New Extension button - hate it, and behaviour is (I hope) broken

DavidGB 

Actually I'd like to re-state the problem in a different way. Edge developers - you have basically made a type mistake, and I was implicitly following the same mistake in my reply.

What you have done is remove a particular useful function. And you have added a fundamentally and conceptually different function. Which is all well and good, but it does not replace the first function as what you have added is a completely different thing.

What you have removed, the area at the top of the More menu, was an equivalent to the Firefox toolbar overflow menu, so I'll call the Edge version the overflow menu too. For people who have too many toolbar buttons, it's a place to put the lesser used ones where they are not in the way but quick to get too, and just like the main toolbar the user can arrange those extra buttons in the order best suited to them.

What you have added is a light-weight dropdown extensions manager. It is to the full extension manager page what the Favourites and History dropdowns are now to the full favourites and history manager pages. And just like the full extension manager page it lists all of them in alphabetical order, which is fair enough as a lightweight extension manager dropdown.

Some people may have a use for that, personally I don't and am happy using the full extension manager page for managing my extensions, but you've put in a button on/off, so fair enough.

But I DO want and need my toolbar overflow that you have removed, and what you have added IS NOT A TOOLBAR OVERFLOW. It's a lightweight extension manager dropdown, which is a different thing for a different purpose.

Chrome did this, when I actually already had a 3rd party extension that provided a button that was a dropdown lightweight extension manager. So they gave me their new built in dropdown extension manager that wasn't actually as good as the one I already had from an extension (for the small amount of use I made of it), but removed the toolbar overflow from the top of the More menu which I made a lot of use of. So I took that as a final 'screw you' from the Chrome devs and have permanently and totally given up on it.

Just because Google made the same mistake is no reason you lot can't see and avoid it.

Now:

Lightweight dropdown extension manager: contains long scrolling list of all extensions, whether with a button on the toolbar, a button not on the toolbar, or no button at all, in alphabetical order.

Toolbar overflow: provides an area (could be at the top of the more menu, or a separate toolbar button dropdown) for all the toolbar buttons not on the menu but ONLY the buttons not on the menu, arranged according to the desires, needs and idiosyncrasies of the user just like the toolbar buttons actually on the toolbar.

You have removed the second and added the first. I for one need the second and am indifferent to the first.

You could have both. I'd be fine with that if displaying the first was optional.

OR you need to add a bunch of things to your dropdown extension manager so the user can configure it to act as a toolbar overflow instead: hide extensions that have no toolbar button, hide extensions who have their buttons actually on the toolbar, and allow re-ordering.

It's a long time since I coded anything so I may be wrong, but I imagine it would actually be easier to maintain both the dropdown extension manager and the toolbar overflow separately. After all, they are conceptually different things serving different and distinct purposes

But just because the Google Chrome devs missed the point that an extension manager is not the same thing as a toolbar overflow, so they removed something - and something very useful - without replacing it to a considerable loss of ease of use of their browser doesn't mean you guys have to slavishly follow them over every cliff.

I use quite a lot of extensions and need a toolbar overflow. As of today, I no longer have one in Edge. That means my attempts to use Edge for normal browsing screech to a halt and will not resume until and unless I get a toolbar overflow back. Your dropdown extension manager is nothing like a toolbar overflow.

I will go back to just running updates for just as long as it takes to see if a toolbar over flow reappears, whether by restoring it as was alongside your considerably broken dropdown extension manager, or you have added considerable changes to the extension manager so it can be re-configured as a toolbar overflow.