Tip of the Week: 4 Reasons to Consider Using Microsoft Edge

Chances are, if given the choice, you would choose Google Chrome over Microsoft Edge for your web browsing needs. Knowing this, Microsoft has enabled users to customize their Edge browsers to suit their needs a little more. For today’s tip, we’ll go over how to set up these features and settings.

Choosing a Search Engine
It only makes sense that the default search engine on Microsoft’s Edge browser would be Bing, Microsoft’s search engine. However, you can adjust the settings to make Google, or any other OpenSearch search engine, the one that Edge will default to. To make this change, follow these steps:

• First, visit the search engine you want to make your default. Edge will only give you the option of a search engine if you have already visited it.
• Once you’ve done so, access Edge’s menu through the triple-dot button in the top-right of the browser and select Settings.
• Navigate to View advanced settings.
• Select Change search engine and choose your preferred search engine option.

Restoring the Home Button
By default, the Home button is hidden on the Edge browser. You can change this and have an option to return to your browser’s home page restored.

• Access Advanced settings
• Switch Show the home button to ‘on’
• You can then set your homepage to be the default Edge homepage, the New tab page, or any other page you want.

Speaking of tabs, Edge has plenty of ways for you to utilize them better as well.

Customizing the New Tab Page
Edge now allows you to choose what is displayed when you open a new tab.

• Access the Settings panel.
• Select your preference from the following options:
  
  • Top Sites
  • Top Sites and Suggested Content
  • Blank, black page

Previewing your Current Tabs
We’ve all been there, having so many tabs open that we can’t remember what’s on which. Edge enables a user to glimpse a preview thumbnail of what each tab is displaying.

• Next to your tabs, click the down-arrow button.
• The tabs will then expand to show their contents.
• If you’d prefer, you can use your mouse to hold your cursor over a tab to achieve the same effect.

Saving Tabs for Later
We’ve also all been in a position where we need space to work on a new task, but we don’t want to sacrifice the tabs currently in use. After all, once you get rid of them, you’ll immediately need them again, right? Edge considers that as well.

• Click the button to the left of your current tabs.
• This saves them as a collection, making it easier to open them all again when you need to, instead of opening them all from your history, one-by-one.

So, now that you know about these changes, are you going to give Edge a try? Why or why not? What is your most-used browser currently? Let us know in the comments section!