Microsoft Edge 90 with a new download look, PDF optimizations and other innovations


Microsoft Edge 90 is available now and brings a whole range of innovations with it. The PDF capabilities of Microosft Edge have been expanded again, there is a new user interface for the download area and many other improvements, which we will take a look at in this post.

"Mini menu" for PDF files

The "mini menu" appears as soon as a text passage is marked in a PDF file and offers to copy the selected text, highlight it or leave a comment:

It is a compressed form of the regular context menu that appears when you right-click. If you click on “More Actions”, the context menu opens completely.

However, because you could feel disturbed by this suddenly appearing menu, it is optional. In the Edge settings under "Appearance" you can specify whether the mini menu should be used or not.

New look for downloads

Active downloads are no longer displayed at the bottom of the status bar but in the toolbar. An animated circle signals progress. If you click on the icon, further options are offered, such as searching in the download history or opening the download folder. The icon for the download management can now also be permanently displayed in the toolbar via the settings.

Plastic reader for Wikipedia

The plastic reading mode is an accessibility function in Microsoft Edge, but it is also ideal for people without impaired vision because it enables concentrated reading on text-heavy pages. This mode, called "Immersive Reader", has been optimized by Microsoft specifically for popular websites. With version 90 the optimization of Wikipedia is activated for the plastic reader.

As on all other pages, the vivid reader on Wikipedia hides all navigation elements on one page and puts the article in a one-column format. On Wikipedia, it also supports the tables of contents within articles in order to be able to quickly jump to the desired position, as you can see in the screenshot below.


The rollout of this optimization is still in progress, in some Wikipedia articles the mode is already available, in others it is not.

You can tell whether this mode can be used on a website by the book / loudspeaker icon in the address bar.

Other improvements in version 90 of Microsoft Edge:

  • If you use the vertical tab bar, links from websites can simply be dragged and dropped into the side tab bar to open them in a new tab.
  • You can now search in the favorites and in the browser history by starting directly with the input after opening the menu, as has been known from the Windows Start menu for many years.
  • Collections can be sorted according to the “last added” criterion.
  • Collections can be used within an "InPrivate" browser session.
  • When opening protected PDF files, existing restrictions are better visualized
  • With the key / you can start a search for suitable autofill data in the input fields.

With Reservation: Kids Fashion

Edge 90 also brings the so-called "Kids Mode", for which Microsoft is beating the drum, they have published an extremely detailed blog post on this. This child-friendly mode seems to be only available in the US version for the time being, but I have not found any reliable information about it.

Last but not least: Password Monitor

For some users of Microsoft Edge already well-known because it has been included in the stable version since January. However, the function was not yet released for all users, which has changed with version 90, which is why we repeat the description of the function at this point:

Password monitor warns of leaked passwords

The password monitor can be switched on in the profile settings (edge: // settings / passwords). When active, Edge compares the stored passwords with relevant databases in which stolen credentials are traded. If they match, the user is warned.


Of course, Edge does not transmit any passwords in a readable format to the Microsoft server; the comparison is made on the basis of hash values. Either way, the function is optional, so each user can decide for himself whether he wants to use this service or not.

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