On 1st August 2015, I upgraded the Windows 8.1 operating system on my laptop to Microsoft Windows 10. The OS comes with some new features and a redesigned start menu. I’ve been using the latest Microsoft Edge browser, and I’m impressed with it.
Edge is the successor to the Internet Explorer, and it is set as a default browser in Windows 10. It has a home screen that boasts a search tool. The default search provider is Bing (You can change it if you want). This window also features a hidden address bar which will be visible only if you click on the free space to the right of the home icon. Below are the most amazing features of Microsoft Edge.
Web note
This is one of the coolest features of Edge browser. In other browsers, you have to install third party extensions to capture website screenshots. You don’t need them in Edge. Web note tool in Edge includes an image cropper tool.
To save a part of a website, click on the crop icon and select the content you want to copy. The copied stuff will be saved to the system clipboard, and you can quickly paste it into the canvas interface of Microsoft Paint, Adobe Photoshop, Corel draw and save the image in your favorite format.
If you want to send the cropped page to OneNote, email address, click on the share icon from the Windows Edge toolbar. If a website is in a different language, you can use the web note tool to translate the content in a language you understand. Web note also includes a highlighter utility, pen tool with different color options and an eraser.
Developer options
This is a very useful section for website designers. Microsoft has added some useful tools in this section. Its DOM Explorer supports live view. If you disable any attribute of CSS from the DOM Explorer, the web page will be rendered without the code you’ve removed.
If you want to test browser friendliness of any website, navigate to the emulation section of Developer Options. Here, you can select different browser views, resolution, and mode (landscape or portrait). To check website performance and its benchmarks, Edge browser for Windows 10 comes with a profiling tool.
Reading List
Edge gives you an option to read your favorite articles on websites later. This feature is known as the reading list. To populate this list, open any web page and click on the star icon (favorite).
Reading view is another useful feature of this latest web-browser. When this option is active, Edge will remove sidebars, advertisements, the footer section of the web page and it will display only the main content.
The image and text content will be automatically aligned to the center of the page.
Cortana:
Cortana, the digital assistant, and Apple Siri Alternative support integration with Edge. Unfortunately, this feature is available only in some countries. You can disable/enable Cortana by navigating to Edge settings.
Performance:
I had opened Facebook and Google Plus websites in Edge and Chrome. Microsoft’s browser consumed more than 600 MB RAM on my laptop, and Chrome took around 400 MB. The page load time on Edge and Google Chrome was almost the same.
Other features of Microsoft Edge are private mode browsing, two theme options i.e. dark and light, options to disable flash, popups, cookies, tabbed browsing, etc.