Forum Discussion
Discussion - Set Aside Tabs and Warn on Close
Hi Insiders, we have received a lot of feedback about how you would like to close your tabs with the option of easily finding and reopening them later as you move between different workflows. Specifically, many of you are asking for the Tab Set Aside feature from the previous version of Microsoft Edge to be brought back. Some of you are also asking for a prompt to help avoid losing all your tabs such that you can’t find them again if you accidentally close the browser.
• Ask users if they want to close all tabs when they close a browser window
• Bring the tab set aside feature from the current version of Microsoft Edge
Each of these requests seem related to the fact that many of you have a lot of tabs open at once across many tasks and workflows. This leads to a situation where it can often be difficult to manage all of your tabs at the same time, and each additional tab makes it difficult to deal with all of the rest (e.g. tabs get smaller, harder to read each titles, many similar tab icons begin to blur together, etc.). But it can also be scary to close tabs and declutter your workspace, for fear of not being able to find things again later if you need to. We have definitely experienced this problem ourselves, observed it in our research and conversations with users, and agree it is an area where we want to invest in tools to help you be more productive across various tasks. We are actively investigating the best way to address this problem and would love your help and input as we proceed to make sure we get the experience just right.
We have looked through your feedback, and there are definitely some very valid reasons for why there was value in the Set Aside feature such as: Helping you pick up on a task later without leaving the tabs open when you aren’t using them, organizing your tabs into groups related to a similar task, and a short term home for more transient tasks that didn’t warrant saving in a permanent location such as Favorites.
We also reviewed feedback on the Set Aside feature itself from people actually using it in the previous version of Microsoft Edge, and there were some very valid critiques on how it worked and how it could be improved. For example, the Set Aside buttons being in a location where they were often accidentally clicked causing some to think their tabs had disappeared, requests to be able to set aside a subset of the currently open tabs rather than “all or nothing”, or requests to rename and personalize tab groups further to more easily find them again later.
The request for a prompt before closing the browser also feels related, because if people could always confidently find and reopen any of their previous tabs, then there would be less fear or concern about losing tabs if they are accidently closed. This would allow people to feel free to declutter and reduce the number of open tabs with no fear about finding them later if needed, and more easily focus on the subset of tabs they are working on now.
As we begin this journey of investigating how best to address these requests, we are asking for your help. Please continue to tell us more about your experience with Set Aside and closing tabs in Microsoft Edge, why these features are important to you in which types of tasks, what did and didn’t work for you about previous implementations, and how you would improve on these scenarios going forward.
337 Replies
I really like both features, but it would be nice to have the option to toggle them.
For the Set Aside features, it would be nice to have a button to hide the button in the tab bar and use the feature in the tab's context menu and the ellipsis to make the UI cleaner if users prefer that.
For the Warn on Close feature, it should behave exactly like the legacy Edge, with the toggle button to disable the feature the first time users see it, and the option in browser's settings menu to turn it on/off.
I do not use Set Aside Tabs. I would like a prompt before a window is closed for the sole reason that I use Edge on a Surface Go, and I hit the close button by accident way too often while holding or carrying it. Ideally, this should be optional: I do not need it on my desktop.
I'm worry that only that some Edge legacy fans are replying to this thread Elliot Kirk
How could you justify to bring back the Set Aside Tabs when only a very small percentage of people used it. What's the point now that we have collections ?
- If collections would store the tabs WITH THEIR URL HISTORY (preserve back/forth links) then I might find Collections useful more than once in 20 blue moons. Otherwise Collections is simply a simplification of a use case for bookmark folders (nothing more, nothing less).
Straight facts. You are 100 percent correct!
Yannick Plavonil wrote:How could you justify to bring back the Set Aside Tabs when only a very small percentage of people used it. What's the point now that we have collections ?
First of all, it's not clear to me that "only a very small percentage of people used it (Set Aside Tabs)." How did you come to this conclusion? There seems to be a lot of interest in it, from my viewpoint. The simple fact that Elliot Kirk opened a separate thread on this topic, saying "many of you are asking for the Tab Set Aside feature..." says a lot about that.
Secondly, if you don't use the feature, why are you concerned about Microsoft bringing it back? This sounds like a case of, "I don't have a need for it, so no one should have it." How about, "I don't have a need for it, but obviously a bunch of other folks do." I've always failed to understand the viewpoint of "I don't need it, so no one needs to have it."
Regards,
Dan
Dan_AI4GK JSyder You misunderstood my comment, it is not about I like/used it or not.
I'm well aware of the interest of this feature but in the legacy Edge, it had a very low percentage of use. I got this private feedback directly from the team. It's hard to decide when to put money and resources on a project, and more difficult to do something that will not be redundant with another feature (collections). They have to decide whether to bring back Set Aside Tabs or enhanced to Collections, or simply build a better feature from all the feedback. At the end, you expect that what you're building is used by the maximum of user available not only a little population.
as someone who barely used the legacy Edge, maybe only 0.001% of the time, I do feel the need for a Set tabs aside feature.
the difference with the collection is that, like seancorfield also mentioned, Set Tabs aside was a quick and single action button where you could put all your tabs aside and close your browser knowing that they are all safe. collections take more than 1 click and they are made for different purposes
Elliot Kirk Set Aside Tabs was my most loved and most used feature in old Edge. I'm a software developer. I'm working on a JIRA ticket so I have that open plus maybe my Kanban board and gradually I open a bunch more tabs while I'm working on that ticket. Then I need to break from that and maybe do email for a while, or work on some higher priority issue. Click the Set Tabs Aside button, start work on the new task, opening tabs as needed. Either I complete that task and close tabs I'm done with, or I need to context switch again and Set Tabs Aside, go to the vertical menu showing timestamps, thumbnails horizontally, click Restore Tabs for the task I want to work on and I'm straight back to it.
Things I really liked:
- No requirement to name the tab group
- All open tabs are set aside with a single click
- Easy to read the vertical sidebar of previously set aside tabs -- easy to skim quickly by date, easy to scroll left/right if needed to see more of a set
- Easy to restore an entire context with a single click and -- this is critically important -- have it disappear from the saved list of contexts!
- Easy to edit previously set aside tabs to remove items I no longer need/care about
The position of the menu and the set aside button made sense, off to the top left, away from the "permanent" controls like favorites and history. As noted above, the transient nature of the tab groups was a critical part of the usefulness: no naming, no need to go back and remove a context after restoring it (and completing the task).
Was there any aspect of set tabs aside I didn't like? Nope. It did exactly what I wanted.
What about Collections? To me, it's a completely useless feature. It implements a workflow I just don't need and it implements it in a way that doesn't match how I use the web at all. I've tried to use it a couple of times since it appeared but it's cumbersome and ugly and I just plain old dislike the entire user experience and user interface for it. Maybe "consumers" like it (my wife's a "consumer" and she doesn't like it either) but this technical user doesn't like it at all.
Could you use Collections as a way to implement Set Tabs Aside without driving me insane? Maybe. The prerequisites would be:
- There must be a single click in the UI -- without digging into menus -- that saves all the currently open tabs to an auto-named-by-date collection and closes those tabs!
- In the Collections menu, such groups would need to easily readable (thumbnails, partial URLs, scrollable so all tabs can be seen -- none of which seems to happen with collections right now).
- In the Collections menu, there would need to be a single click button to open/restore those tabs (no, not a right-click & then a second click) -- and the collection would need to be deleted once the tabs are restored.
Right now, Collections fails on every bullet point, and in multiple ways for each of those.
Sean, you captured my thoughts precisely! I've been in a bit of a hurry every time I try to get my thoughts on "paper," as it were. I'm not sure if you're saying you don't want or need the ability to name your set aside tabs groups, but I would like to have that option: it's not a deal breaker, but I'd like that.
Anyway, good job with your post.
Regards,
Dan
Dan_AI4GK I wouldn't object to having the option to name groups of set-aside tabs, but given that tab groups are deleted from the sidebar when they are restored, I'm not convinced there's really much value in names -- since they'd "evaporate" any time you restored a tab group.
And if you say "Oh, but the browser could remember and reuse the name if you set aside tabs that came from a named group!", I'll offer these scenarios:
- Set Tabs Aside, name them Fred. Open three tabs, restore Fred. Now you have a mix of Fred tabs and non-Fred tabs. If you set them aside now, what happens?
- Set Tabs Aside, name them Fred. Continue working and Set Tabs Aside again and name this new group Joe. Now restore Fred and also restore Joe. Now you have a mix of Fred tabs and Joe tabs. If you set them aside now, what happens?
The set aside tabs features is a must. I used to use it very extensively and would be very helpful when doing long research and browsing webpages that may or may not be useful in the future.
The fact that this feature is not in the new generation of Edge is sad, it needs to be implemented. And when you do, ensure that it does allow you to name different set aside groups and syncs across all of the New Edge browser that you are logged in.
Also, scrollable tabs are a must, you used to have this on the old edge, but you don't have it in the Chromium based version. This feature was also very sleek and allowed me to have many tabs and I could easily scroll through them with touch or precision touchpad. It even had a drop down arrow to expand the view of the tabs and let you see thumbnail preview of each tab, that was very neat and is very much missed in this version of Edge. Its a must as the Chrome implementation of many tabs is just sad and very cumbersome.
Many thanks.
Elliot Kirk I'm happy there are discussions on 'Ask users if they want to close all tabs when they close a browser window'. I've been upvoting this suggestion whenever I can. I tend to work with lots of tabs at one time, and I move around between numerous programs. Add my touch screen laptop to the equation, and you can imagine how I can accidentally close my browser window with tabs still open...happens often.
The previous implementation of set aside tabs was perfect, though it would be nice to have the option to name groups of set aside tabs. The placement of the buttons was fine too. Generally it was used so that you didn't have to keep all your windows open, but quickly go back to different things. Whereas favorites are a bit too permanent and cumbersome.
Personally, I don't use warn on close, but I know others do.
Set tabs aside is my favorite feature in the old Edge. I use it to set aside tabs related to tasks or research I need to get back to later, which makes it easier to manage tabs I working with at the moment and frees up the computer's resources.
I like where the button is in the old Edge, and I think that's the only sensible place to put it. You could add an option to remove it for people who are bothered by it.
The improvements I would like to see are:
- ability to name groups of tabs set aside
- sync of tabs set aside across devices
I would also like the option to reopen a closed window when working with multiple windows. If you have that, and the browser is set to continue where you left off on startup, then there is no need for the prompt asking if you want to close all tabs when you close a window. But I think you should still add it as an option for people who want it.
- I just had an idea for how you could appease users who accidentally click on set tabs aside: when the button is clicked for the first time, you could have a pop-up explaining that the tabs have been set aside and why some people find this useful, and giving the user the option to bring the tabs back and remove the set tabs aside button.
- MarinM Elliot Kirk I actually had the same thought. I'd even suggest having a button to dismiss, and then a check box for Don't Show This Notice Again.
Elliot Kirk Setting tabs aside for later:
The feature helps most significantly when workflows can be temporarily postponed for later use. One amazing feature to integrate within Set-Tabs-Aside would be the office suite of apps.Perhaps an open word document or powerpoint file can communicate its state with Edge, and can be "set aside" in much the same way as a tab would be set aside. Then, once the tabs are restored, Edge can send a signal to Office to reopen the same document in the same place.
In addition, integrating the clipboard into Set-Tabs-Aside might also help resume workflows easily.- That sounds a little bit like the Tabbed Windows that Microsoft tried out in the operating system many months ago. That was a feature that had potential, but not necessarily used a bunch.
- I agree with these two points:
• Ask users if they want to close all tabs when they close a browser window
• Bring the tab set aside feature from the current version of Microsoft Edge
The second point is a feature that has helped me a lot, please bring it to the new Edge. It made it very easy to return to the pages I was using and continue with the work I was doing. That feature was one of the reasons why I use Edge, it is in revision too long and they have not set a release date for the feature. Please add that feature as soon as possible, I would appreciate it very much.
