We all knew that it was a hard time for Internet Explorer to survive as the people even using Microsoft products would use a non-native browser. To address the very fact, Microsoft has unveiled its brand new browser - Microsoft Edge. Though its name is not quite surprising as it has been christened after the Microsoft's new HTML rendering engine - EdgeHTML, its capabilities can surprise any user for sure.

What's on the EDGE?

Microsoft had announced the plans of major revamps to its existing browser and HTML engine back in January. It was termed as 'Project Spartan'; besides this simple announcement, Microsoft was never too vocal about the project or its developments. This makes it quite obvious that the company had been working on this for a year and its results DO seem remarkable.

  • Built in Cortana support: Cortana, the digital personal intelligent assistant of Microsoft will be supported built in. It means your browsing could be smoother than ever, faster voice commands and intelligent word search assistance are given!
  • Built in reader and note taker: To reduce the inside and out browser jumps for petty things like taking notes, copy-paste texts and read documents, the Edge has these utilities built in. This could end your inevitability of intermittent browsing.
  • Minimalist Design: Microsoft's key design style - Minimalism - has its huge impact on the Edge. This could mean the browser might lack those tiny graphic elements and transitions but it could make things much simpler and intuitive.
  • New HTML Engine: This means you won't have to suffer the same lagging behaviour as on previous IE browsers to open heavy graphics sites.

Eager to download? Wait!!

The browser will be released on Microsoft 10 based all devices including Hybrids.

Though it's available for developers under 'Windows 10 Technical Preview' program, it's likely to take a while to be available till Windows 10 will be released fully. Microsoft has warned general users not to install the preview version as it could potentially crash the system and delete files.

So what would happen to Internet Explorer?

Microsoft has placed the Edge as default and only browser for Windows 10; but it isn't the dead end for Internet Explorer. IE would run on all the Windows 10 devices under Backwards Compatibility.