What does everyone think of the new Microsoft Edge?

[jpenner]

So far it's been fine, fast, usable, and relatively pain free. In fact the only thing that's been a pain is updating legacy code that still uses browser strings (hello from 1999!). Bad habits from previous developers. For general browser usage, it seems faster in both usability and in use than Chrome. Haven't run any benchmarks though I've read that it's still not up to par with Chrome. And I *hate* IE prior to version 10. So for me to not be annoyed by Microsoft Edge is... surprising.

[7BMSoousv7fQWYZX]

Too basic, as other said.

I often work with the browser and need specific extension for productivity, not to mention an adblocker, pinned tabs, a better font rendering engine (AA is inferior to Chrome) and other search engine support. 

[Boo Berry]

I had adblocking and userscripts working in Edge, but the lack of LastPass is a dealbreaker for me.

[Motor_Mouth]

Other than the lack of extensions, the inability to change the search engine to Google is why I refuse to use it.

It seems intentional, too. Edge allows both Twitter and Wikipedia as search engines, but still won't allow you to add Google in any easy or meaningful way. I also noticed that under a fresh install of Windows 8.1 recently, it was nearly impossible to add Google as the default search engine for IE, either.

 

Why would you want to use Google? We have to do a lot of image searches at work and we have never found Google to be superior at all. Bing consistently returns the best results nearer the top. Why do you think Google copied Bing's image search layout? (Of course, Bing copied some of Google's refinement's too, but the basic layout was originally Bing's.) I reckon over the last two or three years I have got half the news room using Bing over Google, based purely on results. In general searches, whenever Bing has been unable to find something for me and I've resorted to Google, it has never found what I was looking for, either. Not once.

 

My nephew put me onto Bing 6 or 7 years ago and, to be honest, I stuck with it mostly because I love the Image of the Day but for the past few years I reckon it has gotten as good as Google, or near enough that it doesn't matter any more.

 

And you can't blame Microsoft for trying to get back at Google, given the way Google treat Windows Phone.

 

 

Still IE no matter what they call it, will still only be good for downloading a real browser 

Spoken like an ignorant fool! (And I know, I've been there myself.) I use Firefox, Chrome and Safari at work and none of them are a patch on IE 11. IE11 feels faster, looks better, is definitely more stable and has by far the best reading mode. Being a Netscape devotee since the 90s, I had always avoided IE like the plague but when I started installing Win8 previews on my old netbook, I decided to give it a go and found it to be fantastic. In the end, I just got so sick of all the effort required to make Firefox work the way I want it to, which is how IE 11 works out of the box, that I just couldn't see the point in bothering. So I've been an extremely happy IE 11 user at home for more than 3 years now.

 

 

... a better font rendering engine (AA is inferior to Chrome) and other search engine support. 

That's a laugh! Try using Chrome on any PC with Quadro graphics - you get no AA at all. It renders Chrome unusable on my laptop and work PCs.

 

 

Anyway, to answer the original question - as a replacement for the Modern UI version of IE 11, Edge is a joke. I can see it's (ugly) UI, which is at the wrong end of the screen. It's reading mode is quite poor compared to IE 11 and it is no more usable with touch than any desktop browser. It is the no. 1 reason I will not be upgrading to Windows 10.

[spaceelf]

IE11 feels faster, looks better, is definitely more stable 

 

Did you say something incomprehensible?  IE11 is none of those things.

 

It can be good, but it's nowhere near any of that.

 

Edge, Chrome and Firefox stomp on IE11.

[cork1958]

Couldn't really tell you what I think of it as on my machine it did nothing but crash. Only got it to stay open 1 time and then the first thing I did was download Firefox!

 

From my experience with version 10130, I think was the build number, all of Windows 10 is nothing but one big POS!

 

Replaced Windows 10 with the new version of Debian!

[Anibal P]

Why would you want to use Google? We have to do a lot of image searches at work and we have never found Google to be superior at all. Bing consistently returns the best results nearer the top. Why do you think Google copied Bing's image search layout? (Of course, Bing copied some of Google's refinement's too, but the basic layout was originally Bing's.) I reckon over the last two or three years I have got half the news room using Bing over Google, based purely on results. In general searches, whenever Bing has been unable to find something for me and I've resorted to Google, it has never found what I was looking for, either. Not once.

 

My nephew put me onto Bing 6 or 7 years ago and, to be honest, I stuck with it mostly because I love the Image of the Day but for the past few years I reckon it has gotten as good as Google, or near enough that it doesn't matter any more.

 

And you can't blame Microsoft for trying to get back at Google, given the way Google treat Windows Phone.

 

 

Spoken like an ignorant fool! (And I know, I've been there myself.) I use Firefox, Chrome and Safari at work and none of them are a patch on IE 11. IE11 feels faster, looks better, is definitely more stable and has by far the best reading mode. Being a Netscape devotee since the 90s, I had always avoided IE like the plague but when I started installing Win8 previews on my old netbook, I decided to give it a go and found it to be fantastic. In the end, I just got so sick of all the effort required to make Firefox work the way I want it to, which is how IE 11 works out of the box, that I just couldn't see the point in bothering. So I've been an extremely happy IE 11 user at home for more than 3 years now.

 

 

That's a laugh! Try using Chrome on any PC with Quadro graphics - you get no AA at all. It renders Chrome unusable on my laptop and work PCs.

 

 

Anyway, to answer the original question - as a replacement for the Modern UI version of IE 11, Edge is a joke. I can see it's (ugly) UI, which is at the wrong end of the screen. It's reading mode is quite poor compared to IE 11 and it is no more usable with touch than any desktop browser. It is the no. 1 reason I will not be upgrading to Windows 10.

 

Having actually tried to use Edge, I stand by my comment, still not good or capable above anything else I've used 

[TAZMINATOR]

Did you say something incomprehensible?  IE11 is none of those things.

 

It can be good, but it's nowhere near any of that.

 

Edge, Chrome and Firefox stomp on IE11.

 

Not all system configurations are same...  

 

You: Edge is faster than IE 11 on your system.

 

Other: IE11 is faster than Edge on theirs.

 

You can not judge them... unless you are at their house for proof that IE11 is faster than Edge on that system... 

 

 

It's about preferences and browser is working for him/her.  Like "Oh, I like Firefox better because it's quick enough and stable for me."   They test Chrome or whatever that they find that they have browser glitches or slowness... something like that. "Hell, I go back to IE11 because ti's quick."

 

I understand that those browser you mentioned are better than IE11.  But based on the configuration anyone has... it may be different story.

[insanelyapple]

I don't like the fact that you can't sign-out easily and if you do, you'll be singed-in back again; I'm sick of "personalized experience" everywhere and for me this is a serious privacy issue. That's the first thing, the second is lack of extensions - say whatever you like, but browsing web nowadays without protection from tracking elements and intrusive ads is like sadomasochism caused either by choice or ignorance.

 

Layout is nice - it reminds me both Firefox and Chrome, and also I like the simplified options but there's still lots of stuff that should arrive - like better bookmarks support.

[Stokkolm]

It lacks a tablet mode like Modern IE.

Once it has that option i'll probably like it a lot more

It's designed to be functional for tablets and desktop users alike. Here's a side-by-side of Safari from my iPad compared with Edge. As you can see, it's very usable as a tablet browser. Note that the scaling isn't the same between the two images.

[Stokkolm]

I don't like the fact that you can't sign-out easily and if you do, you'll be singed-in back again; I'm sick of "personalized experience" everywhere and for me this is a serious privacy issue. That's the first thing, the second is lack of extensions - say whatever you like, but browsing web nowadays without protection from tracking elements and intrusive ads is like sadomasochism caused either by choice or ignorance.

 

Layout is nice - it reminds me both Firefox and Chrome, and also I like the simplified options but there's still lots of stuff that should arrive - like better bookmarks support.

I hope you're not an Android user...

[hagjohn]

There's a new IE? Could have sworn Microsoft removed IE from Windows 10.

 

It's still there. It just uses Edge as the default.

[Stoffel]

It's designed to be functional for tablets and desktop users alike. Here's a side-by-side of Safari from my iPad compared with Edge. As you can see, it's very usable as a tablet browser. Note that the scaling isn't the same between the two images.

 

I'm not saying it's not usable, but it's a step back from Modern IE.

In my opinion there is not a better browser then Modern IE11 for browsing on a tablet/laptop with touch screen.

it got rid of all the chrome so your webpage can take up the whole screen. If I need the chrome, it's just a swipe away

[Stokkolm]

I'm not saying it's not usable, but it's a step back from Modern IE.

In my opinion there is not a better browser then Modern IE11 for browsing on a tablet/laptop with touch screen.

it got rid of all the chrome so your webpage can take up the whole screen. If I need the chrome, it's just a swipe away

I do wish they'd add gesture support, that would be really nice. It's at least as useable as Safari on iPad is the only point I was trying to make. I agree that having the address bar fade away in Metro IE is nice, but it did have it's problems...especially if you were using a Surface with the keyboard attached. It was really difficult to swipe up from the bottom in that case. Maybe leaving the address bar on top and swiping down from the upper edge would be a good way to go, either way it's fine for me as is right now.

[Sszecret Veteran]

what stop me from using Edge is extenisons

 

ADBlock + lastpass (being lazy these days to renumber that kind of stuffs )

 

- snip - 

 

I'm in the same boat. I don't mind the UI, but the lack of availability of these two extensions (or rather, extensions in general) is what's keeping me from using it at the moment. 

[Stoffel]

I do wish they'd add gesture support, that would be really nice. It's at least as useable as Safari on iPad is the only point I was trying to make. I agree that having the address bar fade away in Metro IE is nice, but it did have it's problems...especially if you were using a Surface with the keyboard attached. It was really difficult to swipe up from the bottom in that case. Maybe leaving the address bar on top and swiping down from the upper edge would be a good way to go, either way it's fine for me as is right now.

 

You know you can sweep from the top down to get the address bar and tabs too. That way you avoid the KB at the bottom

[hagjohn]

It's quick, at least on my system, but it does need a lot of work. It is getting there though.

[kozukumi]

At the moment it is more of a tech preview than a real competitor to Firefox and Chrome but I think this time next year, once it has extension support and more options to tweak it will be decent.

 

What we need to remember is that Microsoft decided to release Windows 10 before Edge is truly ready for release. While it might be stable enough to use as your day to day browser on July 29th it certainly isn't ready from a feature set to be most peoples primary browser.

[Stokkolm]

You know you can sweep from the top down to get the address bar and tabs too. That way you avoid the KB at the bottom

 

Yes, but the address bar is still on the bottom which isn't as natural as it should be.

At the moment it is more of a tech preview than a real competitor to Firefox and Chrome but I think this time next year, once it has extension support and more options to tweak it will be decent.

 

What we need to remember is that Microsoft decided to release Windows 10 before Edge is truly ready for release. While it might be stable enough to use as your day to day browser on July 29th it certainly isn't ready from a feature set to be most peoples primary browser.

 

I think for most people it will be just fine, it's power users that want all of the missing features.

[Motor_Mouth]

Did you say something incomprehensible?  IE11 is none of those things.

 

It can be good, but it's nowhere near any of that.

 

Edge, Chrome and Firefox stomp on IE11.

 

I assume you use each on a regular basis? As I said, I do and that is an accurate reflection of my experience. To be fair, it's just as likely that OS X makes Firefox and Chrome feel worse but I absolutely prefer IE 11 to any of them.

[Motor_Mouth]

Replaced Windows 10 with the new version of Debian!

Probably OK if you don't use your computer for anything but, for better or worse, I do so I need an OS that supports the software applications I use to earn a living and for my hobbies. That completely rules out Linux and even OS X.

[Circaflex]

Probably OK if you don't use your computer for anything but, for better or worse, I do so I need an OS that supports the software applications I use to earn a living and for my hobbies. That completely rules out Linux and even OS X.

2016, the year of the Linux desktop! /s

[Motor_Mouth]

It's designed to be functional for tablets and desktop users alike. Here's a side-by-side of Safari from my iPad compared with Edge. As you can see, it's very usable as a tablet browser. Note that the scaling isn't the same between the two images.

Here is a better comparison - Edge and IE 11 (Modern UI) at the same resolution and scaling. To show you more precisely, I've isolated the touch targets for switching tabs and adding a new tab. In case it needs to be spelled out, the blue boxes are Edge, the orange ones are IE 11. You can see how small they are in Edge by comparison. I find it no easier to use on my tablet than any desktop browser, even running the tablet at 150% (which I never have to do with W8, because it's smart enough to scale the Modern UI, as appropriate, automatically).

 

 

The text on the site is also rendered slightly larger in IE11, even though I grabbed that from my 15" laptop and the Edge pic from my 10" Yoga 2 (both at default zoom level). I'd also point out that it's not just the size of the touch targets that causes hassles, it's that they are packed so close together in places. e.g. The close tab and new tab buttons.

[Son_Of_Dad]

I consider Edge to be one of Microsoft's worst designs, it looks like a forgotten application from Windows 95. I know they're trying to make one browser work for both desktop and tablet but it fails at both.

[nekrosoft13]

Dumbed down.

 

like the whole windows experience, so fits right in.