Читать книгу Windows 10 All-in-One For Dummies - Ciprian Adrian Rusen, Woody Leonhard - Страница 60

Microsoft Edge (Figure 2-11) finally sheds the albatross that is Internet Explorer. Edge is a stripped-down, consciously standards-compliant, screamingly fast shell of a browser, ready to take on just about any website anywhere. Microsoft Edge may see Microsoft taking back the mindshare it’s been steadily losing on the browser front for the past decade or so. As of this writing, though, Google’s Chrome rules the roost.

FIGURE 2-10: The Start menu in tablet mode.

FIGURE 2-11: Microsoft Edge finally lets you cut the Internet Explorer cord.

Microsoft Edge replaces Internet Explorer, which still lurks in Windows 10, but it’s buried in the Start ⇒ Windows Accessories list. Microsoft Edge is, however, the default web browser, with its own tile on the right side of the Start menu and its own icon on the taskbar. Internet Explorer continues to use the old Trident rendering engine, while Edge has the newer engine of its own. That makes it faster, lighter, and much more capable of playing nicely with websites designed for Firefox and Google Chrome.

Edge is a Windows 10 app (formerly Universal app, formerly Metro app) that runs inside its own window on the desktop, like every other WinRT API-based Universal Windows app. In contrast, Internet Explorer is an old-fashioned desktop app, and the difference is like a Tesla 3 versus a 1958 Edsel.

Adobe Flash Player is turned off by default for enhanced security; there’s a reading view as well, which helps on smaller screens. Click the OneNote icon in the upper right, and all the OneNote markup tools become available. And you can Print as PDF.

Where Internet Explorer was frequently infected by wayward Flash programs and bad PDF files, Edge is relatively immune. And all the flotsam that came along with IE — the ancient (and penetrable) COM extensions, wacko custom toolbars, even Silverlight — are suddenly legacy and rapidly headed to a well-deserved stint in the bit bucket.

On the other hand, Microsoft Edge has a new version that is not yet built into Windows 10. This new version is based on the same rendering engine as Google Chrome and has support for Google Chrome-like extensions, which play in their own sandboxes, staying isolated. Instead of the spaghetti mess with IE add-ons, we finally have some Microsoft-sponsored order. You can download it and try it at www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge.

Microsoft Edge uses Cortana for voice assistance and search capabilities. I talk about Edge in Book 5, Chapter 1.