new-year,-new-browser-?-the-new-microsoft-edge-is-out-of-preview

Microsoft Edge logo on a body of water

A little over a year ago, we announced our intention to rebuild Microsoft Edge on the Chromium open source project with the goals of delivering better compatibility for everyone, less fragmentation for web developers, and a partnership with the Chromium community to improve the Chromium engine itself. At Ignite, we unveiled our new vision for the web and search, our colorful new icon, and how Microsoft Edge Bing are the browser and search engine for business — and we are thrilled by the growing excitement we’ve heard from all of you who’ve tried it out and sent feedback!

From this incredible momentum, today I’m pleased to announce the new Microsoft Edge is now available to download on all supported versions of Windows and macOS in more than 90 languages. Microsoft Edge is also available on iOS and Android, providing a true cross-platform experience. The new Microsoft Edge provides world class performance with more privacy, more productivity and more value while you browse. Our new browser also comes with our Privacy Promise and we can’t wait for you to try new features like tracking prevention, which is on by default, and provides three levels of control while you browse.

Another innovative new feature in Microsoft Edge allows you to customize your online experience. Choose a new tab page layout or design, and select the types of news you want.

Microsoft Edge user interface

The last several months have been nothing short of inspiring for all of us working to deliver great new capabilities for Microsoft Edge including AAD support, Internet Explorer mode, 4K streaming, Dolby audio, inking in PDF, Microsoft Search in Bing integration, support for Chrome-based extensions, and more.

If you’re a business or education IT administrator looking to deploy widely in your organization or school, we have you covered as well – you can download offline packages and policies and learn more on the new commercial site.

Internet Explorer legacy mode animation

People have downloaded the preview channels of the new Microsoft Edge millions of times to their devices, and we’ve seen many organizations begin to pilot these channels for their users. Enterprises and schools who have mission critical legacy applications and websites – but also want modern web and security – have turned to our new Internet Explorer mode as a “best of both worlds” solution. And for Microsoft 365 customers, using Microsoft Search to find files, people, office floor plans and more on your organization’s intranet is as easy as typing in the Microsoft Edge address bar. Our early customers are calling it “a win.”

Moving to the new Microsoft Edge – what to expect

Now that we’ve reached this milestone, you might be wondering what to expect on your PC. To get the new Microsoft Edge you have two choices: you can either manually download it today, or if you are a general consumer user, you can wait for it to be automatically released to your device via Windows Update. When you do make the switch, your favorites, passwords, form fill information and basic settings will carry over to the new Microsoft Edge without you having to do anything. You can read more about our rollout plans here.

If you’re an IT administrator, you will need to download an offline deployment package to pilot within your corporate environment—the new Microsoft Edge will not automatically deploy for commercial customers. Additionally, none of the Microsoft Edge preview channels will update to the new Microsoft Edge, as they can be used side-by-side for testing and validation.

We also know that deploying a new browser isn’t just “flipping a switch,” so we want to make the process as easy as possible. In addition to simplifying deployment with tools like Intune and Configuration Manager, we are committed to helping your organization transition to the new Microsoft Edge. At Ignite we announced FastTrack and App Assure support for Microsoft Edge. FastTrack will help you deploy Microsoft Edge to your organization at no extra charge if you are a customer with an eligible subscription to Microsoft 365, Azure, or Dynamics 365. And if your sites are compatible on Internet Explorer 8 and above, Google Chrome, or legacy Microsoft Edge, then they’ll work on the new Microsoft Edge. If not, contact App Assure and we’ll help you fix it.

What’s next

Of course, the innovation, testing, and new features don’t stop coming today, and this initial release is only just the beginning. If you want a sneak peek of what’s coming, we encourage you to keep using our preview channels – Beta, Dev and Canary – which will remain available for download on the Microsoft Edge Insider site. Not only will you get an insider’s look at our features pipeline for Microsoft Edge, but you’ll continue to have the opportunity to help improve Microsoft Edge with your valuable feedback. Your input helps make both the new Microsoft Edge, and the web, better for everyone.

Thank you!

A huge thank you to our community of Microsoft Edge Insiders as well as the engineers within the Chromium community who have worked with us to develop the new Microsoft Edge. We remain committed to actively participating in and contributing to the Chromium open source project. To date we’ve made more than 1900 contributions across areas like accessibility, modern input including touch, speech, digital inking, and many more.

Keep telling us what’s working well, what needs to change and what you’d like to see in the new Microsoft Edge.

Our heartfelt thanks – we couldn’t have made it here without you!

JoeB

rip-windows-7:-microsoft-ends-support-today

Pack up your things, Windows 7 users. It’s time to move on, as Microsoft today ends support of the venerable OS. So to the millions of people still running the OS: now’s really, truly the time to upgrade.

According to Microsoft’s end-of-support article for the OS, your Windows 7 computer “will still function but Microsoft will no longer provide …. Technical support for any issues…. Software updates… [or] Security updates or fixes.” In fact, it’s almost laughably passive-aggressive in its nudge to get users to buy a new PC that can run Windows 10:

While you could continue to use your PC running Windows 7, without continued software and security updates, it will be at greater risk for viruses and malware. Going forward, the best way for you to stay secure is on Windows 10. And the best way to experience Windows 10 is on a new PC.

It’s been over ten years since Microsoft released Windows 7, and I have fond memories of installing it for the first time as a teenage stripling and enjoying how much less finicky it was than Vista. And it seems I wasn’t the only one: data from Netmarketshare (via The Verge) shows the OS is still running on 26 percent of modern PCs.

They can’t exactly say they didn’t see this coming. Microsoft announced almost a year ago that today would be the final day of Windows 7 support. And it’s not a good idea to remain on an unsupported OS, if only because you won’t get any more security upgrades.

There is some hope for the many businesses that still run on Windows 7 PCs. Microsoft offers Extended Security Updates (ESU), for a price, which will support Windows 7 for the next three years, though the word is that this will get more and more expensive for them as time goes on. The ESUs won’t be available for individual users. So basically, upgrade or get left behind, is the message Microsoft is sending.

If you’re one of the people finally, begrudgingly making the transition to Windows 10, Microsoft is also quick to add that its “the most secure Windows ever built,” and that it’s “the perfect operating system for personal and household use.”

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microsoft-is-winning-the-?cloud-war?-against-amazon

Microsoft Holds Its Annual Shareholders Meeting

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Stephen Brashear/Getty Images

Topline: Microsoft is now the most popular cloud services supplier and is steadily gaining market share against major competitors like Amazon, according to a new survey from Goldman Sachs about the current state of a trend that is reshaping the technology industry. 

  • Goldman Sachs’ latest biannual IT Spending Survey of chief information officers at large companies, first reported on by CNBC, showed that while Amazon still leads cloud services in terms of overall revenue and spending, Microsoft is the most popular supplier—and is steadily gaining market share.
  • The survey asked technology executives about their vendor choices for public cloud deployments, specifically in two areas: IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service) and PaaS (platform-as-a-service). By both metrics, Microsoft “demonstrated continued momentum,” beating out Amazon.
  • A larger number of respondents said they currently use Microsoft’s Azure software over that of Amazon Web Services (AWS)—and that lead has been increasing since Goldman’s December 2017 survey.
  • The report also indicates that in three years, more executives expect their companies to be using Azure than any other cloud service—even AWS.
  • While Google and its cloud initiative (GCP) remain a solid third place contender in the cloud wars, Goldman’s analysts found that it saw a slight decline in traction, as fewer respondents indicated that they use the service or will do so in three years.
  • Despite this setback for Google, the analysts point to “more upside” for its cloud business than originally forecast, as Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s efforts to catch up to Amazon and Microsoft start to bear fruit.

Crucial statistics: The cloud computing wars are just getting started, with plenty of potential market share to still go around: Around 23% of IT workloads are now on public clouds, and that number will reach 43% in three years, according to the Goldman analysts. The booming cloud services market on the whole is likely to balloon to a valuation of up to $1 trillion.

AWS reported $9 billion in revenue last quarter. Microsoft didn’t report specific quarterly revenue for Azure, but one analyst estimated that it was about $4.33 billion, according to CNBC.

Key background: With cloud software proving to be a booming new trend in the tech space, that will lead to even more competition between big players, such as for the $10 billion Pentagon JEDI contract earlier this year, where Microsoft won out on the deal over Amazon. With Azure’s popularity and growing momentum in the cloud services space, Wedbush analysts Daniel Ives and Strecker Backe predict that Microsoft and its CEO Satya Nadella will “win the next stage of the cloud war” against Bezos and Amazon in 2020.

What to watch for: Don’t write Google off as a competitor yet, the Wedbush analysts say. Google Cloud Platform will potentially make a “major strategic acquisition” of another public cloud vendor in its bid to catch Microsoft and Amazon.

Tangent: As Microsoft’s cloud shift starts to pay off further, workplace messaging app Slack will find it increasingly difficult to compete with Microsoft’s Teams initiative and could lose market share, according to Ives and Backe’s forecast.

“>

Microsoft Holds Its Annual Shareholders Meeting

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Stephen Brashear/Getty Images

Topline: Microsoft is now the most popular cloud services supplier and is steadily gaining market share against major competitors like Amazon, according to a new survey from Goldman Sachs about the current state of a trend that is reshaping the technology industry. 

  • Goldman Sachs’ latest biannual IT Spending Survey of chief information officers at large companies, first reported on by CNBC, showed that while Amazon still leads cloud services in terms of overall revenue and spending, Microsoft is the most popular supplier—and is steadily gaining market share.
  • The survey asked technology executives about their vendor choices for public cloud deployments, specifically in two areas: IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service) and PaaS (platform-as-a-service). By both metrics, Microsoft “demonstrated continued momentum,” beating out Amazon.
  • A larger number of respondents said they currently use Microsoft’s Azure software over that of Amazon Web Services (AWS)—and that lead has been increasing since Goldman’s December 2017 survey.
  • The report also indicates that in three years, more executives expect their companies to be using Azure than any other cloud service—even AWS.
  • While Google and its cloud initiative (GCP) remain a solid third place contender in the cloud wars, Goldman’s analysts found that it saw a slight decline in traction, as fewer respondents indicated that they use the service or will do so in three years.
  • Despite this setback for Google, the analysts point to “more upside” for its cloud business than originally forecast, as Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s efforts to catch up to Amazon and Microsoft start to bear fruit.

Crucial statistics: The cloud computing wars are just getting started, with plenty of potential market share to still go around: Around 23% of IT workloads are now on public clouds, and that number will reach 43% in three years, according to the Goldman analysts. The booming cloud services market on the whole is likely to balloon to a valuation of up to $1 trillion.

AWS reported $9 billion in revenue last quarter. Microsoft didn’t report specific quarterly revenue for Azure, but one analyst estimated that it was about $4.33 billion, according to CNBC.

Key background: With cloud software proving to be a booming new trend in the tech space, that will lead to even more competition between big players, such as for the $10 billion Pentagon JEDI contract earlier this year, where Microsoft won out on the deal over Amazon. With Azure’s popularity and growing momentum in the cloud services space, Wedbush analysts Daniel Ives and Strecker Backe predict that Microsoft and its CEO Satya Nadella will “win the next stage of the cloud war” against Bezos and Amazon in 2020.

What to watch for: Don’t write Google off as a competitor yet, the Wedbush analysts say. Google Cloud Platform will potentially make a “major strategic acquisition” of another public cloud vendor in its bid to catch Microsoft and Amazon.

Tangent: As Microsoft’s cloud shift starts to pay off further, workplace messaging app Slack will find it increasingly difficult to compete with Microsoft’s Teams initiative and could lose market share, according to Ives and Backe’s forecast.

the-icon-kaleidoscope-–-microsoft-design

Redesigning over 100 icons with new colors, materials, and finishes

Jon Friedman

A translucent ribbon with a sample of icons in a grid flowing across it.

A translucent ribbon with a sample of icons in a grid flowing across it.

A sampling of the new Microsoft 365 icons.

Blank pages and redesigns have nothing on sequels.

Last year, we rolled out the new Office icons to show our customers that we’ve evolved our products to support the changing world of work. A world where, despite being more mobile than ever before, social connectedness and collaboration are paramount to success. A world with immense potential for creativity and growth thanks to new flows of information.

Across Microsoft, we’ve worked to help facilitate and enhance these kinds of interactions and experiences. Scaling an icon design effort from 10 products to over a hundred to reflect this new world of work was both daunting and thrilling.

Scaling a design across the Microsoft ecosystem requires an open and flexible system.

But design teams across the company came together as a collective to develop design guidelines that encourage individuality while creating a cohesive whole. From enterprise to small business to consumer, product teams ensured each icon authentically represented both the product truth and the larger Microsoft brand.

We shared knowledge, iterations, obstacles, and successes. We compared icons in different contexts and made changes for one another. Most importantly, we inspired each other. This was truly a One Microsoft effort, and we can’t wait to hear what you think.

From Windows utility icons to mixed reality icons in Microsoft Dynamics, all of our new icons were cut from the same cloth.

Widening the aperture of our design system

From tools like a calculator to a mixed-reality app that puts an expert anywhere in the world, the diversity of our customers’ needs continues to grow exponentially. We needed our modern icon system to continuously reflect changing tides.

With the newest wave of icon redesigns, we faced two major creative challenges. We needed to signal innovation and change while maintaining familiarity for customers. We also had to develop a flexible and open design system to span a range of contexts while still being true to Microsoft.

A designer’s desk covered with materials and sketches of icons.

A designer’s desk covered with materials and sketches of icons.

Rich gradients, soft curves, and fluid motion connect the Edge and Office logos to each other and the rest of the icons.

Our Fluent Design System was instrumental in helping us navigate both these challenges. Fluent emphasizes building off the familiar — designing for what our customers already understand, not asking them to develop new habits or learn something new. Fluent is also about creating space for a diverse yet connected system. To account for such a breadth of contexts and experiences, we expanded our initial library of icon colors, materials, and finishes.

People spend most of their working time using Microsoft Edge and Office to get things done, and the teams were excited to experiment with the new materials on these popular products. We know how important these experiences are to our customers, so the icons needed to fit in and stand out at the same time. Based on extensive testing and customer feedback, we introduced rich gradients, broadened our spectrum of colors, and implemented a dynamic motion with ribbon-like qualities.

Our customers are also beginning to use mixed reality to accomplish goals in a completely new way. Blending the physical and digital worlds in our icons helped us think beyond traditional manifestations of colors, finishes, and materials. We needed to consider the third dimension, so we chose new materials that reflected light and depth and felt more tactile.

Whether our customers use their phone, PC, or VR headset to get work done, we wanted to reach people in every environment. The newest design guidelines helped us unify icon construction across the company and within each product family.

Designing our future together

Our community has been on this journey with us from the beginning, and the path to this icon redesign was no different. We conducted countless rounds of research for every icon. From mild to wild, we explored a multitude of design directions and listened to customers around the world. We learned what didn’t resonate with people (flat design and muted colors) and what did (depth, gradations, vibrant colors, and motion), all of which drove our decisions.

A designer’s desk with materials and icons.

A designer’s desk with materials and icons.

Designing for 3D means starting in 3D.

As we continue to evolve our technology and roll out new icons that will reflect the future of Microsoft, our design system will also evolve to address new scenarios that we haven’t considered yet. Developing a system that encompasses the spectrum of literal to abstract while balancing product identity and the Microsoft brand is a huge challenge — but nothing worth accomplishing is ever easy.

There’s always work to be done, but we’re incredibly proud of what our teams accomplished and can’t wait to see how you respond. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!


microsoft-went-all-in-on-accessible-design.-this-is-what-happened

The Xbox Adaptive Controller is one of the most telling products in how design as we know it is changing. It’s a boxy controller with two giant buttons and over a dozen ports for external peripherals, to allow people with disabilities the option to play Xbox in any manner they can.

If the 2000s and 2010s were about bringing good design to everyone, the 2020s are shaping up to be about bringing good design for everyone else—the so-called fringe cases embraced in inclusive design who have been overlooked by a world that champions averages and other one-size-fits-all solutions.

[Photo: Logitech]

But the Xbox Adaptive Controller was just the first step into more inclusive video games and voting machines. And we’re seeing that proven in a new, companion product developed by the mouse and keyboard giant Logitech. Called the Adaptive Gaming Kit, it’s a collection of mix-and-matchable buttons that plug into the Xbox Adaptive Controller for additional customization.

Priced at just $99, it includes three big buttons that can be stepped on or hit with a head or an elbow, three smaller buttons for similar use cases, four microswitches that need nothing more than a finger tap to activate, and two pressure-sensitive triggers that can work as gas pedals, allowing variable, pressure-based input. These buttons stick firmly onto two pads with Velcro. Those pads can be placed on a table, tilted like a laptop stand, or wrapped around an arm or wheelchair. The idea is that the player can set up the controls however they want.

[Photo: Logitech]

“It’s not one product that will solve everything,” says Ujesh Desai, VP and general manager of Logitech. “If every user’s needs are unique, [we had to build] a kit with every button and switch they could need.”

The Adaptive Gaming Kit was a project that started long before Desai even realized the road his company was on. More than two years ago, Microsoft reached out to Logitech, requesting some joysticks to test a secretive, unannounced product. Microsoft and Logitech are frequent partners; Logitech sells all sorts of headsets and other components that plug into Xbox peripherals already. So Desai gave his consent for Curtis Brown, Logitech’s strategic partnership manager, to send whatever Microsoft wanted. Then he pretty much forgot about it.

After about a year, Microsoft invited Desai, Brown, and the team out to see the mystery product. Inside Microsoft’s accessibility lab, Desai was blown away by the inclusive vision of the Xbox Adaptive Controller. He also realized just how much free product Logitech had been sharing with Microsoft when he learned more about the project and saw it strewn around the lab.

“Unbeknownst to me, he must have given them hundreds of our joysticks . . . it was a lot,” Desai laughs. “That’s when it came out how much gear Curtis had given them. He looked at me sheepishly, and I gave him a big hug. . . . I said, ‘This is really important to Logitech—we need to learn more about this space.’”

That’s when Logitech created a dedicated team focused on building something to plug into the adaptive controller. Microsoft was generous in sharing what it had learned, and Logitech began collaborating with groups such as Special Effect, the gaming-with-disabilities charity in the U.K.

“We spent a week there with their occupational therapists. They showed us all the equipment and different buttons they use,” says Desai. “And they showed us no patient was the same. We got to meet a number of the people they work with, and hear from them about some of the pain points they had.”

[Photo: Logitech]

Logitech, which knows as much about controller ergonomics as any company on the planet, absorbed a lot of new information about designing around disabilities. That’s when they began to piece together this multipronged, customizable approach.

Desai’s team also recognized some clearer shortcomings with specialty buttons and switches on the market: They just weren’t built all that well. These components would often break in a few months, yet sometimes they cost over $100 for a single switch (and someone might need many switches). That meant an Xbox, the Adaptive Controller, and some extra buttons could top out over $1,000. Who can afford that?

“I arbitrarily picked a price point. I told the team, I want the whole thing for only $99,” says Desai. “They looked at me like, ‘OK . . .’ [But] having a clear goal, saying no, it’s not going to be more than $99, we challenge our team to do something that was high-quality design but still reach a [lot of people].”

Through the process, Logitech worked with gamers to figure out how these buttons should be Velcroed. They also learned that often, it wasn’t a gamer but a caretaker who would be setting up these controllers. That meant the controllers needed clear label systems that would allow a Luddite to piece together a very specific setup, take it down, and put it back together again. And of course, the product packaging itself needed to be accessible too—so Logitech followed all of the best practices learned by Microsoft, which had already spent a year developing an easy-open box for the Adaptive Controller.

For now, it appears that Logitech succeeded at all its tasks and then some. Note how colorful, and downright playful, the buttons look. I want to play with these myself! “The biggest thing we learned—a number of people with accessibility needs use this term a lot. They don’t want to feel othered. They understand they might need gaming gear different than someone else, but they don’t want to feel othered,” says Desai. So Logitech pulled colors and other symbology on the controllers right from the Xbox itself. “That’s why designing the buttons and switches, we wanted to make them feel like gaming equipment. That’s why the labels match the Xbox, because it’s a gaming product.”

[Photo: Logitech]

Desai admits that the $99 retail price for a collection of 12 buttons, while doable, means that Logitech’s margins on the Adaptive Gaming Kit are lower than most of its products. “But all the way from me to Bracken [Darrell], our CEO, we said, ‘This doesn’t matter, this is an area you need to do the right thing.’”

And in the few hours since Logitech launched the kit, Desai had already heard from gamers who actually imagine that the kit might help in all sorts of other parts of their lives. That response certainly makes sense: High-quality, cheap, customizable buttons could be beneficial to someone in a wheelchair during all sorts of times when they aren’t gaming, from turning on the lights to opening a door.

So what does this all mean for Logitech? Could the PC and gaming peripheral company become something more, something that might help with someone’s mobility or healthcare needs, too? “That’s something we’re going to have to think through,” says Desai. But he means it. Now that it’s started down the road of inclusive design, Logitech is earnestly trying to figure out what comes next.

microsoft-testing-gmail,-google-drive,-and-google-calendar-integration-with-outlook-web-client

It appears Microsoft has been busy working on a way to fully integrate Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Calendar with its Outlook webmail client. A Twitter user reported receiving an invite to test out the new features. Although there were some rough edges, he successfully linked his Google account and got access to Gmail, Drive, and Calendar data inside Outlook.

As popular as Gmail is, Microsoft’s Outlook email client also has a large following of happy users. Currently, Outlook offers a limited option for users to import or sync their Gmail account. The integration, however, is not complete in that the Gmail emails you delete from inside Outlook won’t actually delete them — they just get hidden. It appears that Microsoft plans to truly integrate not only Gmail but also Google Drive and Google Calendar into its Outlook.com web client.

You can now add your gmail account on https://t.co/qrV9WCmJyQ ! pic.twitter.com/KYvZe6wx7q

— Florian B (@flobo09) November 20, 2019

He reports that the integration is similar to how Outlook works on mobile devices with separate inboxes and side-by-side integration in the calendar. With Google Drive integration, you can attach documents and files from Drive to both Gmail and Outlook emails. This still looks like an early test as he wasn’t able to add more than one Gmail account, and switching between Outlook and Gmail accounts caused the entire page to refresh.

As of this writing, there haven’t been any public announcements from Microsoft about this new feature or when it is expected to roll out for more users. We’ll update this post when and if Microsoft makes this feature official.

new-microsoft-edge-logo

While we may still not know when the final version of Microsoft’s Chromium-based Edge browser is coming out, we got our first look at its logo this weekend. The redesigned icon was the reward for solving an elaborate Easter egg hunt inside the latest Canary versions of Edge. Apropos of its wave design, the puzzle’s final leg involved beating a hidden surfing minigame.

Other than still spelling out the letter e, this new logo ditches any element that could possibly make you think of Microsoft’s previous doomed browser, Internet Explorer. It’s really obvious when you lay out the company’s icons from the last two decades side by side, as the Verge’s Tom Warren did in the tweet below.

This time around there’s no sans serif font, no orbiting ring, hell Microsoft went so overboard trying to distance this iteration with minimalist styling that it barely even looks like an e. More like the lovechild of an e and a c, which I suppose makes sense in a way: Chromium. Edge.

There’s one aspect of this new logo that I can’t unsee though. I spent a good five minutes staring at the negative space in the wave trying to think what it reminded me of—a backward comma maybe? No, that’s not it…—when I realized: Sperm. That is sperm. A single little cartoon spermy boy trapped in the ocean.

Others apparently less perverted than me have compared it to that of another web browser, Mozilla’s FireFox. Some people determined to bring back cursed memes have also likened it to a Tide POD, which, I mean, I guess? It’s not square by any stretch of the imagination. Though it may be slightly less toxic to eat.

Whatever it may remind you of, it’s a desperately needed make for Microsoft’s nearly five-year-old browser. Last December we first started hearing rumors that Microsoft was switching out its in-house rendering engine, EdgeHTML, for the open-source Chromium, the powerhouse behind more successful competitors like Google’s Chrome. Though there’s still no word on an official release date, the new Edge’s beta has been running since August.

Clarification: 11/4/2019, 7:20 a.m. ET: A previous version of this article cited the tweet of a Twitter user who had copied the Verge’s Tom Warren. We’ve updated the article to cite Warren instead.

microsoft?s-new-font-for-devs-is-very-aesthetically-pleasing-(and-free)

Microsoft has crafted a new font specifically built with developers in mind — and its new command-line experience, Windows Terminal. It’s code (issa dorky pun, don’t get too upset about the spelling) Cascadia Code, and you can already try it out.

“It is the latest monospaced font shipped from Microsoft and provides a fresh experience for command line experiences and code editors,” wrote Microsoft program manager Kayla Cinnamon in a blog post. Cascadia Code was built especially for the new Windows Terminal application, but Cinnamon says it ought to pair just fine with other terminal apps and text editors, like Visual Studio an Visual Studio Code.

The new font inherited its name from the pre-release codename given to Windows Terminal, namely Cascadia. The Windows-maker later decided to add ‘Code‘ to its name to indicate it was intended for devs. It’s also entirely open source.

One cool thing is that Cascadia Code supports ligatures. “Programming ligatures are most useful when writing code, as they create new glyphs by combining characters,” Cinnamon adds. “This helps make code more readable and user-friendly for some people.”

Anyone itching to give Cascadia Code a test drive can grab it from its GitHub repository. For anyone else, the font will automatically make its way to the next iteration of Windows Terminal. And for those looking to implement it in Visual Studio, you’ll find instructions on how to do that here.

via Thurrot

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microsoft-introduces-xlookup-in-excel-–-and-it’s-a-big-deal-for-data-reporting

For those working in ad operations and PPC, the VLOOKUP function (and HLOOKUP – its horizontal counterpart) has been a tried-and-true staple of data manipulation in Excel. Now, after more than 34 years as a cornerstone lookup function, VLOOKUP is making way for a new successor.

Microsoft has announced the rollout of XLOOKUP – a powerful new function designed to address many of the known limitations of VLOOKUP. For advertisers and marketers, this means more efficient reporting with less time spent performing workaround functions.

How it works

XLOOKUP function is able to search sheets both vertically and horizontally, which wasn’t a possibility with VLOOKUP alone. XLOOKUP requires only three inputs in order to perform the most common exact lookup:

XLOOKUP(lookup_value,lookup_array,return_array)

  • lookup_value: What you are looking for
  • lookup_array: Where to find it
  • return_array: What to return
XLOOKUP takes aim at the following VLOOKUP limitations outlined by Microsoft:

Defaults to an “approximate” match: Most often users want an exact match, but this is not VLOOKUP’s default behavior. To perform an exact match, you need to set the 4th argument to FALSE. If you forget (which is easy to do), you’ll probably get the wrong answer.

Does not support column insertions/deletions: VLOOKUP’s 3rd argument is the column number you’d like returned. Because this is a number, if you insert or delete a column you need to increment or decrement the column number inside the VLOOKUP.

Cannot look to the left: VLOOKUP always searches the 1st column, then returns a column to the right. There is no way to return values from a column to the left, forcing users to rearrange their data.

Cannot search from the back: If you want to find the last occurrence, you need to reverse the order of your data.

Cannot search for next larger item: When performing an “approximate” match, only the next smaller item can be returned and only if correctly sorted.

References more cells than necessary: VLOOKUP 2nd argument, table_array, needs to stretch from the lookup column to the results column. As a result, it typically references more cells than it truly depends on. This could result in unnecessary calculations, reducing the performance of your spreadsheets.

Why we should care

For advertisers and marketers who rely on Excel for day-to-day reporting, the new XLOOKUP function will reduce the time it takes to match and analyze data from varying sources, such as from ad platforms, servers and CRMs.

XLOOKUP will be able to replace VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, and INDEX/MATCH by enabling the selection of two columns (instead of the whole range) and allowing columns to be inserted into the desired data range without needing to change the column numbers.



About The Author

how-to-try-microsoft?s-chromium-powered-edge-beta

Welcome to TNW Basics, a collection of tips, guides, and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff.

Towards the end of 2018, Microsoft surprised everyone by announcing it was shifting Edge from a custom engine to Google’s ubiquitous and open-source Chromium platform. By switching to Chromium, Microsoft could better support constantly evolving web standards, ensuring that you wouldn’t come across the occasional glitches that occurred with its proprietary engine. Now you can try it for yourself, even if you’re not a developer.

To be clear, Microsoft first allowed public access to the new Edge back in April, but these were Developer (weekly) and Canary (daily) builds that risked instability and glitches. Those were best left to the experts.

But earlier this week, Microsoft introduced an honest-to-goodness beta that promises a more stable experience; the company says the beta is “ready for everyday use.” To try the Edge Beta, or if you were an early adopter who wants to switch to a more stable update channel, simply head on over to Microsoft’s Edge Insider page. From there you’ll be able to try out the various browser channels and stay up to date on what’s new.

The overall feature set hasn’t changed too much since the Developer builds were introduced. You can read our original post for a recap, but for the most part it’s a mishmash of classic Edge and Chrome.

Upon launching the app, you’re asked to choose between three New Tab layouts: Focused, Inspirational, and Informative. Focused is just a blank page with a search bar and some commonly used sites. Inspirational adds a background image pulled from Bing, while Informative behaves the most like the old Edge, adding Microsoft‘s News Feed to the mix. You’re also able to sign in with multiple profiles that will sync across devices, as with Chrome.

One of the biggest advantages in the new Edge, however, is the ability to run most extensions from Google’s Chrome Store. That opens a vast number of custom features that weren’t available in the original version of Microsoft‘s browser. Of course, Microsoft has its own set of Edge-specific extensions too, but its store isn’t nearly as robust.

On the other hand, there are some features from the classic Edge that I miss, such as the ‘Reading List’ for saving articles and the ability to annotate pages. Alternatives are available in the Chrome Web Store, but I miss having those features built-in.

Though some will lament how pervasive Chromium is, for most users, it means Windows gets a better built-in browser. And if you want to try it on the Mac, well, you can do that too.


on Microsoft

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