Forum Discussion
MicrosoftIntroducing the new favorites experience in Microsoft Edge
Favorites are an integral part of any web browser, and in the months since we released the new version of Microsoft Edge we’ve heard a lot of feedback about the experience. Specifically:
- While the favorites menu provides quick access to your favorites, it isn’t always the easiest to use and more complex tasks typically require going to the edge://favorites page
- The favorites page works well for bulk management but isn’t ideal for more lightweight tasks like getting to, updating, or moving a single favorite
- Many of you also miss the Hub in the legacy version of Microsoft Edge—especially the ability to pin your favorites and other content open while you browse
Today, we’re excited to share that we’re evolving the favorites experience to address your feedback and provide a more efficient way for you to quickly access and manage your favorites without losing context of the page you’re on. These changes are currently available in the Canary and Dev channels.
The new favorites experience blends the power of the full page with the dropdown’s ease of access. Your favorites are now displayed in a classic tree view, and you can edit, organize, and even search your favorites in-line without having to go to the full page. The new favorites menu stays around while you need it and disappears when you’re done, making it easy to open or manage multiple favorites at once.
We’ve also brought the full breadth of management capabilities to the new favorites menu. In addition to the basics like reordering, renaming, and editing, you can now add new favorites and folders directly from the dropdown menu, sort, import or export your favorites, remove duplicate items, and much more. With the new favorites menu, these features are always at your fingertips.
Best of all, in response to overwhelming feedback you can now pin your favorites open in a pane along the side of the browser. This allows you to see your favorites while you browse and helps you stay more productive during those times where you need frequent access to your favorites.
For those of you who prefer a more immersive experience, we’ve got you covered. You can get back to the favorites page at any time by clicking on the favorites menu button () and selecting Manage favorites. Or simply type edge://favorites into your address bar.
We’d love to hear what you think of the new favorites experience, so please send us feedback! This is a new interaction model that we hope will save you time and keep you in the context of what you’re doing. In the coming months, you’ll see other content types adopt this model as well, including downloads, history, and more. Stay tuned!
— William Devereux, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Edge
99 Replies
William Devereux Opening the favorites-menu is to slow (even in your first "screenshot" you see a delay. Very annoying, opening a menu has to be instant.
Furthermore, the design is a litte bit off. I have a vertical scrollbar, but the menu has enough bottom margin left.
I preferred the old style, this favoritesmenu layout is for me a step back.
William Devereux I prefer the "old style" favorites menu, with the cascading sub-menus. I'm surprised at the majority of favorable responses to the changed "experience".
Just notice that the favorite left windows of Edge beta cannot be horizontal resized. Please implement this feature to add more space in the main windows if necessary
I'm testing the new Beta version of Edge. I see that if I open the right favorite windows it is not persistent as in IE , if I close and reopen Edge, I have to reopen the favorite window with 2 click, oped the window and dock it on the right.
Please make persistent the change an make possible to position it on the left too!
New request: Favorites can be shared between different devices, however it seems that this sharing is not protected. Favorite, likes password and login information should be consider private data, and encrypted by a master password, driven by the user, and not shared with microsoft or anyone else
I woudl add also the following requirements:
1) Store the favorite link as in IE in a folder under user directory.
2) In the beta version I'm seeing the possibility to show favourites in a right docked windows. I would like to move the favourite window on the right (like in IE), but also to un-dock it (floating window) so one can move it in everywhere
Good to see that the new EDGE version will include the access to the favourites link as in IE. I would like to add the following feature requests.
It would be interesting to consider these additional features:
1) allow you to select the position of the favorite window on the left (as in IE) and on the right. Personally I'm used to IE and would like to have the option to arrange the favourites window to the right
2) Increase the density of links displayed. There is too much spacing between the actual links (Edge official version) and the link size is too small. It would be very interesting to make the density of the links displayed (font size and spacing) configurable. Keep the font size and spacing of the current IE. 4) Restore the selection arrow of a link that allows you to open the associated page as in IE, in a separate tab, In conclusion, keep the same display characteristics as IE
3) The automatic saving of passwords must be encrypted and protected by a master password not accessible by microsoft
4) Improve the automatic capture of passwords, allowing you to exclude the possibility of storing it on banking sites. For example, on the website http://www.iwbank.it, Edge stores the password automatically even if you don't want to.
- William Devereux
Thanks for the great feedback everyone! We're thrilled to hear that so many of you like the new experience. We're investigating reports that it can sometimes be slow to open on some devices, and we're looking into the other issues you've reported as well. I also love a lot of the suggestions you've mentioned and have shared them with the team for future improvements. Please keep the feedback coming!
William Devereux looks not bad, spacing could be less, but I guess it is optmized for 4k (Surface) and touch?
A small glitch with ... in the new favorites menu
It will move from right to left on every click on ...
also when pinning the fav menu on the next open it will be unpinned again.William Devereux Thank you, thank you, thank you, both for being able to access Favorites through a more classic tree menu and being able to pin Favorites in a pane to the side of the browser. Those two steps alone have vastly improved my experience using Edge. All the rest of the changes to how we can work with Favorites more easily and efficiently without having to constantly chase dropdown menus across the screen and having to start from the top again every time we make a click error (which for me was often before these improvements!) is so very helpful. As a user and not a developer, this week's Favorites UX redesign is the single best weekly improvement the Edge team has made since being able to sync Favorites between devices. Now if you could just bring these Favorite improvements quickly to the Beta and public release versions of Edge, you'd hear a big cheer from tech media reviewers and users alike. Keep up the good work, Edge team. You are building out the best browser on the planet, IMO.
