I thought about making this a Tech Talk topic but I want those posts to be more informational and less opinionated. I’m also going to preface this post by saying that I did give Edge an honest try so I feel I’m being unbiased but I will admit, I probably wasn’t as open minded as I could have been when I was using Edge. I’m not going to berate Microsoft either for trying to “force” you to use Edge by making it your default browser upon upgrading. Despite Mozilla’s attempt at a flame war, if you paid attention to the install you could easily prevent that from happening and I’m not going to fault Microsoft for trying to change your default browser. They want people to try Edge and setting it as the default makes good business sense but they were wise to give you the option to switch it off.
Ok, enough giving Edge the benefit of the doubt because, as the title of this post suggests, I don’t have many nice things to say about Edge. In fact I straight up don’t like it. It doesn’t feel like a modern browser (which I’ve mentioned before). It’s so plain and boring. It has terrible space utilization (like all the blank space when you click/tap on the settings menu). Initially it does feel like it performs as well as Chrome but once you toggle all the suggested privacy settings it definitely feels slower (and its recommended that you turn off those privacy settings).
I think the most cognitive dissonant thing about this browser is that Microsoft is trying so hard to distant it from Internet Explorer but the icons look almost identical. Also, Edge still struggles with a lot of web sites (which is common for debutante browsers) but its suggestion is then to view the site in Internet Explorer. Doh! Also, as a developer, I’m really, really not looking forward to having to code for yet another browser’s idiosyncrasies.
Now, so I don’t go out on a completely sour note I do think that considering the performance of a browser fresh out of the gate, Edge does have a slight “edge” (see what I did there 🙂 ). Since its performance is pretty close to that of Chrome, it has room to improve and could become stiff competition in the browser wars, as long as Microsoft doesn’t screw it up.
I say might as well give it a try if you are on the fence about it, you might like it better than I did, which is fair. Everyone knows I’m pretty critical and not easily pleased by Microsoft. As improvements are released I might give it another test run but in the mean time I will stick with Chrome.
/cheers
I could get so much more accomplished if I only had minions!
Despite the fact that I make my living providing Microsoft solutions using .NET, many know that I have never been a big fan of Microsoft. I stated that because I want to be upfront about my past feelings and that I am going to try not to let those feelings influence this topic. I am going to discuss this based on my interpretation of the evidence I see in the industry today. I think that Microsoft is no longer a leader but frantically playing catch-up instead.