... browsing is still one of the very top activities that people do on a PC" yes, so why the hell don't they change the browser as chrome requested, and why the hell do they put this option on the bottom of the window, which is not visible unless I scrolled down (I have a 1920x1080 screen) ?

well I think I know why, I'll be sure to check edge's market share in the next months.