Microsoft is constantly upgrading its Edge web browser to make it better. The company has been using Google Chromium for better web support and functionality. Despite not having a large market share, Edge has many useful features. I have personally been using Microsoft Edge and find it quite awesome compared to other web browsers.
The best thing about Microsoft Edge is that it is highly optimized to work on Windows 11. It takes low resources but is also well-integrated into the Microsoft Edge web browser. The company has a poor reputation with Internet Explorer, but with the pivot to Chromium, it has become a well-polished web browser that allows you to completely switch from existing browsers. Today, in this article, I will be sharing the best features that you should use.
Bing Chat Integration
After the announcement of the new Bing, which is now integrated into the Edge Browser, a similar feature is being tested for integration into other browsers. Additionally, Microsoft Edge has integrated with other services such as Teams, Outlook, Skype, and more. You can directly access the new Bing from the Bing icon in the menu bar, and it will open the new Bing Chat directly in a side panel.
This eliminates the friction of opening the new Bing AI Chatbox in a new tab since you can open it on your sidebar directly. Just engage in the conversation directly from the side panel. There is also no need to add any extensions or visit a website in a new tab. Just start writing your prompts, and then submit to start generating the content.
This makes it quite handy and helpful, with various capabilities that make it different from other browsers. Popular browsers like Google Chrome are still in the very early stages of training their AI chatbots and integrating them into their web browsers. On other browsers, you have to visit the URL for the Bing AI Chatbot in a new tab, and to have access to the Bing AI Chatbot, browsers like Vivaldi are spoofing the user-agent string when you visit Bing, but those don’t offer a refined implementation.
Reading Mode
Google Chrome recently unveiled the Reading Mode accessibility feature for Android, similar to Microsoft’s Reader experience. It is a built-in feature in Microsoft Edge that allows you to open any website in Reading Mode, which helps you avoid distractions such as ads and pop-ups. Immersive Readers make it easy to read, listen to, and understand the content as if it were native.
When you open a website in Reader mode, it modifies the webpage into a new canvas with a new appearance. You can customize the elements of Reader mode, such as text size, theme, spacing, font, alignment, and various grammatical notations like nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives.
There are plenty of customization options, and the immersive Reader also provides accessibility tools like Read Aloud, which allows you to narrate the text with words being highlighted as they are read. It even has a built-in translator and picture dictionary. There is also a visual representation of it.
Web Capture
This feature helps you take a screenshot of a webpage, including its scrolling capabilities, editing tools, and various other features. With Web Capture, you can take screenshots by dragging your cursor across the webpage and then copy, mark, and save the screenshot. You also have the option to markup and capture a portion of the webpage as an image, extract text, and keep the formatting, such as tables.
It is useful in many cases and definitely comes in handy whenever you want to take a screenshot of a browser webpage. This eliminates the need for external software like Snipping tools, but you can still use the snipping tool for the same purpose. However, it doesn’t have the same editing features and scrolling capabilities as Web Capture.
Remove Tracking
Web browsers like Google Chrome aren’t as privacy-focused as others. For privacy, use Brave, Mozilla Firefox, DuckDuckGo, Vivaldi, or other privacy-focused browsers. Browsers contain a lot of essential information, such as fingerprints and credit card details, but websites track your activities to sell your data to advertisers for personalized recommendations.
Microsoft Edge has some built-in privacy functionality that helps users protect their privacy to some extent. You can block tracking from advertisers through Edge’s Tracking Prevention feature. You can choose from three different levels of tracking protection: Basic, Balanced, and Strict. This means you can block almost all trackers across any website you visit.
This blocks trackers and cookies from sites when you visit the webpage without breaking the website you are visiting. You also have a separate session to block trackers and configure exceptions to allow all trackers on certain websites. The tracking prevention feature is another great reason for privacy-conscious customers who want to visit their favorite websites without worrying about cookie collection and trackers monitoring all their activities.
Split Screen
This is another useful feature that allows users to visit two browser tabs side-by-side. You can enable Split Screen by clicking on the Split-screen icon from the Edge Menu bar. You can use the Split-screen to check related content in the second window or even segregate your workflow within the same tab.
There is an option to resize according to your preference and also open the link in a new tab. These features allow you to enhance productivity, and there are more similar features available to use. There are even more essential functionalities that you can use on Microsoft Edge, and with Windows features like Snap layout and Windows Copilot, you can also use the Bing AI Chatbot.
