Edging Closer to Using Microsoft’s Web Browser (Premium)

One of the things I intended to do during my three-week home swap was spend time with several different alternative web browsers. So I loaded up my PCs with Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi, in addition to Edge, Chrome, and Firefox, with the intention of seeing how each compared.

In the course of configuring each of these browsers, I did what I could—the capabilities vary by browser—to import my master list of bookmarks, and where possible, passwords into each. The browsers are obviously similar in many respects. But each also offers some unique user experiences that triggered a rethinking about how I use PC-based web browsers.

(Tied to this, too, was a desire to ensure that I could sync my data between the PC and my phones, ideally by using the mobile versions of the same browsers. This was generally possible, and only Vivaldi doesn’t provide a mobile version of its web browser.)

But then something interesting and unexpected happened. It occurred to me that letting go of some long-held habits—like using the Bookmarks Bar exclusively for bookmarks—would make for a more streamlined web browsing experience. And that, if I were going to do that, I should reevaluate Microsoft Edge. Which, I should do anyway, since it’s being updated again with Windows 10 version 1809, which is nearing completion.

And switching to Edge isn’t as ridiculous a prospect as it was even a year ago: In Windows 10 version 1803 (Redstone 4), especially, Microsoft finally began chipping away at my remaining complaints about its web browser. And now with version 1809, things are improved yet again.

Yes, it’s cheap to say “this is the best version of Edge yet”—because of course it is—but this version may actually be good enough to use. That’s a big deal.

To be clear, Microsoft has not addressed my key remaining complaint about Microsoft Edge. Which is that pinning a web page to the taskbar with Edge creates a shortcut, but later clicking that shortcut will open the page in an Edge tab, not in its own window. With Chrome, you can save shortcuts to the taskbar that look and work like standalone apps. I really like that.

To overcome this problem, I’ve experimented with a compromise: Instead of using Chrome-based shortcuts for Google Inbox, Google Calendar, and Twitter Lite, I’m using Store apps—Windows Mail, Calendar, and Twitter—instead. The only truly onerous app in this list is Mail, but it’s not as horrible on a laptop display as it is on my much larger desktop PC. And I think I can make this work.

The advantage of accepting this compromise is that Edge consumes less system resources and impacts the battery less than does Chrome. This is particularly useful on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga I just reviewed, since it has only 8 GB of RAM. But this set up also lets me compare Edge side-to-side with the version on my Surface Book 2. That PC is running the Windows 10 Insider Preview, which includes the next, improved version of Microsoft Edge.

This new Edge is more refined than the version in Windows 10 version 1803. For example, the Settings and More menu and Settings itself have both been cleaned up and are better organized. But the killer new feature here, even though it seems like a small thing, is the removal of the Hub button from the Edge toolbar. Instead, you can choose display just a Favorites (and, optionally, Reading list, Books, History, and/or Downloads) button.

It’s weird, I know. The Hubs button in previous Edge versions defaulted to the Favorites view, so it was still a one-click way to access favorites. But I really prefer being able to pick where I’m going explicitly. And I find myself using it more now. The ability to actually customize the toolbar is important.

Also key is that the new Edge lets you block automatic audio and video playback on websites. This is a Godsend, and it neatly corrects one of my biggest pet peeves on the web.

Am I … starting to like Edge?

Well, yes. But there are still things about Edge I don’t like.

It doesn’t map to the system theme, so you have to manually choose between Light and Dark themes in the app itself, which is unsophisticated and tedious. Other apps in Windows 10 let you switch automatically with the operating system.

You can’t customize the New Tab page enough—I’d prefer to use Momentum, as I do on Chrome and Firefox—and the “A blank page” option isn’t even a blank page.

I love that Edge has a Reading view, but I don’t like its landscape orientation and wish I could use a single-column, vertically-oriented view instead. There should at least be an optional to toggle between portrait and landscape Reading view styles. But if there is only one choice, it should be portrait, not landscape.

And I find the Edge developer tools harder to use for finding the images in websites; this is admittedly an unusual need, but it’s something I use everyday and Chrome just does this better.

Are any of these deal-breakers?

I’m not sure. But as I noted earlier, I’m trying to compromise here, and I’m willing to do it if the pros outweigh the cons. And while the decision matrix here hasn’t shifted completely to the Edge camp, it’s teetering somewhere in the middle. Using Edge is—perhaps—no longer onerous. No longer painful.

Maybe.

I really like the way Edge looks, and it’s become the poster child for the Fluent Design System and Microsoft’s new look and feel. And the mobile version of Edge, inexplicably, is a wonderful app, and that fact makes switching to this browser a lot more enjoyable.

So I’ll keep using it. And even though this strange side-trip has at least temporarily scuttled my plans to test Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi more deeply, moving to Edge has been sort of a vague goal since Microsoft first announced Windows 10. It’s just never met my needs.

Until now. Maybe.