4 Great Things You Can Do In Windows 10’s New ‘Edge’ Browser

Windows 10 is just around the corner, hoping to have a successful launch on July 29th. Windows 10 looks to bring the glory of innovation back to Microsoft like it did in the old days before Apple came along and stole the laptop market completely, left Windows hanging on to those die hard Windows fans and true PC gamers. Windows 10 looks to bring back a lot of what people missed from Windows 8, the start menu, a dedicated desktop. Along with this, they’re keeping it modern, allowing you so great tablet and desktop modes, adding in Cortana to smarten up your laptop and bringing Xbox One Gaming to the software update.

However, one of Microsoft’s biggest complaints over the past few years has been Internet Explorer which has struggled to keep up with internet standards. It has also struggled to keep up with the likes of Chrome, Safari and Firefox when it comes to speed, extensions and just plain user numbers. Therefore, Microsoft thought it was suitable to give their browser a complete new refresh along with a completely new name. Windows 10 will debut with ‘Edge’, a complete overhaul of their browser, ridding itself of the Internet Explorer curse and truly taking Windows into the next-generation with some killer features. New features are being announced every week up until launch, but we’ve got 4 really exciting ones to tell you about here today.

Cortana Can Give You Information

Cortana is looking to be a really exciting addition in Windows 10, bringing you the great functionality of a personal assistant that no other platforms currently offer you (we expect the next version of OSX after El Capitan just might though.) In Windows 10, Cortana will look to be your assistant giving you information on things when you want them, activated either by voice or by a click of the button. Almost like the universal search of yesteryear but with super-intelligence.

In Microsoft’s new Edge Browser, Cortana will work to make sure that you can get information about whatever page you’re on. Within this example, we look at a Cuoco Trattoria restaurant. Cortana popped up in the browser with a little message just saying she had information, clicking on her brings out this slide-out menu full of information. With Cortana, you’ll receive all sorts of information such as opening times, prices, a menu, directions, Yelp reviews, pictures. If you want a comparison, it’s sort of what Google Now might give you if you specified you wanted all the information you could find on that restaurant. Except in this case, Cortana already has that information and can show you in an attractive way within a matter of a second.

It Has A Clever Reading Mode

A lot of browsers these days have been offering up a great way to quickly and easily access a reading mode that will quickly pull all the text and the main images from the article or page you’re viewing and present it in a minimal and easily viewable way. Safari is probably the best at this right now, offering an almost instant on version of the product, making it super useful when you want to get the clutter of the ads and other stuff out of the way.

Microsoft’s new Edge browser looks to bring this feature into its list of great features. From the demo video, it appears to be a simple process too, just right clicking anywhere and a little book sign will pop up, allowing you to quickly switch to reader mode. It looked to work really quickly too which is promising because you don’t want to spend your time waiting for it to load to simply read something in a more minimal format. What you can then do next once you’re in reading mode though is when Edge comes into its own as a next generation browser.

Has The Ability To Annotate Directly In The Browser

Something that Microsoft were really proud of with their Microsoft Surface tablets was the incredibly powerful writing ability that the Pro models came with. The writing was the best we’d ever seen on a tablet and it had clever pal-recognition technology so it only picked up the pen was especially useful. Within Edge browser, you can draw, highlight and erase all over your different images, making for a great way to quickly show off something about a page that you like or dislike. However, Microsoft have thought of those without a stylus and a touch screen laptop too. There’s a notes button alongside the drawing tools which allows you to click anywhere and write a note about that section of the image/text. Sharing it however, is what makes this such a powerful and not a completely useless tool.

Ability To Share Annotated Pages Directly In Intelligent Ways

What you can then do with these annotated pages is what takes this ability away from being a little bit of fun to genuinely useful. Sharing this annotated image will then send either a screenshot of the current look of the page to whatever platform, social media or messaging service you have installed on your computer. Or, if you know someone else uses Edge browser, you can send a link which will send them the direct view you have of what you’re looking at, allowing them to directly annotate and edit the same page. It’s a unique and clever idea and one we think could work quite nicely for those with Windows hybrid laptop/tablets.