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How to: Buy and read books in Microsoft’s browser<br />
More options open up if you tap the screen, which reveals a black<br />
border at the top of the page. At the upper left there’s an icon that<br />
displays the table of contents, which slides out from the left. Click<br />
the icon next to that and any bookmarks you’ve saved will appear.<br />
Edge also includes a search function to look for specific terms.<br />
In the right-hand corner, the Options icon (alternatively Ctrl +<br />
Shift + O) lets you adjust text font, size, colour, and spacing. There’s<br />
also an icon to ‘read aloud’ via text-to-speech, which also lets you<br />
adjust pacing, evidence of Microsoft’s commitment to assisting<br />
those with vision problems (although there doesn’t seem to be<br />
a hands-free Cortana command to ‘read my ebook’ – hopefully<br />
that’s forthcoming). There’s also an icon to set bookmarks<br />
within your ebook, one per page.<br />
Unfortunately, features you might expect in an e-reader app,<br />
and which are available elsewhere in Windows – inking, highlighting,<br />
sticky notes, titled bookmarks – haven’t yet made it to Edge’s<br />
e-reading experience. If you stop reading an ebook – say, because<br />
Windows 10 unexpectedly reboots your <strong>PC</strong> – your progress will<br />
be saved. That’s how it’s supposed to work, anyway. As we were<br />
evaluating Edge using a build of the Windows 10 Creators Update<br />
that Microsoft provided to journalists, the operating system<br />
updated to a new build – forcing us to redownload all of our books<br />
and losing our progress. That needs to be fixed.<br />
Unfortunately, Microsoft’s mobile ebook experience is limited<br />
to the small number of Windows phones or tablets in existence,<br />
as Microsoft doesn’t make a version of Edge for Android or<br />
iOS. That’s a serious and unfortunate handicap for train or bus<br />
commuters. Since Microsoft does include a browser inside its<br />
Bing app for both mobile platforms, it’s at least theoretically<br />
possible that this capability could be added later.<br />
For now, you’ve probably already settled on an ebook format<br />
and reader. If Microsoft launches its ebook store with a splashy<br />
sale, however, you could be lured in. And aside from the obvious<br />
mobile limitations, reading ebooks within Edge isn’t half bad. J<br />
June <strong>2017</strong> www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to 101
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