Microsoft is making a major change to the way Edge looks and works, which could be enough to tempt you away from Google Chrome.<\/p>\n
At its annual Digital Briefing event, where it lays out its plans for its software over the coming year, Microsoft revealed several new features for the new Chromium-based Edge<\/a>, including the ability to switch from vertical tabs along the top of the browser to vertical ones along the left-hand edge.<\/p>\n “If you are like me when you research online, you find yourself with dozens of tabs open at any given time,” explained Liat Ben-Zur, corporate vice president of Microsoft Edge. “When that happens, there’s less space for me to see which tab is which. I find myself losing track or I’ll accidentally close a tab as a result. Utterly frustrating as that is usually exactly the one page I needed.”<\/p>\n When you have a lot of tabs open horizontally, you may find yourself having to identify them by just a couple of letters of their title, or even just a favicon. Vertical tabs give more space for the title of each page, making them easier to navigate.<\/p>\n Edge isn’t the first browser to offer vertical tabs (it’s been an option in Vivaldi<\/a>, another browser based on Chromium) for many years) but it’s the first time we’ve seen it as an option in a mainstream browser.<\/p>\n Vertical tabs will be appearing on Microsoft Edge Insider<\/a> channels (Beta, Dev and Canary) for testing in the coming months.<\/p>\n Collections are another new Edge feature designed to help you organize your browsing. These are groups of webpages, images and text on a related subject, which you can sort, export into other Microsoft applications (such as Office) and return to later. They are more convenient than building a list of bookmarks or keeping a bundle of tabs open, and work more like a miniature version of Pinterest.<\/p>\n Collections are available now on the desktop for Microsoft Edge Insider channels, and will be coming to the stable release and mobile devices soon.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Other new features on the way soon include Smart Copy, which lets you copy a chunk of a web page and paste it into Microsoft Word without losing any of the formatting, improved tracking cookie protection, and a new Password Monitor, which works like Firefox Monitor<\/a> to warn you if your login credentials appear in any published lists of leaked usernames and passwords.<\/p>\n Another tool seemingly borrowed from Firefox is a new Immersive Reader mode, which strips non-essential page elements and formatting, making it easier to scan text. Edge will soon be able to read content aloud as well. Both these features should be a real boon for the many people who struggle to read text on a screen, particularly when websites use low-contrast font and background colors.<\/p>\n Chromium-based Edge is available to download now<\/a>, and will replace the legacy version of Edge on Windows 10 PCs.<\/p>\n\n
More to tempt you…<\/h3>\n