Microsoft’s Edge Chromium Gets an Internet Explorer Mode and Privacy Controls

At a conference in Seattle, Microsoft announced loads of new features coming with its new browser update, called Microsoft Edge Chromium. The new features coming with Edge Chromium focus both on business consumers and also casual users at home.

IE Mode for Business

The new IE (internet explorer) mode for Edge is designed exclusively for businesses and enterprise administrators stuck with age-old business apps and websites. IE mode allows you to load old websites directly within Edge Chromium, using the legacy internet explorer rendering engine. Previously, Edge would open a different browser window for websites that required the legacy IE engine, but now you can have all of that in one place with Edge Chromium.

You can also customize newly opened tabs to add a custom company logo and the option to load some sites into the top tabs, in addition to integration with Microsoft Search and Office 365.

Collections

The new Collection feature allows you to grab anything off the internet, whether it’s images, text, GIFs or videos and lets you put them all together in a collection, like your personal notes. You can drag and drop anything you want into your collections which of course you can later edit. It also includes a reference link at the bottom of the collection to take you back to the website you took it from.

You can then share these collections with your friends through email or export it into Word or Excel. This is especially useful if you’re collecting info to make a purchase or to simply prepare a presentation or speech.

Privacy Controls

As promised by Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore “We’re going to give you, the user, control over your privacy and try to explain in a way that’s clear.”

Delivering on that promise, Microsoft is also bringing a new privacy page which lets you choose between three privacy modes; unrestricted, balanced and strict. Based on the setting you choose, the browser will restrict the ability of third-party cookies or websites to track your activity on the internet and will also block ads. It’ll work just like AdBlock and Ghostery extensions on other browsers.

Edge Chromium is currently available in early test builds for developers. Microsoft did not say much about when the new features are rolling out, saying only that they “will begin to roll out over time as we get closer to the broader launch of the next version of Microsoft Edge.”