For years now, Microsoft hasn’t exactly been winning the browser popularity contest, taking a distant third to Google Chrome and Apple Safari. But for several years now Microsoft has been working hard to shed its Internet Explorer-era reputation. And if you ask us, Microsoft Edge is a highly compelling browser, especially in the workplace.
Microsoft is back at the innovation game, adding even more new business-friendly features to its Microsoft Edge internet browser.
Here’s a rundown of what’s new. Take a look and consider whether any of these features or new capabilities could improve the way your business operates.
In-Browser Split Screen
First up is an interesting one: split screen, but within the browser itself.
Many of us are familiar with using apps in split screen. Windows makes it super easy: you just grab a window, slam it toward the side of your monitor, and boom — you’re halfway to split screen. (I’m even writing this very blog post using a full-screen split screen view on my laptop!)
Well, in today’s business world of large and dual monitor setups, sometimes a full-screen split screen doesn’t make much sense. You end up with two laughably huge frames, and you can’t get to the other stuff you might need.
Split Screen for Multitasking could help here. It allows you to place two pages side by side within a single browser tab. It’s a split screen browser, leaving you with plenty of screen real estate for other apps (if you’re using an external monitor, at least).
Vertical Tabs
We’re all drowning in browser tabs. That’s just part of life these days. Many browsers are trying to innovate to help, giving us tab groups, dedicated spaces for personal and work, and so forth Well, here’s one more to try on for size: vertical tabs.
Instead of running your browser tabs across the top, Edge can now run them vertically along the side of the browser window. We think this is genius, especially for mobile users. Think about your typical widescreen laptop: You’ve got way more side-to-side space and precious little top-to-bottom space. Taking a whole horizontal slice for tabs reduces your usable screen far more than if those tabs were vertical.
Is it a small change? Sure, but it’s one that could make an outsized difference for some users.
Workspaces Come to Edge
If you’ve used Microsoft Teams, you already know Workspaces. They’re perfect for collaboration, allowing you to open all sorts of apps and services within a collaborative, team-based environment.
Until now, “browsing the web” wasn’t one of those services, which seems like a missed opportunity. Think about how many tech tools actually run in your browser. Wouldn’t it be great to make sure the whole team is seeing the same thing?
Now you can with Edge: it’s possible to share a tab or a tab group as a workspace, further extending the collaborative possibilities within Teams and Microsoft 365.
Collections
One of the reasons people keep so many tabs open is what we call “bookmark purgatory.” Sure, we can always bookmark a page to read later. But with 10, maybe even 20 years of unorganized bookmarks following us across the web, the bookmark system tends to be chaotic, disorganized, and hard to navigate.
Plus, the only thing you can bookmark is an entire page. No text snippets, photos, and so forth.
Collections is the research-focused solution. Now you can create a custom Collection (say, on a major upgrade or a big client project) and save, well, just about anything to it. Pages, photos, videos, snippets of text, and so on.
Immersive Reader
One more bonus: Microsoft is bringing its Immersive Reader, already available in Word and several other M365 apps, to Edge. This is a sneaky powerful tool both for accessibility and for better focus with less distraction.
That’s it for this round of updates. Have you considered making the switch to Edge? We’re here to help if so.