Inking on Web Pages - Discussion

Elliot Kirk Here is just a few scenarios I would leverage the "Write on the Web" feature.

• Record a walkthrough of a web page to assist others in troubleshooting without having to apply visual effects to a video or markup to a series of screen captures later.
• Grab notes for myself or others that I can follow up on by returning to the annotated page.
• Draw attention to specific information on a page that I can share with others by providing a link to the annotated page.
• Discuss and plan changes to a web page in real time with team members using notes and pens to mark the pages as we go along.

These are just a few I could think of off the top of my head.

Elliot Kirk 

I am a student of computer vision and I have to read a lot of scientific articles every day.

Since I have a convertible computer I love the functionality to mark important parts of the text to which I come back after reading it the first time.

From psychological studies I have read, I know that the brain is much more activated while reading a text if the text is not just read, but also a lot of notes and marks are taken. 

Therefore, I also take many notes while reading articles, for example from Wikipedia, or long blog posts in my leisure time.

Since right now, this feature is not yet available, I sometimes have to print important articles, for which it is not enough to read them without writing in it.

I also tried the OneNote clipper, however it is quite instable in comparison to the old inking on webpages feature. 

I would love to have less to print on paper in the future, and instead more inking on webpages in the future.

Thanks

BennyHardjono please provide inking on edge web browser as before - I need it to teach online classes - Hurry. I am really disappointed that your team has removed and made this inking on Legacy version NOT available (even you have prevented users to look for / get it). VERY BAD policy.

Elliot Kirk

Use case; 

1. Insert a video in a ppt with instructions, or just a demo. Ability to circle or highlight what I am talking about on the screen , while I am talking. 
2. I create an SOP in One Note of everything I do.  So much easier just to insert screen shots with some text on the it.  Rather than typing; Please select the second button to the last on the right, and from the drop down, click option number 2, then navigate to the center of that page...... and so on.  Just put a picture with a circle and the text "Select This". 
3. For new web development back and forth, clients and designers can just circle or mark up  what they want to change and share it. 

Please add ability to Type text.  

This is a critical functionality that would make a lot of people's lives easier. 

Please add ability to add a shape, circle or square to highlight an area on the page.  Hand drawn looks messy on presentations to clients. 

Elliot Kirk I am a teacher who teaches high school math.  I personally bought a Surface and talked my school into buying a Surface for me to teach with.  Textbook companies used to make PowerPoints to teach lessons with, but now every publisher is using some sort of Interactive web interface.  In my opinion, these are not the best tool for a teacher - just a good tool for the students.  However, with the capability to write on the webpage, it was tolerable.

Furthermore, having an inking tool to work well on pdf documents gives me the flexibility of creating my own lesson shells to use while teaching.  I can then write on the pdf in the spaces I created to show the mathematical steps in solving a problem.  I can save the pdf to share with students later.  Most importantly, by using my Surface and my Surface pen, I can have an interactive experience in teaching while walking around the room and still have a clean crisp experience with my Surface Pen and the document.  (What I'm saying is that with the Surface being a touch screen, third party apps don't always work smoothly with the pen and sometimes I get marks in several places on the screen that I touched with my hand or fingers.  It's annoying.

Microsoft Whiteboard is great for tutoring, but it is not something that works well for preparing lessons in advance or for sharing notes afterwards.

Elliot Kirk Inking is finally here! Thanks for taking the users' feedback. 

Elliot Kirk 

I'm glad to see you're adding this feature. But I hope you will improve the pen and touch support, which is really poor, especially considering that the whole point of this feature is to draw with a pen on a touchscreen. Some of the problems are:

• I can click and drag with a mouse to capture more of the page than fits the screen, but I can't do this with touch or pen.
• There is no pen and touch input separation. I want to use the pen to draw and touch to pan, and I don't want to have to tap on the "Draw" button after I have already tapped on the "Add notes" button.

Please also add undo functionality.

Elliot Kirk Please enable the inking on web pages on this new Edge browser (The entire toolbar, highlighting, inking, erasing, snipping, sharing tools) which already existed on Edge legacy.

Everyone who sees the feature will know what it is, and there is no confusion. So, a setting could be enabled to turn this feature on. That way, people can choose if they want it or not. They won't feel like this feature was forced on them.

Everyone loved this feature, and used it a lot. Please enable the one note like inking toolbar.

Hope this will be taken into consideration, and implemented for the betterment of edge, and the satisfaction of the users.

Thank you

Elliot Kirk I wonder why MS didn't solicit feedback on use of the feature before it was removed?  I agree with several people that it was the main reason I used Edge (well this and the quick save of open tabs).  It is also one of the features that is used to sell Surface products so it is hard to fathom why it would be removed as if nobody would notice.  The snipping tool update is a poor substitute.  I want to draw on a live web page.  For example, I have a conference schedule with all of the Zoom links for the workshop sessions.  I want to highlight or check the sessions I will attend but still have the live connection links available to me.  I do legal research so I want to make notations or highlights in published cases and still have live links to cited cases and statutes so I can easily jump to them.  I also want to save these highlighted cases for future use.  I know that I can download documents to Word or Adobe but the drawing features in Adobe aren't as robust as those that Edge used to have.  Word is better but not all content can be converted easily to Word and it is a lot of extra steps.  Plus, it isn't even clear how to download a page.  In FireFox it is one click, easy peasy.  Return of this feature needs to be a priority if you don't want to make Edge obsolete.