Forum Discussion
Reading List - Discussion
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 To be honest, I don't think many people care about this feature as it was in the legacy Edge (and, that is, of the minority of people that used legacy Edge).
I think there could be an option somewhere to "make this page available offline" or "make pages in this folder available offline", and it would be nice if you had the option to make collections available offline.
[Perhaps specifying "for a week/month/indefinitely" would be useful, considering that most people will only need this if they're away from decent signal for an extended period and it's nice to have things deleted after a set period. Come to think of it, it's almost irrelevant since the internet is so accessible and increasingly so.]
I can see how a "reading list" could somewhat 'simplify' this feature, but a true "reading list" might be more useful if it saved webpages in reading mode and as epubs perhaps.
I can easily see a future where the browser replaces the pdf and ebook reader. Apple Books has different "shelves" for pdfs, including word docs converted to pdf natively in Safari. If a reading list could do something similar ("shelves" for epubs and pdfs, and the ability to convert webpages and docs), it would be extremely useful.
Thus, there are three features I may request in place of a reading list:
1. A "Make page/folder available offline for X days" (7 days or 30 days or indefinitely).
2. The ability to convert webpages/docs into pdfs/epubs (print to pdf isn't great).
3. A "bookshelf" or "reading list" with saved pdfs/epubs, and filters to see saved webpages.
This would all have to be perfectly integrated and intuitive to effect widespread adoption though, which is the tricky part.
I believe in you guys.
I agree with Graham. The true reading list is needed.
The reading list feature in Edge was a replacement of a long used feature in Internet Explorer "save web page as Web Archive, single file". It provided a single file copy of web page that could been opened from any computer and continue reading the content of web page.
Removing both features in new Edge would be a huge mistake and throw us back to very old ages.
I remind you that internet is not archived place, and content is being constantly changed, moved and removed. It was the way to preserve the content for own usage.
Moreover the way how you migrating the reading list is worst possible.
1. we are loosing the saved content of web page (the state retrieved from favourites is not the same)
2. you are mixing user favourites with reading list pages,
3. we are loosing time when reading list entry was saved to reading list (the historical order was very important), ex. I saved many pages from amazon for next Christmas gifts, those pages will be lost due to expatriation of the offers and pushed into single folder with all the others.
4. reading list was a good temporary stack to continue on reading web page as it was very good synchronised with other devices,
5. reading list in Edge was a complementary feature to tabs aside, because tabs aside never was properly synchronised between devices
List of use cases:
1. Save the list of Christmas gifts over the year, (partially implemented in collections, state of web page not saved - expired content will be lost)
2. Quick store interesting page to read it later in unchanged state, (no replacement, collections too complex to use for it, favourites are not easy for use in this case)
3. Quick store interesting page to continue on another device later (no replacement, send to device buggy and require to point target device; collections are too heavy, because there is a lot of actions to take, we need one button solution; favourites makes it hard to retrieve link, because of lack of chronological order)
4. Save references for master thesis (no replacement, collections does not store page state, favourites does not store page state)
5. Keep interesting recipes to try for weekend dinner (no replacement, collections does not store page state, favourites does not store page state, workaround as copy page into OneNote)
