Forum Discussion
Tab Preview - Discussion
Hi Insiders, thanks so much for your feedback on the tab experience in the new Microsoft Edge. From reading your comments, it is clear that many of you would like an easy way to view more information about your tabs to quickly identify which one you are looking for. This problem can be particularly painful when you have many tabs open at once, perhaps appearing similar to each other with repeated site titles or icons, and you'd like to avoid having to switch to each of them to find the right one. Many of you specifically cite "tab preview" from the legacy version of Microsoft Edge as a helpful tool in this situation.
Top Feedback Item: Bring the tab preview feature from the current version of Microsoft Edge
As we investigate this feedback further, we'd like to ask for your help to make sure we are solving the right problem and get the experience just right. For example, in the Microsoft Edge Legacy , there were actually a couple of methods to preview the contents of a tab. One way was to hover over a tab, and a little thumbnail and description of that specific tab would appear with more information. Another method was to select an arrow to the right of the new tab button to open a persistent preview of all the open tabs simultaneously.
Could you tell us more about your experience in this area, and what you would like to see going forward? For example, which of the legacy version of Microsoft Edge tab preview features did you specifically use, and how did you use it? What problems did this feature help you solve and how? What types of information is particularly useful in a preview of a tab and why?
Thanks for your help, we look forward to working with you to improve the new Microsoft Edge in this area.
132 Replies
Elliot Kirk thank you for the question, let me share some scenarios:
1) I opened multiple tabs and I see their titles but I want to have better preview on what is inside , so I select to view preview for all tabs and browse over to see which one is the one I am looking for.
2) In other case, I do have some idea about tabs by title so I just want to mouse over and see which one is the one I am looking for.
So we need both options.
I am also wondering, will we have ability to preview video?
I am also interested in add special icon for tabs to show whether they contains video or picture. In addition, it would be interesting to have special highlight for currently played video. So sometimes, I am opening multiple tabs and while browsing, I am hearing sounds and I am not sure which tab it is , it would be nice to have some special highlight on tabs which are playing video or sound so I could find them quickly. May be setting special highlight or color on those tabs.
One other feature would be Tab Pinning like to be able to pin some favorite tabs and place them on left and also unpin them to make sure we won't lose them.
It also would be nice to have option like expand tab, so it shows all open tabs in full screen with preview for easier browsing and finding them.
Elliot Kirk I would love "to hover over a tab, and a little thumbnail and description of that specific tab would appear with more information", I will use this primarily.
Bring the Tab Previews/Thumbnails from old Edge to the new Edge
that was the best design you guys did
Elliot Kirk I would like to see both the hover preview and the arrow to see the persistent preview of all tabs at once. I did a ctrl+f search for "hover cards" and was surprised that no one had mentioned them. But Chromium supports experimental flags already available called "Tab Hover Cards" and "Tab Hover Card Images". When both are enabled, you get the same behavior as legacy Edge where hovering your cursor over a tab causes a thumbnail preview of that webpage to appear. Try it in Chrome to see what I mean. Oddly, this flag is not available in the new Edge. It seems like Chromium contributors have done half the work for you. Just perfect and implement that feature!
By the way, tab preview + tab groups + vertical tabs could be a killer combo.
Please bring the following facility to the new Edge from the legacy edge to make it different and better
1- Reading List and reading view
2- View tools like adjusting the fonts, changing line spaces and themes and ability to remembers a book's progress...etc.
3- Tap Preview, search and preview tap both by cursor or panel docked at the top
4- Set Aside
5- Ask Cortana
6- Pin to Strat
7- open with internet explorer
8- Annotation and make a web note
MS new these features and other very well they create them before so please work hardly to get these facility back to the new edge.
Regrads
- Spoiler
Derarg wrote:Please bring the following facility to the new Edge from the legacy edge to make it different and better
1- Reading List and reading view
2- View tools like adjusting the fonts, changing line spaces and themes and ability to remembers a book's progress...etc.
3- Tap Preview, search and preview tap both by cursor or panel docked at the top
4- Set Aside
5- Ask Cortana
6- Pin to Strat
7- open with internet explorer
8- Annotation and make a web note
MS new these features and other very well they create them before so please work hardly to get these facility back to the new edge.
Regrads
Reading view which is Immersive Reader mode is now in the new Edge browser, it was also called Immersive Reader at some locations in Edge legacy.
Pin to start is also available, also Pin to taskbar and Pin to desktop, simply use the ellipsis menu button to Pin sites to task bar or install them as an app in Edge.
Reading list and any feature related to books are depreciation.
there are no more books to be bought from store.
in the screenshot which is 2 Windows store categories on top of each other. the one at the top belongs to older Windows 10 version and the one below is the current Windows 10 store.
Set Aside tabs is also (kinda) implemented:
if you want to for example read kindle books, here is how
Elliot Kirkso I'd like tab preview to be persistent and NOT on hover because I need to be able to look quickly across the dozens of tabs I have open. the top tab far of Edge works well, but it would also be nice to have the Quick Tabs option from older IE versions where you could tile the tab previews to take up the full browser window instead of having to scroll. the important thing is persistent tab previews where we can see the contents of many tabs at once.
- I like this idea, in Firefox you can do this by CTRL + TAB shortcuts.
Windows uses ALT + TAB shortcuts to show all the open windows and Firefox uses CTRL + TAB shortcuts to show all the open tabs.
it'd be great if Edge used the same shortcut which is very familiar to Windows too.- pretty sure I remember Joe Belfiore demo'd having Edge tabs show up as individual windows when you used Alt-Tab at a Build: is that still on the roadmap @elliotkirk ?
Elliot Kirk Please implement BOTH ways (hovering AND the arrow button) because they are both extremely useful and were amongst the best features of the old Edge.
Also please implement scrolling in the tab bar... When you have multiple tabs opened, they get very very tiny and basically useless. The way the old Edge handled this (by making the tabs scrollable) made it perfect.Yes, please bring tab previews to edge. Personally I am more of a fan of single tab highlighting previews, but a tab preview button that shows all tabs previews would be nice as well.
If single tab previews were brought in please make sure the delay in preview isn't overly long, I think a 2s delay before preview is good.
- 2s is way too long. If i wanted to wait 2 seconds for every tab preview to appear, i could just click on each tab manually and see their contents myself.
to view the preview of 10 tabs, it would take 20 seconds. with my mouse I can cycle through 10 tabs in less than 7-8 seconds.
so I think the tab previews must be instant not to waste users time and be Actually useful.
Hey, I was wondering if the 'send tab to devices' option is going to be added anytime soon. The only feature that is stopping me from porting from google chrome to MS edge is the lack of this feature. When i'm reading a pdf or from a website on my computer and need it on my ipad, i use this feature to send it to my other device.
Elliot Kirk I did like tab preview, especially for touch devices (and the way it is used on Xbox One). Adding this into the new Edge would be a sensible move, and would ensure that Edge continued to be more capable/usable on tablets and other small form factor Windows devices.
