Microsoft Windows 10 has arrived and with it comes Microsoft Edge, Redmond's new web browser. Edge isn't just a browser though, it's a kind of atonement. Microsoft it seems, wants to apologize for not just Windows 8, but Internet Explorer as well. And, surprisingly, Edge turns out to be a great apology.

Perhaps the most surprising and welcome thing about Windows 10 is the absence of that old IE icon in the task bar. The web no longer orbits the "E" in your task bar, instead there's a new icon -- still an "E", but less at the center of the universe.

To be sure, IE is still lurking a few levels down in some start menu sub-section should you need it, but the focus -- and the thing everyone purchasing a new machine with Windows 10 on it will click on -- is Microsoft Edge.

Microsoft Edge is the future of the web on Windows, not just because Microsoft wants it to be, but because it's actually a pretty great web browser. In using test builds of Windows 10 for many months and now the final version I've yet to feel the need to install another browser.

There will no doubt be a lot of criticism leveled at Edge for not supporting cutting edge web standards and new HTML5 features quite as well as other browsers. Those critiques are valid. Edge could have better support for standards. 

Web developers won't like its relatively low score on the HTML5 compatibility tests -- it supports 402 of 555 features, compared to Firefox which manages 447 -- but it's leaps and bounds better than IE 11. Edge is also brand new and, frankly, launches with better support for more web standards than Google Chrome did when it first arrived.

Edge might not be the darling of the web development set, but it's something users haven't seen a while -- simple, reliable and fast.

It also boasts a suite of features designed to help cut through the crufty web that those Google Chrome wielding web designers have created. There's a built in Reading View that gets rid of all the useless sidebars and other clutter so you can actually read the article you wanted to see. Then there's Cortana, which is pretty well integrated into Windows 10, but really comes into its own in Edge. 

Highlight terms and Cortana will get more information about them for you, search for something like weather and Cortana will get you results without loading a page. Microsoft's documentation says Cortana can provide answers for some 20 different types of questions without loading a search page. In everyday use I've only run across a couple, but they're handy when they're there.

Perhaps the most useful thing Cortana can do is dredge through the dreck that is the average restaurant website and pull out the only reason anyone ever went to that site in the first place -- hours and contact info (it'll also show you reviews if there are any). Given the current state of most restaurant websites it's worth turning on the (potentially) privacy invading Cortana for that feature alone.

While I did say I haven't felt the need to download another browser, that's not entirely true. I have felt the need in the sense that I like to extend my browsing experience beyond what any browser provides out the box. Edge is on par with Firefox out of the box -- in terms of user features, if not web standards support -- but Firefox can of course be customized in a thousand different ways with extensions, which Edge does not yet support.

I also haven't been able to locate a download manager and until Windows 10 for phones gets here there's no way to sync anything. In other words, it's a work in progress.

That said, Edge is already great at what really matters: browsing the web. Pages load fast, scrolling is smooth and you won't see any quirky page rendering the way you sometimes did in IE. Edge does some very aggressive pre-fetching which means sites often load instantaneously when you click the top search result link in Bing for example. Pre-fetching has its downsides and hopefully won't be the case on data-limited phones, but it goes a long way to making Edge feel clean and speedy, something that's become increasingly rare in web browsers.

That speed, coupled with Reading View, which strips out clutter, means that Edge can offer up a simpler, faster, easier to read web.

That's not to say that Edge doesn't occasionally show some, ahem, rough edges. It will, for example, occasionally offer to open a page in IE if it can't load a particular site. Expect this to be the norm if you try to use Edge with legacy ActiveX-heavy intranet sites designed exclusively for IE.

The only time I encountered this problem was with Google Docs, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, doesn't work well in Edge. It's also surprisingly hard to change the default search engine from Bing to Google, which together with the Google Docs failure feels almost deliberate.

Like most users I've long considered any Microsoft browser a one-use browser: I opened it up and downloaded Firefox and Chrome and closed it, never to return. I honestly expected Edge to be the same, but it managed to win me over. I do have Firefox installed and set as my default browser in Windows 10 -- primarily for the extensions I rely on -- but when I just want to check the news or read a long form article I find myself reaching for Edge.

Edge could be improved -- it really needs extensions and a download manager at the very least -- and hopefully it will. I'm optimistic that Microsoft's vision of Windows 10 as the last version of Windows, that is, no more major updates, just a long road of gradual improvements, will apply to Edge as well. Given time and updates, Edge can continue to develop and add in the missing standards support as well as extensions and other missing features. In the mean time Edge is fast, lightweight and presents a cleaner, simpler web than I've seen in a long time.

Screenshots:

edge-first-run.png - Microsoft Edge on Windows 10.
edge-reg.png - El Reg in Edge.
edge-cortana-weather.png - Edge with Cortana weather results.
edge-html5-score.png - Edge's HTML5 score (Firefox gets 447, Chrome 530)
edge-other-browsers-dialog.png - Windows 10's browser option dialog