A small yet loyal user base.

However, one thing that Microsoft’s web browser has missed out on is a user interface that is properly optimized for touch usage. While some parts of the UI play nicely with touch-enabled devices like the Surface Pro, the complete interface is nowhere near as optimized as it could be for this input method.

And as a matter of fact, Edge users have been demanding improved touchscreen support ever since the demise of Edge Legacy.

Well, good for them, as Redmond seems to be working on this very aspect.

The company has been busy lately making Windows more optimized for touch, having rolled out a compact and tablet-optimized taskbar. But apparently, the OS is not the only one benefitting from these efforts, as Microsoft is showing the same commitment to Edge.

As discovered by an involved Edge enthusiast, the software titan is currently testing a new Touch mode, where turning it on makes the size of all browser elements slightly bigger.

See:

Elements like buttons and tabs are enlarged when you activate it.

If you use Edge on a convertible PC, select the Auto option from the Touch mode dropdown menu. Doing so, the browser will automatically recognize whether or not you are using Windows with touch, and offer you a layout accordingly.

Microsoft is currently testing this feature with a very select number of users in the Edge Canary channel.

To find out if you are one of the lucky ones, navigate to Settings > Appearance > Touch to make your Edge more touch-optimized.

Website typo protection is now live for Edge.

Yes, you heard it right. This feature works exactly what it says on the tin.

This is a problem that many developers have ignored for way too long and has likely resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses over the years. It still remains one of the most used ways for cybercriminals to trap their victims.

Malicious actors use URL typos in their nefarious practices to redirect unsuspecting users to their compromised sites or deploy infected payloads on their devices.

The concept is simple enough to understand. Every once in a while, when typing a web address in the address bar of a web browser, a user may input text with typos that are hard to notice at first glance. Doing so results in the browser pointing us to a completely different website or web resource.

Typosquatting, it is called.

Which is why this new feature that Microsoft has developed automatically detects these typos and prevents users from being redirected to malicious URLs.

As the company puts it:

“Website typo protection complements the Microsoft Defender SmartScreen service to defend against web threats. Microsoft Defender SmartScreen helps protect users against websites that engage in phishing and malware campaigns.

Typosquatters engage in phishing activities too, but there are only so many ways in which one can mistype a brand. Malicious actors know this and choose to host less aggravating content on “typosquat” URLs to avoid detection. Typosquatting site owners profit on users’ mistakes by taking them to advertising sites, affiliate links, false products, fake search engine results, or in some cases by redirecting users into parked domains reserved for very short-lived phishing campaigns.”

This new feature is as straightforward as you expect and works very smoothly.

Every time you type an address in the URL bar, Edge performs an automatic check in the background to figure out if you are being targeted by typosquatting or not. It that is the case, the browser displays a message to let you know that there might be a typo in the URL your just entered.

This new addition is now enabled by default on all platforms where Microsoft Edge is available.

Many of these are required additions, some are welcome, and a few veer towards bloatware territory.

But despite the company’s best efforts, Edge is finding it hard to gain a big market share. Redmond is finding it hard to get its web browser past the 10% share mark, with things stagnating a bit these last few months.

Of course, this picture has been painted by none other than StatCounter, the firm that also released the figures for the desktop market share for this month.

And data shows that Google Chrome remains the absolute king of the hill in these parts, with its 66.46% share of the market. This, despite the fact that it lost 1.12 points in October. But a dip like this does nothing to chip away at the commanding lead the world’s most popular browser has.

Less impressive is the showing from the second most popular browser, with Edge gaining a measly 0.05 points to end up with a 10.85% share.

That is to say, the situation has been relatively unchanged for Microsoft’s solution for five months now.

Apple Safari rounds up the top three desktop browsers list with a 9.38% share, up 0.45 points. Firefox comes in fourth with 7.05%, losing 0.22 points. Opera closes the top five with 3.61%, gaining 0.67 points the last time we checked.

And just like Windows XP, which refused to give up some eight years after its high-profile retirement, Internet Explorer also has a never-say-die attitude, holding on to about 0.8% of the global desktop browser market share.

That will likely change, as Microsoft plans to disable IE on specific versions of Windows 10 on February 14, 2023.

Talk about a Valentine’s Day present.

That being an improved sidebar.

Stable channel users now have access to this refreshed version of the web browser, which is available for download on multiple platforms—namely, Windows, macOS, and Linux. As the announcement post details, this release includes an enhanced sidebar.

Sidebar is a feature in Edge that lets you view various productivity tools side-by-side with the page you have currently open. This handy feature also lets you view two websites in a single window and allows you to pin a specific page to keep it available on every tab.

In other words, this is one of the better features in Edge.

And it just got a bit more, shall we say, better.

That’s because Microsoft has improved things to let users access their productivity tools side-by-side in this location right alongside their browsing window. For enterprise customers, a number of experiences are currently turned on by default.

These include Search, Discover, Office.com, and Outlook.

Administrators can also control the availability and configure the Microsoft Edge sidebar using dedicated policies. For more information on how to manage it, visit this link.

Microsoft has also snuck in a new policy that gives you more flexibility when starting up Edge. You can now add and remove your own URLs to open when starting the browser while maintaining the mandatory list of sites specified by the admin.

Edge version 107 is now available for all.

While the web browser will update itself automatically, you can force an update by paying a quick visit to Settings.

This is at a time when the operating system’s core UI and feature set could use a lot of work.

Well, it’s a good thing the software titan is finally getting around to improving these core options in the web browser. This time around, the focus is on the Find on Page feature, which is already part of Edge.

An updated flavor of it has just become available for some testers in the Canary channel. It offers a range of options that testers can toggle on or off after firing up the feature by pressing the Ctrl + F keys or selecting the Find on Page feature from the main menu.

As of this writing, the following filtering options are available:

• Include related matches: The browser highlights words and phrases that might be related or similar to the request entered.
• Match case: Enables case-sensitive search when you want to find a specific upper-cased word.
• Match whole world: Finds only words and omits parts of words that match your search request.
• Match diacritics: This option lets you find only accented characters. It pairs nicely with the new Quick Accent tool in PowerToys.

Good stuff, and it should really come in handy.

If you want to give these newly updated feature sets for the Find on Page in Edge, you can download the latest Edge Canary release from the official website here. Not everyone gets in on the first try, so you may have to wait to get access to these new additions.

But they should soon be available in the main release after due testing.

Edge is already one of the most efficient browsers, thanks to the introduction of this mode in version 101.

But now, this updated efficiency mode that is available in Microsoft Edge 106 takes things one step further by adding more power-saving options to the browser. It will be able to detect when a device is on battery and adjust its performance accordingly.

There are a couple of different modes to go with several options that are now available for the tool.

And Microsoft does a good job of breaking them down in this Tech Community post.

The browser uses the “Balanced Savings” option by default, which takes reasonable steps to save battery without notable slowdowns. However, it will take a more aggressive approach when your device runs low on juice, which will result in worse performance and a less smooth experience overall.

This happens when your machine enters battery save mode in Windows or reaches the 20% battery mark on a Mac.

And for those who want to squeeze every last drop of battery juice, there is a “Maximum Savings” option with Edge applying every energy-saving measure at its disposal. This, as you can imagine, trades off speed for battery life, and the performance downgrade will be very noticeable.

But horses for courses, as they say!

Another noteworthy change in Edge 106 is the option to keep the battery saver on when connected to power. This is a step that ensures that your machine consumes less energy, reducing carbon emissions in the process.

Much like the recent changes that made the Windows Update process greener and more eco-friendly.

Redmond has confirmed that the updated battery efficiency mode in Microsoft Edge is currently rolling out to customers, so you may have to wait a few more days before this feature reaches your computer.

Good stuff.

The final build number for this update is 106.0.1370.34. The refresh brings two new feature updates: more reliable web defenses and more work results in the address bar. This release also includes a handful of policy updates.

As the changelog notes, the two new additions have to do with security and productivity.

First up is the enablement of a more reliable web defense that lets you browse the web more reliably thanks to some enhanced protection. This is due to the rewritten Microsoft Defender SmartScreen library for Microsoft Edge on Windows that was introduced with Edge 103.

By the same flip of the coin, the NewSmartScreenLibraryEnabled policy is now deprecated in Edge 106 and will become obsolete by the time Edge 107 strolls around.

The second new addition relates to increased work results in the Microsoft Edge address bar. Microsoft has increased the maximum number of work results displayed in the address bar from 2 to 4, saying that this will offer greater visibility into the work content available to you as you search.

This feature requires the AddressBarMicrosoftSearchInBingProviderEnabled policy enabled to work.

The rest are policy updates, the details of which you can gather from the changelog linked above. We have 3 new policies enabled, 2 deprecated, and 2 obsoleted.

If Microsoft Edge is installed on your system, you can update your web browser easily via Settings and More > Help and Feedback> About Microsoft Edge.

A fresh copy of Edge is also up for grabs from the official website.

Web apps, as in Progressive Web Apps, are also called PWAs.

The company labeled this new API as Window Controls Overlays, and it is now enabled by default in the web browser. It was implemented in Version 105, and the feature itself was a long time coming.

Microsoft initially discussed it in January 2020 before starting work on an early implementation in March 2021 through the Chromium project. The feature has now finally become the default experience on Edge 105, complete with a formal specification being published.

As Microsoft details:

“We believe PWAs are a great fit for making desktop web applications. Turning your website into an app that really feels like it belongs on desktop has never been so easy and using the Window Controls Overlay feature will help you create desktop apps that look much more modern and engaging to your users.”

And all the effort on this front has been worth it, as this new addition makes PWAs feel more native.

This is not done by making them more performant; rather, it is done by making a seemingly minor UI enhancement. Instead of making an app’s title bar follow the operating system defaults, it returns around 30 pixels of height back to the PWA.

Essentially, giving the PWA almost full control over the title bar.

While this number sounds small, it does give a PWA the autonomy to display custom titles, menu bars, navigation tabs, and more in this area. This diagram above does a good job of illustrating how this new implementation looks.

Redmond emphasizes that this implementation adapts to different operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Linux. The graphic below shows this.

If you are a PWA developer, Microsoft also has some handy code snippets to help you figure out how to tweak your web app’s title bar.

Interestingly, while this feature is here, none of the major or minor releases of Edge 105 highlight this new addition. The API is, however, enabled by default if you are on the latest build of the web browser and is a very welcome improvement.

Microsoft shared the news, revealing that PowerApps is the first WinUI 2 app to have WebView 2 built-in. This project allows customers to build applications for popular platforms and create user interfaces using drag-and-drop elements.

You can learn more about Microsoft PowerApps on its official website.

Getting back to WebView 2, this technology is different from its predecessor in that unlike the original WebView, which was based on EdgeHTML, this one is powered by Chromium. This makes sense because EdgeHTML was the rendering engine that ran things on the original Edge before its engine upgrade.

Replacing the legacy WebView with this Chromium-based variant provides better compatibility, enhances sustainability and support, and adds modern features.

Since WebView 2 is part of both Windows 11 and Windows 10, developers can create lighter apps for their users.

Finally, what’s even better for this new control is that it supports older versions of Windows, allowing developers to reach more users. Redmond confirms that developers can build apps using WebView 2 for Windows 7, 8, 10, and 11.

Developers who want to embed WebView 2 into their WinUI apps can consult the handy Getting Started guide that Microsoft has made available in the official documentation.

Not quite the miracle worker that you see on films and TV shows, but close enough.

The cliché in entertainment is of genius investigators seeing an extremely blurry element on a screen and asking their support assistant to enhance it. And voila! It results in a crystal-clear image of a person or object in the photo.

Microsoft’s technology leverages its machine learning technology to enhance the quality of the images being displayed in the web browser.

Eric Lawrence explains in a dedicated blog post on this new feature for Edge that the company is currently calling “SuperRes” or “Enhance Images” technology. And as of now, only a small percentage of users using Edge Stable, Dev, and Canary have this capability enabled via trial flags.

This machine-learning model improves an image by adjusting its color, lighting, and contrast.

The important thing to note here is that this image enhancement does not happen locally in the web browser. Microsoft uses the Turing Image Super-Resolution model built by the Microsoft Turing team that is hosted on the cloud to dynamically improve image quality.

This post here has more details if you are interested in monitoring the communication Edge conducts with this cloud service with this feature enabled through Fiddler.

Lawrence does note that the model is not quite perfect just yet. It does not work that well with PNG images and leaves pink, fuzzy artifacts. Nor does it cater to the ICCv4 color profiles correctly, either. These are still early days, of course.

There’s no word yet on when — or if — this image enhancement technology will be generally available for all users of the Edge web browser.

But you can check if you have it by heading over to edge://flags and enabling Enhance images in Microsoft Edge. If it is enabled, you will see an “HD” icon in the omnibox that can be leveraged to toggle image enhancement.