Check to see if you have Microsoft Edge on your device by looking for the icon on your taskbar or searching for it in your applications list. Move to Microsoft Edge today for speed and security. I’m sure that will be fixed eventually.Experience the web in a whole new way by switching to the Microsoft Edge browser from Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge Legacy. Hey, it’s a beta (the new Edge, that is). (It worked in this initial Insider Preview build and previous to that.) I love it, though I should point out that the last two new Edge Canary builds have screwed up the layout of Momentum so that the time display is shifted off the left, incorrectly. You can also configure Momentum with a to-do list, weather, an inspirational quote, and more. My choice is Momentum, which provides a gorgeous new photo backdrop every day, big time and date displays, and a nice menu for links which, for me, has replaced my previous usage of the Bookmarks Bar (called Favorites Bar in both Edge versions). (Which you need to enable first, as I discussed in both Living on the (New) Edge: Getting Started and Living on the (New) Edge: Extensions.) Just open the Chrome Web Store and search for new tab. But because this browser is now based on Chromium, you can choose from a library of custom New Tab extensions in the Chrome Web Store. There’s no interface for doing so in new Edge, either, actually. This is a big deal, in part because the feed is hidden by default in all but the Informational view by default.īetter still, of course, is choosing your own New Tab experience, a feature that was unavailable in classic Edge. You’re asked to choose a layout for this interface when you first install the new Edge, but you can also configure the layout at any time by selecting the hamburger-style Page Settings menu in the top right and choosing between Focused, Inspirational, Informational, and Custom layouts. It’s prettier, for starters, with a Bing Images backdrop image that changes every day. Nonetheless, this page is a significant step up from the similar classic Edge experience. When you do this the first time, you’ll be presented with a page that somewhat resembles the old “’Top sites’” and suggested content” choice from classic Edge: There are tiles for frequently-visited sites at the top and, below the fold, your “feed,” which is that terrible collection of ads, news stories, and ads masquerading as news stories. You can’t do this from new Edge settings. So, yes, I still configure this to “Continue where you left off,” which I believe is the behavior that most people will want as well.Ĭonfiguring the New Tab page experience, oddly, requires you to actually open a new tab. But I can’t get that to work in the current Insider build.) Left missing in action, of course, is “Open a blank page.” (Could you set the specific page to “about:blank” to achieve a blank page? Perhaps. So the three choices basically map to the first three remaining choices in “Open Microsoft Edge with” in classic Edge: Open the New Tab page (which is the new Start page), Continue where you left off (the same as “Previous pages”), and Open a specific page or pages. In the new Edge, the On Startup behavior (now in Edge settings > On startup) doesn’t include the Start page from classic Edge, which seems like a good sign until you realize that it’s hidden in the New Tab experience. Because it is, of course, not actually blank. And “a blank page” is perhaps my favorite. You can choose between “Top sites” and suggested content (the default), Top sites, and “A blank page.” Top sites is basically a grid of tiles representing the websites you visit most and/or sites that are sponsored by Microsoft in the browser, so eew. The “Open new tabs with” option is a bit more problematic. I always select “Previous pages” for what I assume are obvious reasons: You don’t want to lose anything you were working on previously. Aside from the fact that the default Start page is absolutely miserable-full of ads and terrible news stories, and, worse, ads masquerading as news stories-this is a reasonable set of options for most people. The “Open Microsoft Edge with” option can be configured with Start page (the default), New tab page, Previous pages, or a specific page or pages. Both are configured in Edge settings > General > Customize. To understand what I mean, let’s first review how these features-the browser’s behavior on startup and what you see what you open a new tab-are handled by classic Edge. It was certainly something that always bothered me. I suspect that even fans of classic Edge will appreciate how the On Startup and New Tab behavior has changed in the new Edge.
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