Introducing the new favorites experience in Microsoft Edge

As to Favorites. You would still need to open Edge and then click on the 'Star' with the three dashes next to it.
If your list of favorites is on that does not change often you have a couple of options :
1. You can save the Favorites (which are like web links) to the Start menu as tiles. Which does not require Edge to be open.
2. You could 'pin' your favorites to taskbar.
3. If you are using Edge 'vertical tabs' you could 'pin' your favorites as vertical tabs in Edge. However you might want to set the tabs to 'sleep' so Edge does not keep them all open and slow down your system.
Most other options for this would require some 'programming and maintenance' on your part. How many favorites do you need to appear on the desktop and how often do they need to be changed or updated ? Saving the favorites to the Tiles in Start seems to be the easiest to maintain.
Note: There is a way to display a list of Favorites across the top of the Edge window. The ones displayed are Favorites that are saved to the Favorites Bar folder in Favorites.
1. Click on the three dots (upper right) in Edge.
2. Click on the word 'Favorites' in the dropdown that appears.
3. Click on the three dot menu in that dropdown menu.
4. Click on 'Show Favorites Bar' .
5. Click on 'Always' to display the Favorites Bar in Edge.
You can follow the same steps to Turn the feature off by selecting the alternate choices.
You can edit the Favorites Bar folder in Favorites to choose what you want displayed.
Recommended : Try out the Collections option to save your links / favorites instead. Collections is an easier way to read them and allows you to even add notes. Collections is still under development and the organizational tools that are being added make it more versatile than Favorites for some things. Collections icon is the one on the menu bar with the square with the + plus sign in it .