Whether you like Microsoft Edge or not, whether you use it or not… You’ll definitely agree with me on one thing: it’s great browser. In the end, Microsoft succeeded with the product, although the forms continue to fail. But as for the browser itself, few issues can be listed beyond the well-known personal privacy hole that its use involves. As with Chrome, because we are.

But if we compare Microsoft Edge with Internet Explorer, it’s like comparing night and day. The brightest day with the most unpleasant night. And basically everything rests on two pillars: excellent performance at the level of the best together with a highly valued capacity for practical innovation in the times that run. For the record, all the good stuff started happening in the old Edge, but it disappeared after the jump to Chromium base in crescendo.

Being based on Chromium somewhat took away from the originality of the project, but in return it allowed Microsoft to focus on the truly differentiating element of the user experience: browser functionality. It’s something we’ve covered many times on these pages. And Microsoft Edge has always been one of the references in this sense: everything – with the exception of Firefox, Safari and some other weird stuff, yes – is Chromium, but the battle of the browsers is now played out with interface and features.

Microsoft Edge Phoenix

If we talk about the most active browsers in terms of practical innovation, today Microsoft Edge is surpassed only by Vivaldi…. But the Redmonds aren’t content with what they have. On the contrary, and if Edge is already one of the browsers most likely to integrate new features, “Phoenix” goes one step further. A few, and that is that Phoenix’s purpose is to innovate in the segment itself.

Phoenix is ​​the code name for the Microsoft Edge kitchen. A kitchen in which designers and developers mix ingredients for different purposes: creating a web browser in the shape and form of Windows 11, while at the same time modernizing the flow of traditional use of this type of applications, which in recent years hardly represent disruptive innovations (that’s why this war focused on functions and not on performance).

Remember that split screen feature we talked about recently that the folks behind Microsoft Edge are working on? Well, it’s from Phoenix, and it’s just the tip of the iceberg, as reported by Windows Central, as you can see in the image we attached above – the full evolution of the aforementioned split screen – and in action in the tweet you can see below. Cool or not?

‘Phoenix’ was an ‘imaginary’ version of Edge, appeared as an internal concept video by the MS User Research team, with a new user interface/features, it is a project to gather internal feedback for Edge development directions/priorities, ‘Split-Screen’ was the most popular Phoenix features🤓 pic.twitter.com/DRrLwN8x01

—WingCat (@_h0x0d_) January 26, 2023