Edge, Microsoft’s default web browser in Windows 11, is getting new text editing capabilities, including Copilot-supported rewriting, improved clipboard functionality, and support for handwriting in forms and web pages via a stylus.
Windows Copilot is the AI assistant that Microsoft is busy integrating into Windows 11 and several other products, including Microsoft Edge. It was presented as if it could eventually help you with every task on your device, and while it still seems like there’s a way to go before Copilot achieves that lofty ambition, it’s getting there.
The new feature, AI Compose, makes rewrite suggestions for user-selected text in editable parts of a web page and can help writers with possible phrasing improvements and sentence structure clues. It also allows users to change the tone, format or length of the text suggestions.
MSPowerUser compares the new functionality of the popular AI-powered writing assistant tool Grammarly. Apparently, this update will make Copilot more competitive with Google’s major language model and AI assistant project, Gemini, which is said to offer similar features to Google’s rival Chrome web browser.
Added support for digital pens and more
Edge will also gain support for digital pen writing, which will allow users to write directly into the input fields of web pages, converting their handwriting into text. Microsoft also describes in a blog post that users can take advantage of Windows Ink support in Edge to do the following with digital pens:
- Enter text by writing with a pen in or near an input field
- Delete text by scribbling over words to remove them
- Add or remove spaces by drawing vertical lines in the text
- Add line breaks by drawing horizontal lines
Other text-related updates coming to Edge include a new EditContext API tool for web developers that aims to simplify the process of creating custom text editors, and an improved copy-and-paste feature that lets users create formatted, rich HTML content can copy and paste more reliably and provide more control for web developers over Edge’s text prediction feature.
I think this certainly has the potential to be a very useful addition to Edge because, as Microsoft itself points out, much of the success of the web in general is due to its form submission capabilities and editing text. Microsoft has also stated that it would like feedback to improve the feature if necessary, and this is one feature where it could take initiative and actively encourage users to try the feature.