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
While I agree with many other posts in this thread, I feel like adding my own voice.
Reading List, to me, was useless in Old Edge. It felt like it was just a folder in Favorites that looked special. I was turned off from it because, while Favorites could be transferred to Chrome or another browser, the Reading List was stuck on Edge. I do not want to see the return of Reading List in Edge. Collections has already borrowed the visual style of Reading List; I could just create a collection called Reading List and call it a day. For the Stable release of Edge, importing Reading List should create a Collection in Collections instead of a folder in Favorites. The only point of using Reading List in Classic Edge was the unique visual style.
I do not want the Edge team to end up with four unique ways to save lists of web pages. We are planning:
Favorites (already here, must be kept the same for compatibility with other browsers)
Collections (already here, brand new, and awesome)
Set Aside Tabs (Not here yet, but pretty unique)
Reading List (imported into favorites)
When we talk about Reading List features, we're talking about features that were not in old Edge. These brand new features could be added to the brand new Collections. For example, the ability to choose "view offline" on a collection by collection basis would be neat. Another feature I have wanted for a while is the ability for the Reading List to remember what part of a webpage you stopped reading at - just like a bookmark in a real book. "Bookmark section" would be a great feature in collections too; I sometimes save an entire webpage to a collection because of a 2 paragraph chunk 3/4th through an article. Inking on webpages isn't out yet, but I'd assume that'll be as useful in Collections as it would have been in Reading list.
Arguably, the Reading List has enough potential to be its own unique tool, and this had been making me uncertain about my desire to see it be ignored in favor of collections. However, while writing this post, I realized something: if Reading List is added with unique features, it would really be depriving Collections of greater flexibility. If Collections retained all of its current features plus all planned Reading List features, users wouldn't have to choose which tool to use. They wouldn't be saying "jeez, I really wish I could use Collections for the notes and organization, but it needs to be offline so I guess it's getting put in reading list."
I can only see one potential negative in this: Collections might end up overcomplicated. That's something I can't really predict, so I'm sticking with what I've said here.
Meanwhile, it could be considered to add a bookmark-like feature other than Favorites or Collections. The main distinction is that an item forever remains in Favorites or Collections list until deleted, but this shouldn't be the case for the Reading List or a Bookmark Feature. In such a feature, a page should automatically be removed once it has been visited by the user.
Apart from this, optional features like Offline Saving could be added.
I stopped using Reading List on Classic Edge, not because I didn't like the idea, but because it stopped syncing across my devices (as did Favorites). The sync experience in New Edge has been equally abysmal, and now the Collections have stopped syncing (and Favorites syncing is still disabled, with only a few weeks until launch).
So, one of the most important things to get right, should you consider to revive Reading List, is to make the list sync properly. Unfortunately, after years of sync failures, I doubt your ability to deliver and recommend that you stick to getting the announced features working first.
Yes! This so much! I lost count how many months I have had issues with reading list syncing. It took between 5 minutes to never for the changes to reflect on a secondary device.
Worst experience were when you had to reformat *Windows* before reading list sync functionality would resume to work normally.
I think bringing over the reading list feature would be useful, yes you can technically use favourites to accomplish the same task, but it feels a little clunky since it's not designed to be used for rapid adding and removing.
Collections could be a good alternative, I haven't tried collections too much yet, but for Collections to be a useful alternative it would have to be available on the mobile app, since my main use for using a reading list like feature is when I'm on my iPhone and find a article I want to read I need a way to easily add that to a list for reading later on my desktop.
So whatever comes of Reading List, for me the priority is that it solves that use case and does it in a way where it's very easy to add items and then remove them once done. YouTube kind of manages to accomplish this with their Watch Later feature, which is just a personal playlist but with quick context menu actions to allow easy adding and removing from that particular playlist.
I whole heartedly agree with this. It explains everything I expect from a basic reading list experience. Of course more functionality can be added, but as long as these basic scenarios are covered, I am satisfied.
- Collections + offline capability = reading list
AaronMcHale wrote:I think bringing over the reading list feature would be useful, yes you can technically use favourites to accomplish the same task, but it feels a little clunky since it's not designed to be used for rapid adding and removing.
It literally takes 2 clicks to add something to favorites, you can do it in 2 seconds.
- click on the star button on the address bar (omnibox)
- click "done"
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)
Elliot Kirk Thanks for the update. I love the reading list and therefore hope that it will return in the new Edge! So please bring it back with a feature set at least on par with the legacy reading list. Oh and I would also love it if you could add a keyboard shortcut for activating the immersive reader view and also one for opening the reading list.
I might sound like a broken record but I will say this again (and again (and again (and ... )))
Please first port all the functionality from Edge classic. Nothing more, nothing less and exactly as it worked. Preferably pixel by pixel identical.
Why? Because the users know how that works so we will not have to spend money on retraining them. Money better spent on Christmas gifts for example
They will also have all the functionality they expect from Edge.
As it stands today. We will not deploy the new edge for many months - I'll wait until it gets at least a decent set of features
matsmcp wrote:I might sound like a broken record but I will say this again (and again (and again (and ... )))
Please first port all the functionality from Edge classic. Nothing more, nothing less and exactly as it worked. Preferably pixel by pixel identical.
Why? Because the users know how that works so we will not have to spend money on retraining them. Money better spent on Christmas gifts for example
They will also have all the functionality they expect from Edge.
As it stands today. We will not deploy the new edge for many months - I'll wait until it gets at least a decent set of features
I don't know how to use Reading List and I never bothered to learn because I never felt the need for it.
just like at least 95% of the people in the world, I Rarely used Edge classic due to its lack of features, extension support and lots of other issues.
so we shouldn't expect everyone to know how Edge classic works because the market share can explain everything.
obviously if Microsoft apply just the same features to the new Edge, nothing will change. so everything needs to be reevaluated.
- I am always curious when I hear people say 'I never used Edge because of its lack of features.' I assume that only applies in business/commerce circles, because for home users, browse, search, favourite/bookmark, reading list (for things you would add to favourites but want to easily find again across your desktop/laptop PC's tablets and phones, printing, sharing via Windows 10 Apps such as Mail/Photos/or SEND TO PC from a phone, built in PDF reading/saving/printing, and the awesome ADD NOTES markup features that saves any web page into a photo that can be edited and annonated, along with Microsoft Store Extensions for Edge sounds like a superb collection of features.
What is missing from that list? Internet Explorer is still part of Windows 10 for business users if other protocols are needed. If you use Edge on your Windows 10 devices, Android phones or Apple phones, and use Microsoft Launcher as well on Android, the experience is almost seamless - and far quicker and simpler than synchronising via original Google Chrome.
I think its more a problem that 95% of the population use what they are used to (such a Chromium based browsers), based on information given to them by people that do not understand the best features of Classic Edge. I believe Microsoft has the potential to create something that is recognisable, usable, stable and with Fluent Design looks great too, with the new Chromium based Edge.
Posted via Chromium Edge Beta Version 79.0.309.54 (Official build) beta (64-bit)
Windows 10 Version 1909. I write/speak UK English which is important to me.
Hi Elliot Kirk
Please make Collections to be available Offline, this way it will be a good replacement for Reading List
All the info and details are in this topic:
developers even commented on that topic but no further follow ups or results have been made so far.
- Offline extensions are a good start. It should also be faster to add to Collections. In Reading List the addition tool was lightning-fast. Also, you should be able to go to a page, like edge://bookmarks, to show all your collections in a page instead of a popup.
Freddie-Zhang The ability to manage Collections in an edge:// page, similar to managing Favourites and History, is a good idea. Have you suggested it to the Edge developers?
- Check this out : Specially point 3,
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Discussions/Updated-on-27-Nov-Things-to-consider-about-quot-Collections-quot/m-p/1024064- Nice :3
exact, collections at least for me replaces the reading list well, just need to add the Offline function
