For two decades, the default web browsing experience in Windows has been Internet Explorer. Over the years, Microsoft’s home-built browser became bloated, insecure, confusing to use, and just plain hated by many users. A lot of people turned to alternatives, such as Google Chrome, as a result. With Windows 10 , Microsoft went back to the drawing board and scrapped everything it had done so far with Internet Explorer. It built an entirely new browser from scratch, one that would shed all of the baggage of Internet Explorer and offer a modern, fast web browsing experience for Windows users. That browser is Edge.
Edge comes with Windows 10 out of the box. And I should say up top that Internet Explorer also comes with Windows 10, though it’s buried in the OS, and Microsoft says that’s largely for compatibility with legacy enterprise apps. But Edge is the default, and it will be available across Microsoft’s product line, from PCs to smartphones to Holo Lens and Surface Hub. Microsoft said it built Edge to be clean, tight, and responsive. In my tests, it mostly was. Edge feels really lightweight and fast — and in some cases bare-bones — which is a refreshing change from IE.
After IE, Microsoft has some work to do to rebuild users' trust, and the company says the days of cluttered, unwanted task bars and constantly changing home screens from nefarious apps are long gone. Edge uses its own rendering engine, which was built off of IE 11's engine, but slimmed down. Microsoft does note that it has done some work to make sure websites that are designed for browsers like Safari or Chrome still work well in Edge, which has long been a problem with IE. I did run into some bugs on some webpages with Edge, but mainly stuff loaded fast and accurately.
Edge's default home page is informative and inviting
Open Edge and you are greeted with a clean home page that asks, "Where to next?" above a combined search and address bar. Below that are links to popular websites, and below those is a customized news and information feed, that can display personalized news articles, sports scores, and weather information based on your Microsoft account. Unsurprisingly, Edge’s built-in search is powered by Bing, but what may be more surprising is just how hard it is to change it to another service, giving the impression that Microsoft really doesn’t want you to. To change it, you need to visit the search engine you want to use (such as Google), go to Settings, Advanced Settings, scroll to the "Search in the Address bar" setting, select "Add New", choose the engine that’s in the list, and click "Add as default."
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