"Legacy Edge"

This article on ZDNet, written by an old friend of mine, Mary Branscombe, is the first time I’ve seen a reference to the original Microsoft Edge browser that is somewhat positive. I’m both laughing and cringing at the term “Legacy Edge” because its legacy is very much the curate’s egg: good in parts.

That’s not entirely Microsoft’s fault, mind you, and to give them credit they’ve worked hard to be good citizens of the Web in recent times. (In stark contrast to their behaviour back in the Internet Explorer days.)

In many ways, that role has now been taken up, ironically, by Google with their Chrome browser. I’d hope that Microsoft can exert some influence over the Chromium project and curb some of Google’s self-serving impulses, which sounds a really odd thing to say about Microsoft given their history.

As the article makes clear, while you can get the old Edge browser back, you’re going to be repeatedly reminded that you’re going against the flow. You should only really be doing this as a stop-gap measure, and working to fix your site or service to work with all browsers. That such a situation is even possible today is probably the worst indictment against the original Microsoft Edge, and something that many had hoped consigned to history along with the remains of Internet Explorer.