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Microsoft Edge
As I mentioned earlier in this chapter, Microsoft Edge is a relatively recent arrival in Windows 10 and is
still evolving rapidly. In its current incarnation, you can see the deliberately minimalist design shown in
Figure 6-2, which probably was a key influence on the Project Spartan code name.
FIGURE 6-2 The minimalist design of the Microsoft Edge browser includes the ability to dock a pane to the right
side of the browser window, in this case the Settings menu.
In its default layout, Microsoft Edge is lean indeed. There’s no title bar, and only three buttons and
an ellipsis that leads to a menu of options and settings. On the new tab page, shown in Figure 6-2, the
address bar isn’t even visible until you load a page from the search box or click in the space where the
address bar would be.
That simplicity of design means there are far fewer settings to tinker with than in Internet Explorer,
and some features you might have become accustomed to are missing in action.
The most obvious missing feature in Microsoft Edge 25 is support for any kind of browsing extension.
Internet Explorer 11 supports Browser Helper Objects and toolbars, along with a handful of other
proprietary extensions. For security reasons, those types of add-ons aren’t permitted in Microsoft
Edge.
As of Windows 10 version 1511, the only available add-on for Microsoft Edge is Adobe Flash Player,
which is built into the browser (and automatically updated) in the same way that it’s included with
Internet Explorer 11. (Flash capabilities can be disabled in Settings, but the add-on itself cannot be
removed.) Microsoft Edge also includes PDF reading capabilities you can use to open PDF documents
from websites, email attachments, and local file storage without requiring third-party software.
Microsoft announced plans to allow third-party developers to write add-ons for Microsoft Edge
using HTML and JavaScript, a strategy that is consistent with the approach used by competing browsers.
This capability should arrive first in preview releases and will probably arrive in the Current Branch
CHAPTER 6 Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer 11 81