Forum Discussion
Elliot Kirk
Microsoft
MicrosoftReading List - Discussion
Hello everyone and thanks for your feedback around reading lists in Microsoft Edge. Based on user feedback from legacy Microsoft Edge, there was more work to do with the previous Reading list experience. We heard from users that it was confusing and was also missing some key features like offline reading support. With the next version of Microsoft Edge, we want to ensure we’re building something our customers will love. So, we aren’t shipping reading list immediately in the new Microsoft Edge. We’re going to take our time to ensure we get this right. In the meantime, read on for features currently in the preview builds of the next version of Microsoft Edge that we think could help in the interim. As always, we welcome your feedback to help us continue to evolve and build the best experience possible.
Alternatives for a reading list
To save your articles for reading later in the new Microsoft Edge, you can use Favorites, and there are many 3rd party extensions such as Pocket. You can also try a new feature called Collections that helps you collect and organize web pages. We believe together they can help serve most of the unmet needs and requirements of reading lists. We understand this isn’t a one to one replacement and your feedback will help us further understand what’s needed.
How to access my reading list data
Your reading list data is migrated from the old Microsoft Edge to the new Microsoft Edge via Favorites. To access your data, click: Settings and more --> Favorites --> Other favorites --> Reading list.
Send feedback
We appreciate the feedback we have received so far on Reading list, please continue to share with us what you'd like to see, what you think is missing or anything else.
Thank you,
- The Microsoft Edge Team
We wanted to thank everyone again for their feedback around Reading Lists. We have internally acknowledged that Reading List as a feature was not able to meet the needs of our users. While we do have some very passionate users of this feature, the truth is that it wasn’t used much in Legacy Edge. With these things in mind, we have decided to not implement this feature into chromium-based Edge.
For alternatives, we still believe that the ones mentioned in the original post are what will work best for users. Collections have had several new features implemented recently, and we encourage you to give them a try. If you’re curious as to where your Reading Lists went when you updated to new Edge, they should be located in your Favorites under the Other favorites folder listed as Reading List.
While we are not going to bring this feature to new Edge, we are always listening and making choices based on all your feedback. Please continue to send in the feedback about what you would love to see or what you think is missing!
Thanks,
The Microsoft Edge Team
Elliot Kirk While I added many items to my Reading List in Edge Legacy, I found that I rarely went back to review those and to actually use them. They became a form of storage. As such, I think the newer "Collections" fit that use better, especially since we can a collection to Excel, OneNote, or Word. Export to an HTML page might be a good addition.
Those can be stored locally (and offline as needed), so I would not need an ability for a Reading List to be stored offline. In addition, if Reading Lists were stored offline, people wanting to reduce local hard disk space might need a toggle to disable that.
One possible way to improve this (Reading List just becoming another place for storage) would be if the 2 newest and 2 oldest entries were to optionally appear on the ‘New Tab’ page (Safari on iOS does this by occasionally offering URL bar suggestions from the user’s reading list).
With the demise of ‘Set-Aside Tabs’, there isn’t a last-in, first-out (LIFO, or stack) place to bookmark individual pages. I (and I imagine many others) end up just spawning links in countless tabs for later reading.
————
<dreaming>
Perhaps someday, a browser will allow one to right-click on a link and select “To review” (and/or other more arbitrary tags); before closing the browser (and/or on ‘New Tab’ pages) the user would then be presented with a message “Madam, you expressed interest in reviewing the following links:”, perhaps with each link even showing a tooltip showing from whence it came, and an option to save the links as a folder of favorites or to keep them on the list for future sessions.
Perhaps also someday, favorites / bookmarks (and their associated metadata; e.g. where from, date bookmarked, etc.) will be stored in a database so the browser user could search parametrically. For example, one could quickly filter favorites/bookmarks to show:
- only those I added in the last half of May
- only those links I bookmarked from pages on Wikipedia
- all favorites that point to *.microsoft.com/*.
- all favorites that _do not_ point to a particular site / domain / TLD
- all favorites added more than 2 years ago
- favorites I’ve never clicked on
</dreaming>
- MissyQ
We wanted to thank everyone again for their feedback around Reading Lists. We have internally acknowledged that Reading List as a feature was not able to meet the needs of our users. While we do have some very passionate users of this feature, the truth is that it wasn’t used much in Legacy Edge. With these things in mind, we have decided to not implement this feature into chromium-based Edge.
For alternatives, we still believe that the ones mentioned in the original post are what will work best for users. Collections have had several new features implemented recently, and we encourage you to give them a try. If you’re curious as to where your Reading Lists went when you updated to new Edge, they should be located in your Favorites under the Other favorites folder listed as Reading List.
While we are not going to bring this feature to new Edge, we are always listening and making choices based on all your feedback. Please continue to send in the feedback about what you would love to see or what you think is missing!
Thanks,
The Microsoft Edge Team
I do not like this decision. I will miss location that stores your pages offline.
I would like to point three issues with this decision.
1. No way to store page offline, the one file format is still not supported - mhtml.
2. The reading list on the mobile device will be not synced anymore.
3. Collections are much slower in performance than reading list. (opening reading list less than 1 sek, opening collections more than 3 sek).
- Deleted
1.) Yeah, collections are much much slower (I really hate to use it performance wise, but I like them because of their features and future potential for them)
2.) I'm using beta edge on android. Collection sync works fine from android to desktop, but it's not working from desktop to android.
3.) since collections are there on android now, Reading lists should be removed from android (coz they aren't necessary anymore and are discontinued from edge desktop.)
Note: The most important thing I can think of for collections right now, is IMPROVE THEIR PERFORMANCE. THEY FEEL SLOW AS HELL .
- I like the decision, just add collection support on adroid
MissyQ I would like to appreciate the decision. While I used Reading List a lot, I will also acknowledge that Collections are way better than the Reading List, and bringing Reading List again to browser means duplication of features. Just want Collections to be available on mobile super soon!
This days I really miss Reading List I want to save some pages to read later, the workaround was to add that pages to Favorites but also Favorites are a really really mess compared to the Favorites of old Edge (even for the mere fact that you can pin the Favorites pane to the side). In the next day I will try to use Collection as a replacement for Reading List.
As for today I can say that there is the need that Collections integrates with Nearby Share feature
Elliot Kirk a few suggestions for the Reading List experience:
1. Whether it is in Collections or a separate feature, make sure the sync works for it, and ideally make it cross platform with Android/iOS. Reading Lists (or Collections) really have to be available everywhere and sync'd everywhere to be useful.
2. Provide a "Send to Reading List" share charm (or equivalent) for Windows apps and equivalent for Android/iOS. Being able to save the relevant URL from within an app such as Feedlab, Twitter, etc. was a really great capability back with the old Windows 8 Reader App, and having this capability once again available would make Edge and the Edge experience even more integrated into peoples workflow.
TheAndyMac The Share Charm or Share Intent is a *very* good call.
Collections, with sync stands to be potentially one of my favorite features in any browser anywhere.
I *really* think that cribbing the best bits from Reading List and the Tab Set Aside functionality, (whatever the actual name of that was), will result in an incredibly useful tool.
I think Collections should support Tabs in the same way as Favorites currently does, the send and selection features both. Then to me a per Collection setting for sort order and my reading list needs are handled. With the addition of your sharing idea, I would be golden.
Adding an icon to trigger Add all to a Collection and my Tab set aside needs would be covered too.
All of it is a little bit of UI/UX thinking and wiring up what is already there in other places. I really hope it goes that way. :fingers crossed:
We are hitting the point where I wish I was working on this project, I am so *nearly* in love with it. 😛
As I see the latest item put into Reading list saves folder there is at the bottom of list. Since I have many reading list items I have to scroll for about 25 seconds to find the latest item.
1) In the reading list of legacy Edge the latest item there was at the top, so it could be find easy. I propose to keep this behaviour.
2) A good feature would be if the sort order of the list could be set by the user.
3) A scroll bar could make faster the scroll if there are too many elements in the list. (Now only the small arrows at the top and the bottom allow scrolling function.)
Having Favorites, Reading Lists, Set Tabs Aside and Collections is too many options that kinda-sorta do the same thing (Save a page for later).
When looking for saved pages, you have Favorites, Reading Lists, Set Tabs Aside and Collections to look in. Plus, the bulk of users only understand the concept of "Add a Favorite".
A solution to all this would be only having a "Add to Favorites" option and store everything as a Favorite. You can be a bit smarter about adding and opening favorites to mimic the above functionality.
When adding a favorite, prompt to add content from the page (aka, Collections), or add related tabs (similar to how IE use to color code tabs) or just the current page.
When opening a favorite from a "Reading List" folder, prompt to remove the URL. When opening a URL from a favorites folder, ask to open the other favorites in the folder. Favorites "Collections" folder would replace the current "Collections" sidebar.
The problem is known, but all those storage have different benefits.
* Favourites - good to store large organised collection of links (ex. Links that you use for long time and more or less often)
* Reading list - good to store temporary list of saved pages with content in chronological order (ex. Some interesting articles that you wanted to read, but you do not have time for it right now, later you can just open the reading list and pick one of interesting ones)
* Tabs aside - good to keep current session of browser when you need to change context (ex. you are looking for materials for school presentation, but you need to keep everything as it is, and switch to do reading about Benjamin Franklin for tomorrow lesson)
* Collections - I do not have any usage of it right now, it looks like strange combination of options above with very slow and hard to use
If you look on other browsers:
Firefox allows you to save your session - similar to tabs aside in Edge
Safari offers you reading list for offline reading - Edge has reading list
Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer offers you Favourites - Edge has favourites
My suggestion to Edge developers would be to keep simple explanation to feature that you are developing. It is very hard to explain Collections feature for now. It is not clear what is the purpose to use it. I like some new possibilities in Collections, but I do not know if it should be enhanced Reading List, replacement of tabs aside, or something new.
As a summary for Collections, it could be best to keep original interface of tabs aside, and reading list along with new collections feature.
And as tabs aside - would internally use collections to store tabs aside.
And as reading list - one build in collection used to handle reading list interface.
Thanks to it, all user experience would be kept. The issue of looking for saved web page would be limited to favourites and collections with difference that favourites keep link of web page and collections keep offline page version.
- Combining PDF, epub (and other e-reader), and reading list functionality and history together would be a great use of the reading list functionality.
Adding sync to Collections and some way to add all current tabs to a new or existing collection would pretty much handle all use cases I have for Reading List with the Collections functionality.
It would also potentially eliminate my use of 2 other extensions, due to incorporating my use cases for them.
The most recent Dev Channel announcement says the both sync and add multiple tabs features are available now, so I guess I am good.
Although, I have not been able to figure out how too add multiple tabs to a collection yet, so I am not sure that feature does what I have in mind yet. :fingers crossed:
Elliot Kirk@Unless I can pin open favourites I wont be using the new edge anytime soon.
Trevor Appleton wrote:@Unless I can pin open favourites I wont be using the new edge anytime soon.
For some time now my pattern has been to only use the Favorites Bar. That is, all my favorites are saved within the Favorites Bar or subfolders of the Favorites Bar. With the Favorites Bar showing in the toolbar, it's much the same as having the Favorites pinned open. In fact, I think it's better.
- Spoiler
Trevor Appleton wrote:@Unless I can pin open favourites I wont be using the new edge anytime soon.
Hi,
what do you mean by "open favorites" ?
Elliot Kirk I originally used the Reading List app from Windows 8, and was pleased when it was built into Edge in Windows 10, and it is certainly great to put things I want to focus on into (across my connected computers and phones) rather than adding them to my huge list of favourites.
However now that TaskView and TImeLine sync across from Windows 10 devices to Android, I am using Reading List less.
I really like the Collections feature, but again working with older people I am unsure how anyone will be able to discover or use anything new. At least with classic Edge Reading Lists are discoverable when clicking or tapping the original Favourites management - I have always referred to that button as the LISTS button to my clients - Favourites, Reading important stuff, History and Downloads - all listed for convenience under one button - that is something thats missing from chromium Edge, but I have discussed that elsewhere.
