New Microsoft Edge Launched Today, Marking The Ultimate Death Of Internet Explorer
Dhir Acharya
The new Microsoft Edge uses the same Blink engine as Chrome, from the Chromium project, promising much better experience for users.
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For the past year, Microsoft has teased changes to its web browser Microsoft Edge. Two years ago, the tech giant announced that the browser would rely on Chromium code just like the Chrome browser. The company went on to release alphas, betas, and even a version for macOS users. And today, Microsoft rolled out a new Edge that kills the ereader but is much better at reading web pages. At the same time, it has eliminated the last traces of Internet Explorer.
While sharing the same logo, Internet Explorer has been a joke for years to an entire generation of users Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer has so far relied on the same engine that allows them to communicated with the web.
Every web browser has an engine, Firefox has Gecko, Safari has Webkit, while Edge and Internet Explorer have EdgeHTML.
IE used to be the biggest browser and many web designers focused on making their websites compatible with IE. However, Chrome achieved an important position and Edge couldn’t become widely accepted. This time, web designers shift their focus to making their pages look the best on Chrome.
Chrome relies on the Blink engine with the code sourced from the Chromium project. The Microsoft Edge launched today will also use Blink and Chromium.
For Edge users, they will find much fewer broken sites and Google will also oversee the engine.
Users can download the new Edge right now from the Microsoft Edge site. The new browser will ingest data from previous Edge versions but won’t replace them. It can also import data from Firefox, Safari, Chrome, as well as other browsers. However, users will need a Microsoft Account for syncing data across versions of the Edge.
Starting next week, there will be automatic updates for current users of the browser, though the first update will come to just a small part of the install base. It will take about four to six weeks to move the entire install base to the new Microsoft Edge, except for enterprise users. This group of users will have to wait for their IT staff to be ready for the task.