Browsers are a topic unto themselves. When it comes to the actual software for displaying websites, there’s really not much choice anymore. There’s Firefox with its Gecko rendering engine, and all the other browsers that are based on Google’s Chromium. However, whenever some new feature is announced in a browser, it motivates me to look beyond my own horizons, aka Firefox.

Chrome, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, you name it. I’ve installed and tried them all at some point. But in the end, I always went back to the red panda. Firefox really has everything I could wish for. Except for one feature that I knew about but never used: the ability to group tabs. A function I saw colleagues using in Opera and found very intriguing. Trying it out showed me that I like the feature—but not Opera. And so, I went back to Firefox and forgot all about it.

And then my work laptop started acting so strange that I had to reset it. Afterwards, Windows greeted me with the obligatory (self-)promotion, suggesting I should try the Edge browser. Being the kind-hearted person I am, I couldn’t say no and opened the browser. What can I say?

Holy cow, is it bloated. Lots of icons, some bar on the right, and a colorful start page. Well, these days all browsers push their many features to the forefront in their default state. Firefox is no exception, just think of Pocket or VPN. Still, the first thing I did was customize everything. I threw unnecessary icons out of the toolbars, tried the bar on the left, and decided it could go too. And just like that, I had a very clean browser that didn’t really look any different from my Firefox. Edge looks a bit more modern, but there’s not much in it.

And then I tried the tab groups. Unfamiliar. Until now, I was a minimalist when it came to tabs. I didn’t keep websites open for later. Open tab, use page, close tab. When working across multiple pages, I’d just use several tabs. But the tabs were never my bookmarks. There’s already a feature for that… bookmarks. But tab groups are damn cool. I’m still not quite used to them. I often forget that I already have a page open in a group. But still, my most important pages—especially for work—are always open and grouped. I can’t jump to a page I need any faster.

And so it is that I’m currently using Edge as my main browser. It’s fast, it offers the necessary add-ons, and it’s sleek. Unfortunately, it’s also from Microsoft, but you can’t have everything.