14 DAY TRIAL // Internet Explorer is still there in Windows 10, but all eyes are on Microsoft Edge, the new application that's supposed to compete against Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox in a much more aggressive way, helping Microsoft once again become a key player in the browser world.
Edge, however, is only available in Windows 10, so unless you installed Windows 10, you had no option to try it out. Until today.
Redmond has just announced the release of Windows 10 virtual machines, which are specifically designed to help you test your website in Microsoft Edge without the need for installing anything else than a virtual machine platform.
“With this release, we have automated the process we use to create the virtual machines, so future updates will be available more quickly as the platform is updated,” Microsoft explained.
“By popular demand, we’ll also be supporting new formats for VMs, starting with Vagrant boxes (with VirtualBox) and QEMU. You can expect to see these starting in the coming weeks. We are also continuing to work on making Microsoft Edge available via Azure RemoteApp and will provide further updates as we make progress.”
No Edge for Windows 7 users
Microsoft has no plans to bring Edge browser on any other platform beside Windows 10, as the company previously said that it first wants to get the app right on this particular operating system and only then think about releasing it to more users, such as those running Windows 7.
But it's pretty clear that the big bet here is to bring more users on Windows 10 and Microsoft Edge is one of the reasons users might actually install this new operating system.
Edge is for the moment a Windows 10-exclusive and it's hard to believe that Microsoft will ever bring its browser on an older version of Windows when the focus is all on Windows 10. Not to mention other mobile platforms such as Android and iOS.