In Windows 10, Microsoft included a new web browser, Edge. When edge first shipped, the goal was to replace the old Internet Explorer which had been in Windows for as long as I can remember.
To ease the transition to a new browser, Microsoft selected logo that still had an element of that legacy ‘e’ from IE. Now that’s all about to change with a new, updated logo that ditches any reference to the past, instead, replacing with a an icon that looks like a wave, aka surf the web.
Many have commented that it looks heavily influenced by the Firefox logo and that is probably true, however, like in web design, icon design evolves as an industry and the gradient colours of the new Edge logo reflect that 2019 look.
Since launching in Windows 10, Edge has come a long way and in preview builds, Edge now leverages Chromium as the rendering engine. This means sites work more reliably and building their own engine when a really great one exists in the open-source community was a waste of resources for Microsoft.
Edge is also set to get an IE mode. For Enterprises who leverage the Enterprise Site group policy to open legacy sites in IE, their users will then be able to have a single user experience, in the same browser window that’ll have it automatically switch and give users the best experience possible.
The Edge team took a fairly novel approach to the logo reveal. There wasn’t the typical 5,000 word blog post, rather a secret surfing game in the latest Edge Canary build, available at edge://surf/ and when you completed the game, the new logo was revealed.
Personally I really like the new logo and enjoy the break from the past, we really do have to let go of that eventually. There will certainly be those that get confused about how to open ‘the internet’ now, but with the slightest of retraining, we can all get past that.
