An Introduction: Windows10 & Microsoft EDGE

An Introduction: Windows10 & Microsoft EDGE

Microsoft Edge, a new web browser, is introduced by Microsoft on its Windows-10 OS as a replacement to Internet Explorer. Edge's interface has been rewritten with the old interface of Internet Explorer with all of its clutters. Microsoft claims Edge is designed to be a lightweight web browser with a layout engine built around web standards. Microsoft continues its effort in adding more features to its new browser and expecting Edge will be more competitive with Chrome and Firefox.

Edge includes a software integration Cortana, an intelligent personal assistant, which only be worked after enabling system wide. To do system wide, click Cortana search bar from Windows Task-bar then provide your name to setting up Cortana. You may also check, if this feature is enabled, by click (or tap) More actions button in Edge, then Select > View advanced settings and ensure Have Cortana assist me in Microsoft Edge option is enabled.
  

Cortana's features include being able to set reminders, recognize natural voice without the user having to input a predefined series of commands, and answer questions using information from Bing (like current weather or traffic conditions, sports scores, and biographies). To use Cortana, just type a question into the location bar at the top of the Edge window or on the New tab page. 

For example, you could type “weather in [city]”, “how old is [famous person]” or “when is [holiday] [year]”. Cortana offers quick answers to your questions. 

An integrated sharing option is included on Edge browser, with a Share button on its toolbar. Tap Share button, which opens the system Share panel. You can extend the list here and share to more services by installing the appropriate Apps from the Windows Store.  

For example, if you want to share on Facebook, install the Facebook App. If you want to share on Twitter, install the Twitter App. This provides you with an easy way of sharing web pages without any browser extensions, just like you would do on Android or Apple’s iOS.

You can also tap the title of the page in the Share panel and choose to share a screenshot of the current web page rather than a link to it.

  

Edge includes a reading view functionality that strips the clutter from articles you find on the web and makes them more easily readable. To activate this function, just find an article on the web and click or tap the reading view icon, which looks like a open book, in the address bar. 

Edge includes a reading list feature, too, which allows to save the articles you want to read later, without cluttering your favorites list. To do, just click or tap the star icon on the address bar then select Reading list heading then add the page to your reading list.

To Access your reading list, just click or tap Hub button and select Reading List category. There you will see the pages you saved to read later, that stored separately from your normal favorite web pages.

Edge includes web page annotation, a part of tools, to marking-up a web page to drawing on, highlighting, erasing, add notes and copy individual parts of a web page. Tap Make a Web Note button, the one between Hub and Share buttons on the toolbar, to start marking-up a web page.   

The Save button allows you to save the note to Microsoft OneNote, your favorites or your reading list. You can also use Share button to share your marked up note. 

Edge still has many more features that you'd expect to find in modern browsers. They are easy to find and much of the clutter from Internet Explorer.

• Private Browsing: Click More actions from the toolbar and select New InPrivate window to open a private-browsing mode window. In this mode, your browser history data won’t be saved.
• Pin to Start: Edge allows you to open the menu and select Pin to Start to pin the current web page to the Start menu or Start screen as a tile, allowing you to open it quickly. Click or tap the tile will open the web page in Edge, not its own browser window.

• Open with Internet Explorer: If you do need to open a web page with Internet Explorer, you can just tap More actions button and select Open with Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer is also hidden in the All Apps menu under the “Windows Accessories” folder. For example, you may need to do this if you need to use a legacy web app that requires a browser plug-in like Java or Silverlight.
• Themes: Like many other modern browsers, Edge include light and dark themes and its default theme is light. To change it, open More actions and select Settings then Choose a theme as Dark.

• Disable Flash: Edge includes an integrated Flash Player, just as Google Chrome does. This is the only browser plug-in that works in Microsoft Edge. For security reasons, you can disable it by opening More actions > Settings > Advanced settings (View advanced settings), then slide Use Adobe Flash Player to Off.
• Search Engine: Edge uses Bing as it's default search engine. But it can be changed to any other search engine, if you want, as Edge supports OpenSearch technology. To change Edge's default search engine: Enter the search engine’s website then browse to it. Now go More actions > Settings and then scroll down to select View advanced settings. In the list under Search in the address bar with, choose Add new. Select the website and then select Add as default.

Edge's interface can also be customized in a variety of other ways through its Setting menu. For example, you can enable a Home button to quickly take you back to your preferred home page. You could activate the “Show the favorites bar” setting to get an always-present toolbar for easier access to your favorite web pages.  

You can also configure which web pages Edge opens when you launch it, and what exactly appears when you open a New tab page. For example, you can make the New tab page largely blank without the “suggested content.”

How To Unsubscribe The Irritating e-Mails Of Newsletters - The Correct Way

How To Unsubscribe The Irritating e-Mails Of Newsletters - The Correct Way

Are you receiving lot of news-letters and various promotional e-mails? These e-mails are not technically spam; but they are from legitimate organizations and every legitimate company offers a consistent way to unsubscribe of their newsletters. The next time, you want to stop receiving e-mails from a legitimate organization, do not just click the 'Spam' or 'Trash', instead 'Unsubscribe' from those e-mails to keep your in-box clean. 

Every legitimate e-mail will have a visible unsubscribe mechanism, and this is generally a link at the bottom of the e-mail. Just scroll down to the bottom and look for the 'Unsubscribe' link. The link often in fairly small text; so, you couldn't notice it; but it should always be there! 

To speed things up, you can press Ctrl+F to bring up the search feature in your browser then type 'unsubscribe' to search for it. Click the link to unsubscribe for future communications from that website or business. It's really a simple way and there's almost always an Unsubscribe link! 

The transactional e-mails, such as receipts of bank's online transaction or a receipt for a product you purchased online, doesn't has an unsubscribe link.          

If you're in US, there's an act CAN-SPAM was signed into law in 2003 by President George W. Bush. According to this law, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforces compliance with some basic principles for commercial e-mails. Here are a few things the law requires:

• All emails must contain a visible unsubscribe mechanism — this is most often a link, but can be an email address you have to send a request to.
• The unsubscribe link can take you to a page where you can choose the types of emails you want to receive, but they can’t require you to visit more than one page to unsubscribe.
• The unsubscribe process can’t charge a fee or ask for any personal information beyond your email address when you opt out.
• Your request to opt out must be honored within 10 business days.
• The email must contain a legitimate physical mailing address associated with the sender.
• The “From” field must be accurate, and the “Subject” must be relevant and not deceptive.

The FTC website has more info about this. While this law is in US and other countries have the similar laws, too. 

For example, Canada’s CASL, anti-spam law also mandates an unsubscribe link in each commercial email. Europe has the similar EU DataProtectionDirective. 

This is not one of those laws, which is just only on the books and never used. The FTC has enforced the law in 2006, where the Kodak Imaging Network was fined $32,000 for failing to include an unsubscribe mechanism and their physical address in an e-mail campaign they sent out. 

So, if a legitimate business,  send e-mails and fails to include a way for you to opt out of e-mails, you may actually report them to FTC. This is why you'll usually find such unsubscribe links!  

So, the CAN-SPAM Act helping to clean-up commercial emails sent by legitimate companies. But the real spammers are standing outside to reach of these laws and you may, even, report a serious scammer to FTC for not including the required unsubscribe mechanism; but they're probably sending e-mails from outside of US or other countries with similar laws and this would be hard to find these people - because the spam e-mails are probably coming through a Botnet of compromised computers instead of a legitimate e-mail server.  

Fortunately, modern email services such as G-mail and Outlook.com have made great strides against these types of nasty spam, and they wouldn’t reach your in-box very often. If it does, just click the Spam button. But the Spam button should just be used for real spam and unsubscribe the legitimate commercial emails that you received with their included Unsubscribe links. 

And note: just marking an e-mail as spam won’t actually unsubscribe you from the mailing list.