The main takeaway from the online presentation seemed to be that Microsoft wasn’t out to only fill the shoes that are being left behind with the death of Internet Explorer. The company says it has big plans for Edge, and all are aimed at taking back a chunk of the market they’ve lost over the past ten years to superior competition from the likes of Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
“We need to do more than just the next version of the same old thing,” said Charles Morris, the principal program manager of Edge.
Worthy additions to keep an eye out for will include a tighter integration of features that Cortana can take advantage of, as well as a larger library of extensions that will grow as more independent developers get their hands on the source code in the coming months.
Some unique features shown at the presentation include previously seen “mark-up” mode, which will allow users to draw on a webpage with either a stylus or their keyboard, and save them for sharing with others later. Also intriguing, and never seen before, is the use of a laptop’s ambient light sensor to either dim or brighten a web page depending on how much light is detected from the room you’re browsing in.
The final version of Edge is expected to go live alongside the debut of Windows 10, which is still on schedule to happen sometime this summer.
If you really want to dig into the details of the exact features that Edge will integrate by the time of its formal release, you can check out the full list of changes and upgrades at Microsoft’s site here.
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