In January 2020 Microsoft officially launched the “new” Edge Browser, based on the Chromium code. I’d been using this in beta for many months prior to that and you can get ALL the information here and if you want to update your Windows 10 laptop to using the new Edge browser then go here. Of course, Edge is also available on MacOS and iOS as well.
I’ve shared three tips in three minutes in the above video which I encourage you to check out, but here they are with links for more help:
Tip One – Using Profiles
If you switch between user profiles regularly (like I do when delivering customer demos and also testing new features for my own learning), then this is a great time save for you.
Full guide on how to use profiles here.
Why is this important? No more using anonymous / incognito browsing during demos, and also means you can use profiles that remember your separate browsing history and this can also by synchronized across devices.
You add a profile to Edge based on your Office365 (AzureAD) credentials but you can also use your Microsoft Account (MSA) e.g. @outlook.com or @hotmail.com etc.
This immediately allows you to separate “work” browsing from “personal” browsing – on the same device and in the same browser. Very handy.
Tip Two – Creating Edge Apps
This is a neat feature that allows you take any website and install it as a stand alone Edge App
Guide on how to create Edge Apps here.
Why is this important? The use case that is of most interest for me here is inside of Microsoft Teams. I’m a Guest in a number of other tenants and when I use the primary Teams desktop app, sometimes notifications in those other Guest Tenants is less obvious.
Enter Edge Apps – I can create dedicated apps for each Guest Tenant and with one click can launch into that and use it “natively”.
This is a great time saver for those that use Teams as guests regularly. But of course, you can use this for any web app e.g. create a dedicated Edge app for your favourite news website, or streaming music player – the list is endless.
Tip Three – Collections
In some ways, collections work as visual bookmarks in a standard browser, but you can do a whole lot more with them!
Guide and information on Collections in this blog.
Why is this important? Students and Teachers often need to do a lot of research on the internet – collections are a “one click” way to store websites, images and snippets of text from anywhere on the web into a central place (managed by your Edge profiles as per Tip 1).
You can also easily share these Collections with others, either via Excel, Word, or copy/paste into a platform like OneNote if you wanted to.
Even More Tips!
There are currently 34 additional tips from the Microsoft Edge Browser Support Page – see them all here.
There you have it – some quick tips and tricks on making the most of the new Edge browser!
A new take on the traditional Edge browser logo
Thanks Sam. A game changer for some of my students has been the discovert that you can use Immersive Reader via Edge Browser. Doesn’t work on all sites but those it does makes a real difference – strips away adds, formats in reading mode, will read aloud to students etc etc. I always share this tip when showing students learning tools/immersive reader.
Awesome Michelle – yes Immersive Reader is showing up in more and more places and it’s definitely making a big difference for students comprehension