14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has released a new version of the Edge browser in the Dev channel, and this time the update comes with new features and under-the-hood improvements on all platforms.
First and foremost, this new version comes with the ability to translate the select text on a page, so theoretically, you no longer have to translate the entire page, but only the text that you need. This certainly comes in handy for everyone using the translation process, and it makes the whole thing more straightforward, as users no longer need to turn to the translation process manually.
At the same time, this update also introduces an option to never translate a particular site, and this behavior will work similarly to the one in Google Chrome.
There’s also a new management policy that is part of this release.
“Added a management policy to Configure Speech Recognition. Note that updates to documentation and administrative templates are still needed,” Microsoft says.
There are obviously several fixes for crashes that occurred in the browser, including when Password Monitor shows an alert, when opening the Downloads management page, or when dragging items into a Collection.
What’s more, Microsoft has resolved a bug that sometimes caused a Blue Screen of Death when opening the browser, so starting with this update, everything should work correctly.
The known issues list comes with pretty much the same entries as before, and one of the most notable is a black screen glitch all of a sudden.
“After an initial fix for it recently, some users are still experiencing Edge windows becoming all black. Opening the Browser Task Manager (keyboard shortcut is shift + esc) and killing the GPU process usually fixes it. Note that this only appears to affect users with certain hardware and is most easily triggered by resizing an Edge window. For users with discrete GPUs, updating graphics drivers may help,” Microsoft says.
The duplicated favorites problem is yet to get a fix, so this new update also comes with the same problem.
“Some users are seeing favorites get duplicated after we made some previous fixes in that area. The most common way this is triggered is by installing the Stable channel of Edge and then signing into it with an account that has already signed into Edge before. Fixing this should be easier now that the deduplicator tool is available. However, we’ve also seen duplication happen when running the deduplicator on multiple machines before either machine has a chance to fully sync its changes, so while we wait for some of the fixes we’ve made to come to Stable, make sure to leave plenty of time in between runs of the deduplicator,” the company explains. Today’s Microsoft Edge Dev update is available on all supported platforms.
The migration to Chromium allowed Microsoft to turn Edge into a cross-platform offering, so the application is now available not only on Windows 10, but also on Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and macOS. Microsoft has already announced a Linux version of the browser, and a preview build is expected to be announced as soon as this month, with a stable release to happen at some point soon.
Microsoft Edge has already become the second most-used desktop browser after Google Chrome, as it managed to overtake Mozilla Firefox on Windows and Mac. Of course, the adoption of Windows 10 helped Microsoft Edge a lot, as Microsoft offers the browser as the new default on the operating system, replacing the legacy version automatically with an update shipped via Windows Update.