Chapter 7
Using Microsoft Edge
Since the dawn of the internet era, Microsoft has included a web browser with every copy of Windows that it shipped. In the early days, that browser was Internet Explorer, which once ruled the World Wide Web, but eventually fell out of favor because of widespread security and compatibility issues.
In Windows 10, Microsoft introduced a new browser called Microsoft Edge. It was a noticeable improvement over Internet Explorer, but it had just enough compatibility issues that it failed to make a dent in the popularity of the world’s undisputed browser champion, Google Chrome.
So, in 2020, Microsoft decided to reboot Microsoft Edge, building it on the same open-source Chromium codebase as Google Chrome. It also released the new browser on every major mobile and desktop platform. Because this new Edge shares its core code with Google Chrome, it’s not plagued by compatibility issues. In fact, many add-ons originally written for Chrome work unmodified in Edge, and Microsoft has layered on privacy features that differentiate it from Chrome.
Every copy of Windows 11 includes Microsoft Edge as the default browser. For those who prefer a different browser, you can use Edge to download that alternative and set it as the new default. But Microsoft Edge is a good browser, and it’s worth getting to know. You might even like it enough to replace your old favorite.
As for Internet Explorer, it’s no longer available as a standalone app, but Windows 11 includes a novel solution to help you deal with webpages designed for that old browser.
An overview of Microsoft Edge
If you previously used Windows 10, you’re probably already familiar with the Chromium-based version of Microsoft Edge, which has been the default browser in that operating system since the beginning of 2021. Type a URL or a search term in the address bar and press Enter to find a specific destination; navigation controls are to the left of the address bar and additional commands are on a toolbar to its right, as shown in Figure 7-1. More options are available on a menu that drops down when you click Settings And More—the three dots at the far right of the toolbar.
Figure 7-1 Only a few command buttons are visible in the default layout shown here; you can show or hide other buttons using options in Edge Settings.
Using the open-source Chromium engine eliminates many of the compatibility and security issues that plagued earlier Microsoft browsers. If a page works properly on Google Chrome, which is by far the most popular web browser in use today, then it should work equally well on Microsoft Edge. Likewise, security issues that affect the core browser engine can be quickly addressed thanks to the rapid update cycle for new Edge versions.
Basic design and navigation principles for Microsoft Edge should also be familiar to anyone who’s used Google Chrome (or another browser based on that shared codebase). But if you look carefully, you can spot plenty of places where the designers of Microsoft Edge have added or modified features. For example, clicking the padlock at the left of the address bar in Edge shows an informational pane like the one shown in Figure 7-2. The items at the top are identical to those that appear when you perform the same action in Chrome, but the Tracking Prevention section at the bottom is unique to the new Edge.
Figure 7-2 Microsoft Edge uses the same open source engine as Google Chrome, but it has some key differences, like the Tracking Prevention feature whose controls are visible at the bottom of this information pane.
In the remainder of this chapter, we walk through the details of using and customizing Edge to take advantage of its unique features. But first, let’s talk about how to get the latest version of Edge and keep it up to date.
For information about fine-tuning your default settings—for example, assigning particular browsers to particular web protocols—see “Setting default programs and file-type associations” in Chapter 5, “Installing and configuring apps.”
Choosing an Edge release channel
In Windows 11, the default version of Microsoft Edge comes from the Stable channel. That’s the public release, which automatically updates to a new version roughly every four weeks. To check the status for all releases in the Stable channel (including scheduled releases for the next several months), go to https://docs.microsoft.com/DeployEdge/microsoft-edge-release-schedule.
As it does with Windows, Microsoft tests each new Edge version before it’s released; if you want to be a part of that testing program, you can do so by downloading and installing preview builds.
Microsoft Edge Insider builds are available in three channels:
Beta This is the most stable Microsoft Edge preview channel. It stays one version ahead of the public release and receives major updates approximately every four weeks. This release is fully supported by Microsoft.
Dev These preview releases are delivered weekly and are generally stable enough for everyday use, although you might encounter issues. As the name suggests, these unsupported releases are intended for use by developers who want to test features that will be available to the public in another month or two.
Canary Releases you install from this channel are updated daily with the latest code from the Microsoft Edge engineering team and are not officially supported. Microsoft’s description of this channel pointedly calls it the “bleeding edge.” Running a release from this channel results in not-so-occasional crashes and unexpected behavior.
The good news is that you can install multiple preview versions alongside one another and switch freely between them. (Microsoft Edge preview releases are distinguished by a colored stripe on the taskbar icon.) If you encounter problems while loading a page in an Edge Insider release, you can switch to the stable channel and continue on your way.
No signup is required. Just download and install a preview version (or versions) from https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com.
Managing updates
Although Microsoft Edge is installed with Windows 11, it doesn’t update itself through the same channels as the operating system or Store apps. Instead, Edge has its own updater, which runs as a system service. If you have versions of Edge installed from multiple release channels, each version updates independently.
When an update is ready, it downloads in the background; a green up-arrow icon on the Settings And More menu indicates that the update is available and will be applied automatically when you restart Edge. You can also check for the presence of an update by choosing Help And Feedback > About Microsoft Edge from the Settings And More menu (or go to edge://settings/help, which leads to the same destination). That dialog displays the currently installed version; if an update is ready to install, you see a message like the one shown in Figure 7-3.
Figure 7-3 This About dialog displays information about the currently installed Edge version and alerts you if an update is ready to install.
In home and small business settings, there’s no good reason to defer browser upgrades. In enterprise deployments, administrators might want to manage the timing of updates and update checks. To do so, use the update-related group policies described in this Microsoft Edge Reference document:
https://docs.microsoft.com/deployedge/microsoft-edge-update-policies
Managing Edge profiles and sync
When you run Edge for the first time, the browser prompts you to create a profile, which it uses to keep track of your settings, privacy preferences, saved passwords, browsing history, and so on. You can set up multiple profiles and switch between them with relative ease. The most common use case is to separate your work-related activity from personal browsing so that you don’t accidentally mix up your work and personal browsing histories, email, and services.
Caution
It’s possible to set up Edge profiles on a shared PC so that different family members can browse using their own saved bookmarks, history, passwords, and settings. For occasional use under supervision, that configuration might be acceptable. From a security standpoint, though, you’re much better off setting up a separate user account for each person who plans to use the computer regularly. It’s easy to switch between accounts, and doing so avoids any risk that one person will actually use someone else’s browser profile.
If you’re signed in using a Microsoft account or an Azure AD account, the picture associated with your profile appears in the upper-right corner, just to the left of the Settings And More menu (the three dots at the right of the menu bar). Clicking that profile picture displays a pane like the one shown in Figure 7-4, where you can manage your existing profile, switch to a different profile, browse as a guest, or add a new profile.
Figure 7-4 By setting up personal and work profiles in Edge, you can switch between them to keep saved settings and history separate.
Edge creates generic names for profiles you set up using the Add Profile option: Personal for those associated with Microsoft accounts, Work for those associated with Azure AD via Microsoft 365 business subscriptions, and Profile <number> for profiles where you don’t sign in. The advantage of signing in with a Microsoft or Azure AD account, of course, is that you can sync your browsing data across multiple devices. Click Manage Profile Settings from the profiles menu to open a page like the one shown in Figure 7-5.
Figure 7-5 To change the name of the current profile or remove it completely, use the menu shown under the More Actions menu.
The Profile Preferences page includes some useful options. By default, if you try to sign in to a service using an account that’s associated with a different profile, Edge offers to switch to that profile. You can disable this option if you prefer to switch profiles only when you choose to do so. On that same page, you find an option to specify which profile Edge uses when you click a link in an email message or a document. The default setting sends the request to the profile you used most recently. If you prefer, you can specify that you want external links to always open in a specific profile.
For a profile that’s tied to an online account, click Sync to manage what kinds of browsing data are synced between browsing sessions. This sync works between different devices, including PCs and Macs as well as mobile devices running Edge on iOS or Android. Using matching profiles also makes it more convenient to use Edge Insider builds alongside the stable release on the same PC. You have the option to turn off sync completely, using the profile strictly as a way to sign in to online services and save your settings and history locally. But most people will want to adjust the settings using the controls shown in Figure 7-6.
Figure 7-6 When you’re signed in with a Microsoft account, you can choose which types of browsing data to sync or turn off sync completely.
We can’t imagine why anyone would turn off automatic syncing of Favorites and Collections, but if you use a third-party password manager, you probably want to turn the Passwords and Basic Info switches to the Off position. (See the following section for more information about syncing and managing this type of information.)
By definition, profiles that are not signed in cannot sync browsing data across different sessions. The Sync command is grayed out and unavailable, but you can still save passwords and basic information such as addresses as part of the local profile.
To switch profiles, click the profile picture and then choose the alternative profile from the menu. Each profile opens in a separate browser window, with its own taskbar button marked by a tiny profile picture to help distinguish it from other profiles. The Browse As Guest option uses a temporary profile, separate from all other profiles on the device; it does not save history, cookies, or other site data, nor can it use extensions. Browse In Kids Mode switches the browser to a full-screen session with site access limited to sites that are on an Edge-approved list. As the device administrator, you set up Kids Mode, and you need to supply your credentials to return to a normal Edge session or to visit a site that’s not on the safe list.
Using the built-in password manager
Security experts have some simple advice for creating secure online passwords: Use a random combination of numbers, symbols, and mixed-case letters that can’t be guessed, and never, ever use the same password on different sites. But how do you possibly keep track of those random, unique credentials when you visit dozens of password-protected sites every month?
The solution is to use a password manager, which can keep track of those secrets and fill them in automatically when you visit a shopping site, check your email, pay bills online through your financial institution, or use a subscription service.
Like all modern browsers, Microsoft Edge includes a robust set of password management tools that can store, sync, and help you manage those credentials. It can suggest strong passwords on new websites and alert you if your saved credentials have been involved in an online data breach. It doesn’t require an extra download, and it doesn’t charge a subscription fee, as some third-party password management utilities do. Your saved/synced data is secured by the same encryption and two-factor authentication features you use with Microsoft’s email and cloud storage services.
Regardless of how you choose to manage your own passwords, go to edge://settings/passwords, as shown in Figure 7-7, and confirm that the settings for your profile match your preferences.
Figure 7-7 The switches on this page control the built-in password management features in Edge.
When the Offer To Save Passwords option is turned on, Edge watches your activity and prompts you after you enter credentials to sign in at a password-protected website. When you see a dialog like the one in Figure 7-8, click Got It to add the credentials to your profile, or click Never to add that site to a list of sites where you don’t want your credentials saved.
Figure 7-8 If you click Got It, Edge saves the username and password for the current site; click Never if you’d prefer not to save those credentials and don’t want to be prompted again for this site.
When signing up at a website for the first time, or when changing your password, click in the password box to have Edge generate a strong password. You can save the password or click Refresh to generate a new password. You cannot change the way Edge generates passwords, but you can manually change a password that Edge generates, a task that might be required if that password doesn’t meet the website’s password complexity standards.
If you manually change a password that Edge automatically filled in, a similar dialog offers to update the saved password. Clicking the Edit button allows you to view and, if necessary, modify the username and password before saving it.
When filling in saved credentials on webpages, use the Sign In options on the edge://settings/passwords page to enforce additional security measures. Choose one of the following options:
Automatically Edge shows matching saved credentials on any page that asks you to enter a password. Click to enter the username and password without any additional steps.
With Device Password This option requires you to authenticate with the same credentials that you use for signing in to your Windows PC (including Windows Hello, if you’ve set that up). You can specify that you want Edge to perform this check once per browsing session; or, to avoid any chance that someone can walk up to your unlocked PC and sign in to a webpage using your credentials, insist that Edge always ask permission before filling in passwords.
Prompt for the custom primary password before filling website password When you choose this security step, Edge prompts you to create a custom password of at least four characters, which you need to enter the first time you try to autofill a saved password in a browser session. Note that the custom password is saved locally and is not synced to other devices. If you forget this password, you’ll be unable to retrieve any saved passwords on that device; if you’ve chosen to sync passwords, you can disable and then re-enable sync to download a fresh copy of the saved passwords. If you’ve chosen not to sync passwords and you forget the custom password, your saved passwords will be unrecoverable.
Note that you can turn off the Offer To Save Passwords option and still fill in saved passwords for websites. You might choose this configuration if you want to save a handful of credentials for a small number of sites in a specific Edge profile, while ensuring that you don’t inadvertently save any others in that profile.
At the bottom of the Passwords page in Edge Settings is a complete list of sites for which Edge has saved passwords. The list includes the website’s domain or subdomain, the username, the password, and the Password Health icon, as in the example in Figure 7-9. Below that is the list of sites where you’ve specified that you don’t want Edge to save passwords.
Figure 7-9 You need to authenticate your identity before you can view, edit, or copy saved passwords on this page. Use the Health option to identify weak or reused credentials.
For security reasons, saved passwords are displayed as a string of dots that doesn’t reveal the contents or even the length of an individual password. To reveal a password, click the eye icon and then be prepared to establish your identity with a password, PIN, or Windows Hello biometric proof. Click the More Actions menu (the three dots at the far right) to display additional actions for any saved credential. From there, you can edit and save the username and password (but not the saved web address) for any entry, copy the password to the Clipboard, or delete an entry to remove it permanently from the list.
For large collections of saved passwords, scrolling through the list to find a specific entry can be tedious. Instead, use the search box at the top of the Passwords page in your profile to find a specific website or username. For security reasons, this tool doesn’t search through the contents of the passwords themselves.
The More Actions menu at the top of the list, just to the right of the search box, allows you to export your saved passwords as a CSV file. You can use that file to move your saved Edge passwords to a third-party password manager; you can also keep it in a safe location as a backup. That same menu also includes an option to import a CSV file containing saved passwords from another browser or password manager.
Syncing and filling in other information
In addition to passwords, Edge can automatically fill in other types of information on web-based forms. Instead of typing (and possibly mistyping) your street address, for example, you can save that information in your user profile and allow Edge to use it when needed. As with passwords, this information can be synced using a Microsoft account or AAD credentials.
To save this sort of information for reuse, click Personal Info on the Profiles page, or go to edge://settings/personalinfo. From there, you can edit any existing entries or click Add Basic Info to open a new form. You might want to create separate entries for your home and work email and street addresses, as well as additional entries for alternate email addresses and identities. Figure 7-10 shows the Edit Basic Info form in use.
Figure 7-10 Fill out this basic profile to give Edge the information it needs to fill in web forms with addresses, birthdates, and other details.
If the Basic Info form doesn’t include all the details you want to keep handy, scroll down to the Custom Info section, where you can add free-form fields with driver’s license and passport details, membership numbers for organizations you belong to, and anything else that you can imagine wanting to keep handy and sync for later use.
Finally, from the Profiles page, choose Payment Info to add credit card numbers, expiration dates, and verification codes for easier entry when it comes time to pay for online purchases. As with other sensitive data, you’re required to authenticate before Edge fills in a credit card number.
Customizing browser settings
For each profile you create in Microsoft Edge, you can customize the browser settings so they match your preferences. If you’re using a single profile tied to the same Microsoft account with which you sign in to Windows, these settings persist as you use Edge. But if you’ve created additional profiles, as described in the previous section, each profile has its own settings.
Changing the browser’s appearance
The Edge user experience is, by design, extremely simple, with a limited number of controls surrounding the main window that contains content from the web. But that doesn’t mean the Edge interface is fixed in stone. You can adjust the following aspects using the controls available at edge://settings/appearance.
Under the Overall Appearance heading, as shown in Figure 7-11, you can choose between Dark and Light modes, or instruct Edge to match the mode you’ve chosen for Windows. Options under the Theme heading allow you to choose a pair of complementary colors for tab headings and toolbars. The final option in this section, Discover More Themes, takes you to the Edge Add-ons market, where you can download custom themes that include colors and a background image for new tab pages.
Figure 7-11 Use themes to color-code different profiles for easy recognition. Watch out, though: Some of the bolder color choices can make text difficult to read.
You find more practical customization options under the Customize Toolbar heading, shown in Figure 7-12. The toolbar is the region just below the tab headings; you can show or hide the Home button to the left of the address bar and curate the collection of toolbar buttons to highlight features and extensions you use regularly.
Figure 7-12 Customizations you make here can improve your productivity by making frequently used features more easily accessible while hiding those you rarely use.
The top two groups of options control the vertical tabs feature and show or hide the favorites bar. You can read more about those features later in this chapter. Under the Select Which Buttons To Show On The Toolbar heading is a lengthy list of buttons you can add to (or remove from) the toolbar to make built-in functions easier to access. Resist the urge to make all those buttons available; on all but the largest displays, adding too many toolbar buttons can compress the address bar to a width that’s barely usable.
Installing and managing browser extensions
From the earliest days of the World Wide Web, browsers have supported ways to extend their functionality with third-party add-ons. The original Windows web browser, Internet Explorer, supported ActiveX controls, a powerful but notoriously insecure way to make the browser perform new tricks.
By contrast, modern browsers use extensions—built with JavaScript and HTML and distributed through a managed store—to add new capabilities securely to the browser. Over the past decade, third-party developers have built a thriving ecosystem of extensions for Google Chrome. Password managers, ad blockers, writing tools, and research aids are among the most popular categories, but the sheer breadth of extensions is staggering. Almost all of those extensions work, unmodified, in Microsoft Edge (the exceptions mostly require access to a Google account or to Google services), and many of them have been adapted for distribution in Microsoft’s Edge Add-ons store.
Figure 7-13, for example, shows the OneNote Web Clipper extension in action. Clicking its button on the Edge menu bar reveals the four options shown here, reformatting the page for use in a OneNote notebook. This task would be tedious or impossible to accomplish manually.
Figure 7-13 Extensions like the OneNote Web Clipper can reformat pages on the fly to make them easier to save as part of a OneNote notebook.
Developers can make a few small modifications to a Google Chrome extension and submit it to the Edge Add-ons store. You can browse through the full selection by categories or search for a specific extension at https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons.
If the extension you need isn’t available from Microsoft, chances are you can get it from Google’s Chrome Web Store. To install extensions from that source, you need to enable the Allow Extensions From Other Stores setting in Edge on the Extensions page, as shown in Figure 7-14. That’s also where you go to manage installed extensions.
Figure 7-14 Installed extensions show up on this list. Click the Details button to see any additional settings, including the option to show the extension’s button or uninstall it.
The on/off switch next to each installed extension allows you to enable or disable it on the fly. Most extensions are designed to run at all times, but you might have special-purpose add-ons that you turn on only when they’re required.
By default, a button for each extension shows up on the Edge toolbar, to the right of the address bar. That’s preferred for extensions that require interaction to do their magic. For extensions that work mostly in the background, consider cutting down on clutter by right-clicking the button and choosing the Hide From Toolbar option. (You can move the button back by choosing More Actions > Extensions and choosing Show In Toolbar from the More Actions menu for that extension.)
Finally, take advantage of keyboard shortcuts to expand the utility of extensions. On the Extensions page, click Keyboard Shortcuts (or go to edge://extensions/shortcuts). Click in the box to the right of any extension and press a shortcut that consists of either Ctrl or Alt plus a letter or number.
Customizing the new tab page
When you set up a new profile for the first time, you’re prompted to choose a design for the page you see each time you open a new tab. If you’re signed in with a Microsoft account or a local account, your options include a search box, with the option to add Microsoft news headlines, a fresh background image, or both. Figure 7-15 shows a Custom layout, with a search box and a background image, but no news headlines.
Figure 7-15 The Custom option creates a new tab page that combines a search box with an image that changes daily. Note that the Content selection, which shows MSN news headlines, is off.
If your Edge profile uses an Azure AD account associated with a Microsoft 365 business subscription, you get a few additional options that include links to online apps and documents you’ve worked with recently. In either case, you can change the layout any time by opening a new tab and clicking the gear icon in the upper-right corner.
In either page layout, the new tab page also includes a row of seven quick links, each shown as a tile with a name and a favicon (that’s the formal name of the icon that appears alongside the page title in each browser tab). Click in the upper-right corner of any of these quick links to edit the name or remove the tile.
If none of these options meet your requirements, you need to find a browser extension that can take over the new tab page.
Customizing the startup page
If you prefer to start each new browser instance in a predictable way, go to Edge Settings > Start, Home, And New Tabs (edge://settings/startHomeNTP), and choose one of the alternatives there:
Open The New Tab Page, the default setting, opens each new instance of Microsoft Edge to the new tab page, as described in the previous section.
Open Tabs From The Previous Session restores the tabs that were open the last time you shut down Edge.
Open These Pages starts each session by reviewing a specific group of sites.
In Figure 7-16, for example, Edge is configured to open two news sites and the local forecast from the National Weather Service at startup.
Figure 7-16 Choose this option if you want to start each day by checking your favorite news and weather pages.
The easiest way to specify that you want multiple pages to open at startup is to open those pages (and only those pages) in separate tabs in the current browser session. Then, in a new tab, go to the When Edge Starts section, choose Open These Pages, and click Use All Open Tabs. To add another page to the current selection, copy its URL, click Add A New Page, and paste the Clipboard’s contents into the Enter A URL box.
Fine-tuning browser performance
Edge includes two sets of features designed to improve the web browsing experience. One set of features works by making sure Edge is always running in the background, so you never have to wait for the browser to load. The other allows Edge to put inactive tabs to sleep so they don’t continue using system resources. Both sets of controls are on the System And Performance tab in Edge Settings (edge://settings/system), as shown in Figure 7-17.
Figure 7-17 When Startup Boost is on, Edge remains running in the background when you close the browser window, allowing it to start up faster when you need it again.
At the top of this page is the Startup Boost feature, which loads the Edge browser at startup and keeps the core processes running in the background even when you close the browser. When you reopen a browser window, it should load nearly instantly thanks to those background processes. The impact on performance and resource usage is minimal, which means this feature is usable on all but the most resource-constrained systems.
On some systems, Startup Boost is disabled by default and can’t be enabled because of conflicting extensions. (Ironically, one of those extensions is Microsoft’s own Office add-in.) A button on the Edge Settings page allows you to shut down the conflicting extension to enable Startup Boost.
The second group of options appears under the Optimize Performance heading. One common complaint with web browsers is that activity on tabs running in the browser can use excessive amounts of power; that’s especially unwelcome when using a laptop on battery power. Enabling efficiency mode helps minimize power usage and extend battery life. In efficiency mode, Edge puts background tabs to sleep after 5 minutes of inactivity (if the sleeping tabs feature is enabled) and also minimizes the impact of video playback and animations.
By default, efficiency mode is off. You can specify that you want to turn efficiency mode on by changing the Turn Efficiency Mode On setting. The most conservative setting is Unplugged, Low Battery, which kicks in this resource-saving mode only when the laptop battery hits the low battery setting (20%, by default).
Edge can also put tabs to sleep, leaving the tab in place but shutting down all background activity as a memory- and CPU-saving measure. This option is ideal if you like to keep large numbers of tabs open but don’t want a runaway background process to slow down the rest of your system. Four options control this feature:
Save Resources With Sleeping Tabs This switch turns the feature on or off; if you set it to off, the remaining options are grayed out and unavailable.
Fade Sleeping Tabs With this feature enabled, you can tell at a glance which tabs are running in the background and which have been put to sleep.
Put Inactive Tabs To Sleep After The Specified Amount Of Time Choose an interval from the list here, ranging from extremely aggressive (30 seconds) to extremely generous (12 hours). A value of 30 minutes or 1 hour should be about right for most uses.
Never Put These Sites To Sleep Click the Add button to enter a specific address or domain whose pages are allowed to run in the background at all times.
Undoing all customizations
If Edge begins behaving unpredictably, one drastic but useful troubleshooting step is to reset all browser settings to their default values. This option is the only one on the Reset Settings page in Edge Settings. Doing so changes the startup page, the new tab page, and the default search engine to their default values; it also clears all cookies, removes any pinned tabs, and turns off (but does not remove) any extensions. Saved favorites, browsing history, and saved passwords remain intact.
Working with tabs
Like all modern browsers, Microsoft Edge allows you to keep multiple pages open at the same time, with each page occupying its own tab in the browser window. This feature is a tremendous timesaver for anyone doing research or trying to juggle multiple tasks. It’s also a recipe for information overload, which is why Edge includes an assortment of features to help you switch between tabs and keep them organized.
You can open a new tab in any of several ways. Note that most of these actions include keyboard shortcuts that are worth memorizing if you regularly juggle large numbers of tabs:
To open a new tab, press Ctrl+T, or click the New Tab button, just to the right of the rightmost open tab.
To open a link in a new tab without shifting focus from the current tab, right-click the link and choose Open Link In New Tab, or hold down Ctrl while you click the link.
To open a link in a new tab and shift focus to the newly opened tab, hold down Ctrl+Shift as you click the link.
To duplicate a tab, press Ctrl+Shift+K, or right-click the tab and choose Duplicate from the shortcut menu. Note that your new duplicate tab also includes the history associated with the original tab.
To close any open tab, point to its tab heading and click the X at the right side. (Note that the X is hidden for all but the current tab once you open enough tabs.) To close the current tab, press Ctrl+W.
You can also use keyboard shortcuts to cycle between tabs: Press Ctrl+Tab to move from left to right or Ctrl+Shift+Tab to go from right to left. To reposition a tab within an array of tabs, drag the tab you want to move laterally. To peel a tab from the current browser window and make it appear in a new window, drag the tab away from the tab bar and release it.
You can also select multiple tabs, using the standard Windows shortcuts, Ctrl+click (to select a noncontiguous set of tabs) and Shift+click (for a contiguous set). After making a selection, right-click and choose the option to move those tabs to another window, or drag the selection out of the current window to open them in their own browser window. Right-click the selection to perform another action: Add the tabs to your favorites, add them to a collection, add them to a new tab group, or close them. Other options on the right-click menu include Close Other Tabs, which closes those you haven’t selected, and Close Tabs To The Right, which lets you close sites you opened in new tabs if you tumbled innocently down a rabbit hole of browser tabs.
Using vertical tabs
In the traditional, horizontal arrangement, browser tabs get narrower as the number of open tabs grows. Open enough tabs and they become so narrow that all you see is the page icon, with no title and no Close Tab button.
One solution to the too-many-tabs problem is a feature called Vertical Tabs, which moves the tabs from the top of the browser window to the left side. On a wide display, that arrangement allows you to see a meaningful portion of the title of each tab, with pinned tabs appearing at the top of the pane. Figure 7-18 shows the Microsoft Edge window after turning on vertical tabs.
Figure 7-18 Configuring tabs so they appear in a vertical list along the side allows you to see the full page title, even with a large number of tabs open.
To switch between horizontal and vertical tabs quickly, use the first option on the Tab Actions menu, which appears at the far left (or top) of the open tabs in Edge. If you find the appearance of that icon distracting, you can hide it by going to edge://settings/appearance and toggling the Show Tab Actions Menu to off. You can still switch between the two tab modes by using a keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+Comma (,).
Pinning tabs for quick access
If you want a particular tab to be available and easy to find every time you launch Microsoft Edge, the simplest solution is to pin that tab. Pinned tabs occupy a minuscule amount of visual space, with only an icon and no visible title, at the left of the row of tabs (or at the top of the column if you’ve turned on vertical tabs). Right-click any tab and choose Pin Tab to add it as a pinned tab. Right-click the pinned tab and choose Unpin Tab if you change your mind.
Yet another way to make a particular tab easily reusable is to pin it to the taskbar. To pin the currently open page to the taskbar, click Settings And More > More Tools > Pin To Taskbar.
Sites that can be installed as Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) can also be pinned to Start, by choosing Settings And More > Apps > Install This Site As An App. (For more details on how PWAs work, see Chapter 6.)
Making webpages easier to read
Microsoft Edge provides easy ways to make text and graphics on a webpage larger or smaller. If you’re working on a touchscreen or on a device with a precision touchpad, you can zoom in and out with the standard touch gestures. Spread two fingers on a page to make the content larger; bring two fingers together to make it smaller.
The Zoom command on the Settings And More menu allows you to increase or decrease the size of the page in logical increments. With a wheel mouse, you can zoom in or out by holding down the Ctrl key as you roll the wheel forward or back. Zooming with the mouse wheel has the advantage of maintaining the position of whatever object you’re pointing to when you begin zooming. Suppose, for example, that you’re zooming in to get a better look at a graphical element lying near the right edge of the screen. If you use other zooming methods, the element you care about eventually drifts out of the window. However, if you zoom in by pointing to that element and then rolling the wheel, the element retains its position relative to your mouse pointer as it gets larger.
If you prefer the keyboard, you can use a pair of shortcuts to zoom in and out. Hold down Ctrl and press Plus (+, typically found to the left of the Backspace key) to increase magnification; hold down Ctrl and press Minus Sign (–) to zoom back out. Because the plus and minus keys are right next to one another, it’s easy to hold down control and zoom in and out with precision. To return to normal (100%) magnification, press Ctrl+0.
Changes to display magnification are persistent on a per-site basis, so if you nearly always require a certain zoom level at a particular address, you can set it once and not have to worry about it again. Saved zoom levels for every site are saved at edge://settings/content/zoomLevels. To change zoom settings globally, go to edge://settings/appearance and choose a magnification percentage.
Zooming in is an excellent way to make small text easier on the eyes. But for more improvement in reading comfort, try the Immersive Reader in Microsoft Edge. This view removes distracting elements from a webpage and reformats the text so that you can focus on what you’re trying to read. Immersive Reader is especially useful on pages that are cluttered with ads and where the designer has used type that’s too small or has contrast problems with the background.
To display the current page in Immersive Reader view, click the Enter Immersive Reader icon, which resembles an open book; it’s located near the right end of the address bar. An easier option is to press the keyboard shortcut, F9. To return to normal view, click the Immersive Reader icon again or click Back.
Figure 7-19 shows the same page in normal display (left) and with Immersive Reader on (right). Note the Reader Mode icon where the Site Information icon normally appears at the left of the address bar.
Figure 7-19 Press F9 to turn a busy webpage into a streamlined version with text reformatted for readability.
A toolbar appears at the top of the window in Reader Mode. (If the toolbar is hidden, move the mouse pointer to the top of the page until it slides down. Click the pushpin icon to pin the toolbar in place so it doesn’t automatically hide.) Click Text Preferences to customize the appearance of the page, as shown in Figure 7-20.
Figure 7-20 In Reader Mode, you can choose a font, adjust text size and spacing, and select a color scheme for the text and background.
Most of the options here are self-explanatory. Choose a font and adjust the size and spacing of text and columns to suit your preferences. Under Page Themes are five options to adjust the color of the page background and the contrasting text. If reading is still a challenge, you can ask Reading View to read to you. Turn on your speakers or connect your headset and click the Read Aloud button on the toolbar. (The Read Aloud option is also available for PDF files.)
Finding and organizing information
This section covers the tools built into the Microsoft Edge browser that allow you to track down information on the web using the full array of online search tools and then organize, reuse, and share those results as needed. Some of these tools are familiar, like the favorites that have been part of Microsoft browsers for a quarter century. You can organize favorites into folders or use a new alternative called Collections, which is found only in Edge. But the most obvious starting point is the place you go when you don’t know where to go: your favorite search engine.
Changing the default search provider
You don’t need to go directly to a search engine to find information in Microsoft Edge. If you use one of Microsoft’s layouts for the new tab page, you can open a tab and enter your request in the search box on that page. Even easier is to just start typing in the address bar. When you use the address bar in this fashion, the browser offers autocomplete suggestions as you type, along with trending topics and a list of matching sites from your browsing history.
On a clean installation of Windows 11, Microsoft’s Bing is, unsurprisingly, the default search provider. With a few simple steps, you can change the default to one of the predefined alternatives. From Edge Settings, choose the Privacy, Search, And Services tab. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Address Bar And Search. (If that seems like too much work, go directly to edge://settings/search.) Your options are shown in Figure 7-21.
Figure 7-21 The second option from the bottom, which allows you to assign an alternate search engine to the new tab page, doesn’t appear until you change the address-bar search engine to something other than Bing.
If you find the autocomplete suggestions distracting, the top two options on this page allow you to turn off search suggestions and suggestions from your history and favorites, respectively.
Your options for the Search Engine Used In The Address Bar setting include some familiar names, including Google and Yahoo as well as the privacy-focused DuckDuckGo. To add a search provider that supports the OpenSearch standard but isn’t on the default list, go to the search provider’s website and search for anything; that action is enough to add the new provider to the list of available search engines.
Changing the source of search results from the address bar doesn’t affect the search box on Microsoft’s new tab page, which continues to use Bing even after you make the change. When you select a search engine other than Bing, a second option appears: Search On New Tabs Uses Search Box Or Address Bar. Set this option to Address Bar to make both locations match. (Note that this setting has no effect on what you type in the search box on the Windows taskbar.)
Finding previously visited pages in History
Microsoft Edge maintains a local history of the sites you visit; this history is saved separately for each profile you create in Edge. For profiles where you’re signed in to a Microsoft account or an Azure Active Directory account, Edge maintains a separate history and syncs that list to all instances of Edge where you’re signed in and syncing with that account. If you need to return to a site and you neglected to add it to your favorites, you should be able to find it by searching through the history.
To inspect your history in Microsoft Edge, click Settings And More > History, or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+H. By default, Edge shows your history in a compact scrolling list that drops down from the toolbar. Click the Pin History button in the top right of that list to lock it into place in a pane on the right side of the browser window, as shown in Figure 7-22.
Figure 7-22 Clicking the All tab combines your local and synced browsing history and displays the results in reverse chronological order. This list is pinned to the right side of the browser window.
The list is arranged in three tabs, with the All tab shown by default; it combines local and synced history lists, presenting the joint results in descending chronological order, using relative dates and times for headings: Recent, Today, Yesterday, Last Week, and so on. The Recently Closed tab displays a short list of local pages that you can reopen if necessary, while the Tabs From Other Devices list shows your history from other synced devices, with the history arranged by device in reverse chronological order.
You might be able to find a page by scrolling through the list, especially if your visit was relatively recent. For a more targeted search, try clicking the Search History button (the magnifying glass icon) and entering a word or a snippet of text to find entries that include the search text in the page title or the URL. Enclose the search text in quotes to find a specific phrase; if you enter the words separately without quotes, Edge returns results for any page that includes all the specified words.
If you find a page of interest, right-click its entry in the list to display a shortcut menu of options that allows you to open the page in a new tab or a new window, copy the page link to the Clipboard, or delete the item from your history. The final item on the shortcut menu, More From The Same Site, allows you to filter the History list to show only pages from the same domain as the one you selected.
From the All list, you can delete any entry by hovering the mouse pointer over it until an X appears at the right of the item. Click that X to permanently remove the page from your history.
The More Options menu, indicated by three dots to the right of the Search History button, offers three interesting options. The first, Open History Page, displays your history in a full-page view that includes a search box and controls for filtering by date. The second option, Clear Browsing Data, erases your local history, completely and irrevocably. The final option, Show History Button In Toolbar, offers an additional way to quickly open and close the history list.
Saving, editing, and organizing Favorites
Like every modern browser, Microsoft Edge allows you to build a repository of favorite webpages—destinations that you know or suspect you’ll want to return to now and then—and organize that collection into folders. Once a page has been designated a favorite, you can reopen it with only a few clicks instead of having to search for it again or pull it up from your browsing history.
To add a shortcut for the current page to the favorites list, click the star at the right side of the address bar in Microsoft Edge, or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+D. As Figure 7-23 shows, that action opens the Edit Favorite dialog, where you can change the name to something descriptive and move the link to an existing folder. (Click More to see a full list of folders and create a new folder, if necessary.) Click Done to save your changes.
Figure 7-23 Press Ctrl+D or click the star icon at the right of the address bar to add or remove a page from your Favorites list.
The Favorites Bar is a special folder whose contents can be displayed below the address bar in Microsoft Edge. (Think of this location as your favorite favorites.) By default, it’s hidden. To make it visible, click Settings And More > Favorites > More Options > Show Favorites Bar. Or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+B to show and hide the Favorites Bar.
The easiest way to access your saved favorites is to start typing in the address bar. Any matching favorites display at the top of the list. To see the entire list, click the Favorites button on the toolbar. You can also get to the favorites list by pressing Ctrl+Shift+O. From that same page, you can search for Favorites using the search box at the top of the page.
Click a favorite to launch it in the current tab. Hold down Ctrl as you click to open the link in a new tab (or right-click the link and then click Open In New Tab). Hold down Shift and click to open the link in a new window. The menu that appears when you right-click also gives you the means to rename or remove a shortcut as well as an option to edit the URL associated with each saved favorite. Right-click any empty space in the Favorites list to create a new folder on the fly or sort the list by name.
If you are switching from another browser to Microsoft Edge, you might have favorites or bookmarks that you want to import. If you’ve exported those bookmarks to a file, go to edge://settings/profiles/importBrowsingData. Click Choose What To Import, select the exported file from the dropdown at the top, choose the data you want to add to your Edge profile, and then click Import.
Saving and sharing your research as Collections
Collections are a signature feature of Microsoft Edge, offering a way to save and share research that’s unlike anything in any other modern browser. Collections are an ideal solution for researching travel, purchases, projects, and school papers. Superficially, they resemble folders full of favorites, with content appearing in a pane that drops down from the toolbar and can be pinned to the right of the main browser window. Unlike a folder full of favorites, however, collections can include more than just simple links. Figure 7-24 shows a collection containing research collected ahead of a new car purchase.
Figure 7-24 Collections consist of cards that you can drag to rearrange. You can save images, snippets of text, product details, or even notes.
Collections consist of cards, each of which contains a discrete piece of data you want to collect. You can add entire pages by clicking Add Current Page from the top of the Collections pane. Doing so creates a card with a link and a thumbnail of the webpage. You can also drag a link or a snippet of text from a webpage to the Collections pane to save it directly, along with a link you can click to return to the source page. Right-click just about any web-based content, including images, and use the Add To Collections menu to save it as part of an existing collection or start a new one.
Clicking the Add Note icon at the top of the Collections pane opens a yellow sticky note. There, you can change the font, add bullets, or add headers using the toolbar at the top of the note. When you’re ready to save the note, click Save.
To create a new collection from scratch, click the Collections button on the toolbar, and then click the Start A New Collection link at the top of the Collections pane. If you’ve already begun doing some research in the current Edge window, use Ctrl+click to select a group of tabs, right-click to display a menu, and then click Add All Tabs To Collections.
You can drag collections in the Collections pane to the order you prefer and drag cards in a collection to reorder them. Hover the mouse pointer over a card to display a checkbox in the upper-right corner. Select that box (and repeat the process for other cards, if necessary) to display a toolbar that allows you to copy, share, or delete the selected items.
Collections integrate well with Microsoft Office apps. When you choose the option to share a selection or an entire collection, the menu options shown in Figure 7-25 appear. You can share using Excel, OneNote, or Word. You can also open, copy, or paste the cards in your collection in just about any target, including another collection.
Figure 7-25 When sharing a collection, you can send selected items to key Office apps, making it possible to create a tidy report with minimal effort.
Managing privacy and tracking prevention
The beauty of the web is that you can use it to connect instantly to an almost unlimited world of information. The bad news is that some of those destinations are potentially dangerous to your PC’s health and to your privacy.
There’s no way to make the web perfectly safe, but Windows 11 does include features that help you minimize concerns over security and privacy.
If you care about online security, one smart practice you should adopt for everyday browsing is to prefer a secure connection (HTTPS) even on sites that don’t traditionally require it. Insecure links to seemingly harmless destinations can leak information about you and can also be used to spoof sites, potentially compromising a machine using a man-in-the-middle attack. All modern browsers, including Microsoft Edge, flag the addresses of sites that are insecure as well as those that contain a mix of secure and insecure content (look for a Not Secure label where you would normally see the padlock icon in the address bar). In that spirit, we have gone out of our way in this book to use HTTPS links. In this section, we focus primarily on features that are unique to web browsing.
Unless you go to extraordinary lengths, such as using a virtual private network for every browser session, simply connecting to a webpage reveals information about your PC, your internet service provider, and your general location. When combined with other details, even a single, seemingly harmless visit to a webpage can become part of your permanent online profile, used by companies and organizations you’ve never heard of. Privacy advocates have demonstrated repeatedly that even anonymized data can create a profile that can identify you just as surely as if you had left a fingerprint behind.
You can’t completely disappear online, but you can take some commonsense precautions to cover your tracks and avoid disclosing too much about yourself.
Preventing online tracking
Some websites use tracking capabilities to gather information about your browsing history, information you enter in your browser, and other details of your online life to build a profile that companies can use for targeted advertising and other purposes. If that bothers you, you can order Microsoft Edge to prevent certain types of tracking. To set your preferences, use the Tracking Prevention tools at the top of the Privacy, Search, And Services tab in Edge Settings. Figure 7-26 shows the three options available for this feature.
Figure 7-26 By default, Tracking Prevention is set to Balanced. Choosing the Strict option effectively turns this feature into an ad blocker and may cause problems for some sites.
The Tracking Prevention feature in Microsoft Edge uses open source tracking protection lists to classify online trackers and group them into categories. These “Trust Protection Lists” are maintained by Disconnect, a firm based in San Francisco, California. (The most recent version is available for inspection at https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect-tracking-protection.) These lists are downloaded automatically and stored locally; Edge uses them to prevent resources that are defined as trackers from storing resources or accessing stored resources. (For a detailed discussion of how this feature works, see the Microsoft Docs article, “Tracking Prevention in Microsoft Edge,” at https://docs.microsoft.com/microsoft-edge/web-platform/tracking-prevention.)
The three available Tracking Prevention levels work as follows:
Basic This is the least restrictive level, allowing almost all trackers and blocking only malicious trackers such as those that attempt to perform unauthorized cryptomining. If you use a third-party ad-blocking tool, this setting might be appropriate.
Balanced The default level blocks trackers from sites that you haven’t visited directly while minimizing the risk of compatibility issues.
Strict Turning on this setting delivers the maximum privacy benefit and effectively turns the Tracking Prevention feature into an ad-blocking tool. In the process, you can expect some webpages to break.
By default, Tracking Prevention is set to the Balanced level. With that setting on, you’ll still see a fair number of ads, but most third-party tracking is blocked. Turning the setting up to Strict can break some web functionality and will subject you to lots of “please disable your ad blocker” messages.
You can see which trackers have been blocked and turn this feature on or off for an individual website by clicking the padlock button and using the controls at the bottom of the information pane for that page. To see a list of all the trackers that have been blocked, go to edge://settings/privacy/blockedTrackers.
Using InPrivate browsing to suppress your history
If you want to cover your local tracks only for a particular browsing session, don’t bother fussing with history settings or clearing items after the fact. Instead, open an InPrivate window. During an InPrivate session, Microsoft Edge keeps all your browsing data (including history, cookies, and cached images) in temporary storage and clears it completely when you close the last InPrivate window. An InPrivate session allows you to access favorites, saved passwords, and form data from the profile where you started. Any files you download are retained, although the download history is cleared.
To open an InPrivate window, click Settings And More > New InPrivate Window, or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+N. Any additional InPrivate windows you open are part of the same session. When you close the last InPrivate window, the browser ends the session and deletes browsing data it stored (session cookies and other temporary files, for example). No record of the visit is saved in history.
Be aware that browsing privately is different from browsing anonymously. Sites you visit can record your IP address, and your network administrator or internet service provider (which includes anyone in control of a public Wi-Fi hotspot) can see which sites you connect to and can capture any unencrypted information you transmit or receive.
You can allow or prohibit the use of extensions in InPrivate mode on a per-extension basis, as described in “Installing and managing browser extensions,” earlier in this chapter.
Controlling site permissions
Microsoft Edge includes a dizzying array of permissions that you can configure to control how webpages interact with your PC. To see the full list, go to the Cookies And Site Permissions page at edge://settings/content. There, you can adjust global options for Cookies And Data Stored and Site Permissions, including access to your camera and microphone. You might decide, for example, that you don’t want any websites to disturb you with notifications, ever, so you can set the Notifications permission to block all such requests.
One of the most useful settings in this group is the Media Autoplay switch, which normally is set to allow any site to start playing a video or audio clip when you arrive. Go to edge://settings/content/mediaAutoplay and confirm that this option is set to Limit.
To adjust settings for a specific site, click the padlock icon at the left of the address bar and then click Permissions For This Site.
Clearing your browsing history and other personal information
Your browser keeps a copy of webpages, images, and media you’ve viewed recently. This cached information is saved to generally inaccessible locations, but even so, it might give someone with physical access to your computer more information than you might want them to have—especially when combined with cookies, saved form data, saved passwords, and other details.
To wipe away most of your online trail in Microsoft Edge, open the Privacy, Search, And Services tab in Edge Settings. Then, under the Clear Browsing Data heading, click Choose What To Clear. These steps take you to the set of checkboxes shown in Figure 7-27.
Before specifying the types of data you want to clean and prune, you can restrict the data to be cleared by choosing one of the options on the Time Range menu: Last Hour, Last 24 Hours, Last 7 Days, Last 4 Weeks, or All Time. If you were researching possible birthday gifts for a household member who occasionally uses your computer, for example, you might want to delete all or part of your browsing data for the past week to avoid accidentally spoiling the surprise.
Figure 7-27 Use the options under Clear Browsing Data to specify which elements of your browsing history you want Microsoft Edge to erase.
In addition, be aware that if you’re signed in and syncing data to a Microsoft account, the data you clear here may also be removed from other devices that sign in to that account. To remove only local data, sign out first.
After attending to those details, you can choose from the following types of data to clear:
Browsing History This is simply a list of sites you’ve been to since you last cleared your history, whether you went to them directly or followed another site’s hyperlinks. You can also view this list from the History list and delete individual entries there. (For details, see “Finding previously visited pages in History,” earlier in this chapter.)
Download History This is the list that appears on the Downloads page. Deleting this history here (or clicking Clear All at the top of the Downloads list) does not remove the downloads themselves, which remain where you put them.
Cookies And Other Site Data A cookie is a small text file that enables a website to store persistent information on your hard disk. Cookies, particularly first-party cookies, are generally benign and useful. Note that removing cookies via this option does not block their arrival in the future. (To do that, see “Managing cookies” later in this chapter.)
Cached Images And Files These are local copies of pages and media content from sites you visit. The browser saves local copies of this data to speed up its display on subsequent visits.
Passwords As discussed earlier in this chapter (see “Using the built-in password manager”), there are pros and cons associated with saving sign-in credentials for websites. If you switch to a third-party password manager after you’ve allowed the browser to store some credentials, you can erase the data here.
Autofill Form Data (Includes Forms And Cards) Your browser allows you to store some address information—for example, your shipping or email address—as well as credit card details. Using this saved information makes it more convenient to fill out forms. This option erases saved entries for the selected period.
Site Permissions When you visit a webpage, it can request permission to perform specific actions, such as delivering notifications, switching to full screen, or using your location for personalization. Click this checkbox to remove all saved permissions, or click Manage Permissions to review and modify these settings on a per-site basis. You can browse the full list of saved permissions by going to edge://settings/content.
Hosted App Data Installing a website as an app gives it permission to store some data for its own use. The text beneath this entry lists each of the apps that are capable of storing app data.
All Data From The Previous Version Of Microsoft Edge This option is available only on devices that have been updated from legacy Edge to the newer Chromium-based Edge. After clearing this data, the option is no longer available.
Media Foundation Data This data is used to authorize playback of copy-protected digital media.
After making your selections, click Clear. To automatically clear a specific type of browsing data every time you shut down the browser or sign out, go back to Edge Settings and click Choose What To Clear Every Time You Close The Browser. That leads to a page with on-off switches for the first seven data types listed above.
Managing cookies
Cookies—small bits of information that websites store on your hard disk—come in two flavors. First-party cookies are used by the site you’re currently visiting, generally for such purposes as personalizing your experience with the site, storing shopping-cart information, and so on. Third-party cookies are used by a site other than the one you’re visiting—such as an advertising network or social media service that has placed an ad or a sharing button on the site you’re currently visiting.
Cookies do not carry executable code (they’re text files), and they can’t be used to spread viruses or malware. A cookie can provide a website only with information you supply while visiting the site; a cookie has no access to the Windows file system and can’t read any of your personal information, including your address book or financial records. The information a cookie gathers can be read only by pages in the same domain as the one that created the cookie.
Nevertheless, privacy concerns arise when advertisers and web-analytics companies begin to correlate the information from third-party cookies to build a profile of your activities. Because it’s not always obvious who’s sending you a cookie and what purposes that cookie serves, some people are understandably wary about allowing cookies on their systems.
The most effective way to block this form of tracking is with the use of the Tracking Prevention feature in Microsoft Edge (described earlier in this chapter), or with third-party ad-blocking software. You can, however, set global cookie policies from the Cookies And Site Permissions page in Edge Settings. To review and allow or block cookies from the current webpage, click the padlock icon to the left of the address bar and then click Cookies. That opens a dialog like the one in Figure 7-28.
Figure 7-28 The cookie management tools in Microsoft Edge are interesting for developers and security experts, but for most everyday uses, the Tracking Prevention feature is a better option.
If you’re having troubles with a specific page, you might be able to troubleshoot that page by removing cookies for that page. Open the dialog shown earlier in Figure 7-28, select one or more cookies from the list, and click Remove. Then try reloading the page.
Opening incompatible pages in Internet Explorer mode
Microsoft has officially retired the Internet Explorer 11 browser for Windows. It’s not included with a clean install of Windows 11, and there’s no supported way to add it.
Aside from a slight twinge of nostalgia, there’s little reason for most people to care about the absence of Internet Explorer. Modern webpages are designed for modern browsers, including Microsoft Edge, and there are few sites on the open web that still require Internet Explorer.
The one place where that obsolete browser still has a role to play is on corporate networks, where web-based apps written many years ago are still used daily and are unlikely to be updated. In some cases, those apps rely on features that are unsupported by any modern browser. For those sites, Edge offers Internet Explorer (IE) mode, which opens those legacy web apps in specialized tabs that use the older Trident rendering engine and support Internet Explorer features such as ActiveX controls and Browser Helper Objects. Sites that are loaded in IE mode open in tabs within the Edge browser, distinguished only by a small logo in the address bar, as shown in Figure 7-29.
Figure 7-29 When you encounter a page that requires Internet Explorer, you can reload it in IE mode.
In a corporate setting, administrators can define a list of specific sites using group policy so that Edge automatically opens those pages using IE mode. On Windows computers installed in homes and small businesses and not managed using group policy, you can reload specific pages in IE mode if you encounter compatibility problems with Edge and suspect that the page was originally written for the older browser. The Reload In Internet Explorer Mode option is on the Settings And More menu. If you don’t see this option, go to Edge Settings and look at the options on the Default Browser page, specifically the Allow Sites To Be Reloaded In Internet Explorer Mode options. Change this setting to Allow and restart the browser to make that menu option available; set it to Don’t Allow if you never want to open a page in IE mode.
Using Microsoft Edge to read and edit PDFs
On a clean installation, Windows 11 sets Microsoft Edge as the default reader for PDF files. When you download a file in PDF format, it opens in the Edge window with a toolbar like the one shown in Figure 7-30. You can use those tools to rotate, zoom, print, save, and annotate the file.
Figure 7-30 You can fill in a PDF-based form in Edge using a mouse and keyboard, but the drawing and marking tools work best on a PC with pen support.
Edge allows you to fill in forms for documents that have been created with that feature enabled and saved as a PDF file. You can also use the tools on the PDF toolbar to draw on the document (good for adding signatures) and highlight portions of the document using a digital marker in one of five colors. Use the Print and Save buttons to preserve a copy of the document after you’ve filled in a form or annotated it.