New Tab Page Walkthrough

Microsoft

Microsoft Edge’s new tab experience is designed to be a clean, delightful experience that helps you find what you need on the web and get you where you want to go next. Microsoft Edge starts with a new tab, and you can create more new tabs by clicking the “+” (next to existing tabs).

 

We’d love to hear what you like about our new tab experience, what doesn’t work for you, and anything more you’d like to see in this experience.

 

Default layout for new tabs

The default new tab layout uses a daily background wallpaper sourced from Bing’s image of the day collection. This experience also offers the standard in-page search box as well as quick link tiles .

Celebrating the image as the hero of this experience, we’ve created space across the middle for the picture to shine through.

 

In this layout, News is at your fingertips, just a scroll away To bring it up, you can either click the category headers along the bottom or scroll the page.

 

ntp1.png

In the upper right is a  quick way for you to choose various layouts for the page.

 

Settings flyout

To see more layout choices, explore the settings flyout in the upper right corner of the page.

ntp2.png

 

Focused. Keep it simple.

Focused layout has the fewest visual elements, giving you just the basics: a search box & quick link tiles.

ntp3.png

 

Inspirational. Daily background wallpaper.

This is our default layout, introduced above. Here’s a run through the core elements on the page:

  • Daily background wallpaper from Bing.
  • Image caption and interactive museum card for more information about each picture. Clicking the museum card takes you to more information about the image.
  • A rich repository of news is also at your fingertips, just a scroll away, and can be accessed anytime by scrolling down.

ntp4.png

Informational. Stay informed with news.

Informational layout balances news with search & recent sites. In this layout, the rich repository of news powered by Microsoft News  is present to help you stay current on the topics you care about.

 

  • Personalized news: click the “Personalize” link to set the topics that will appear in your feed
  • We program trusted news from the world’s best journalists in more than 140 countries and 28 languages, keeping you plugged into the events of the day and information relevant to your individual lives.
  • Microsoft News keeps people informed across the web, phone and PC, using our long-tested approach of curating news via publishing partnerships, human editors, and AI.
  • We work with more than a thousand premium publishers and more than 3,000 brands in all major global markets – like USA Today, The New York Times, FOX News, The Washington Post, and many more – to aggregate the best news, videos, photos and other content and deliver it, for free, to people all over the world.

ntp5.png

 

Other layout customizations

You can explore additional new tab page layout configurations by turning individual toggles on and off.

ntp6.png

  • Toggling “Show most visited sites” turns on/off the quick link tiles
  • Toggling “Image of the day” turns on/off the background wallpaper
  • Toggling “Show feeds” moves the news content above/below the visible “fold” of the page

What do you think?

We would love to hear from you.  What’s your favorite new tab layout?  What additional new tab customization options do you want to have?  Anything else you’d like to see changed on new tabs?

 

Thank you for trying out the new Microsoft Edge and leave your comments below!

106 Replies

@Elliot Kirk I am a huge fan of the Inspirational setup.  It strikes a great balance between looking good and being useful.  

@Elliot Kirk I basically like the new tab page. Since you asked, I'd like an option that disables the news feed even on scroll. Also, I'd like to be able to rearrange the order of quick link tiles by dragging.

@Elliot Kirk Is there any way to add custom background instead of using picture from the bing?

@Elliot Kirk We should be able to totally get rid of news from the new tab. Hiding News behind a scroll is not good enough for me.

Personally I like insperational.  I like not having the news stuffed in my face (so to speak) and instead having a pleasant photo to look at.    I like having the choice of whether or not to look at the news by scrolling down.   @Elliot Kirk 

Dennis5mile

@Elliot Kirk I have custom setting - with just image of the day turned on - I love the Bing wallpapers. The only thing is that the search bar across the image spoils it, so it would be good to have another customisation toggle to turn it on or off. As a matter of fact, I almost never use it - I always search from the address bar.

 

I'm fine with the arrangement for the news feed - it's handy to be able to either click on the headings at the bottom, or just scroll down, and just a CTRL+Home to get rid of it and return to the top is quick and simple.

 

Cheers!

@Elliot Kirk 

 

I really like the inspirational view a lot. While I would've preferred to use my own wallpaper its still good the way it is. I would also like to be able to change the search bar to a custom search provider.

 

What I'm really missing is the option to grab and rearrange my favorite tiles. Also I miss the option to use a custom picture for the favorite tiles. I would also be really nice to have as many rows with my favorites as I like.

@KoshyG I managed to hide the news by enabling "Enable using the Microsoft Edge local NTP" in edge://flags.

@zeroeightysix Thank you

@Pete_FFC Yeah, option of toggle off the search bar. Interestingly, when you open a new tab, the URL bar is in focus (if you just start typing), and it can do searches anyway. The search bar in the tab page is actually redundant, even though most people expect a search bar to be there.

@zeroeightysix Thanks for the tip.

@Elliot Kirk I encourage the team to consider additional checkbox options under "Custom", such that the search box and news can be turned off too, resulting in blank NTP if desired with no extension necessary. It seems like this would be easy win vs. the seemingly popular opinion that NTP search/news elements can't be turned off in browsers because the vendor wants to advertise the search/news service. It also allows people to turn off what they consider to be distracting.

 

If the team doesn't agree, then it might be wise to ensure there's at least one NTP customization extension in the Edge extension store during beta to measure popularity and ensure tester coverage on that type of extension. (There are a number of extensions on Chrome Web Store that blank the NTP, these do appear to work in Edge Dev but we have to pop out to the Chrome Web Store to get them.)

@rjansen85, thanks for the feedback and glad to hear you're enjoying the inspirational layout! 

Good feedback on ability to remove news content all together. I'll be sure to pass it on to our new tab experience team.
Thanks for the suggestion! I'll file a feedback via the smiley face on behalf so we can make sure your feedback doesn't get lost.

@Elliot Kirk I'm liking the new tab page so far, but do have some of the same suggestions above:
1). Ability to turn off the search bar (why is it needed when the omnibox functions as the search box?). 
2). Ability to turn off the news feed entirely for those times extra focus is required.

 

and to add, unless I missed it:

3). Ability to change location of the news feed for those who live/travel abroad. I'd like to be able to click the settings gear icon and change it which is an option that was available on the old Edge new tab page.

 

Those seem to be the basics that are missing for me at the moment.

As a bonus: 4). The ability to set quick launch pages in place of "top sites." The UI is nice, but top sites is distracting whereas a minimal favorites-esque set up there would be more useful.

@rsfarris @Elliot Kirk 

A couple of observations:

  • Re: News at the bottom of the NTB - I followed the suggestion of @KoshyG  (thanks!) "hide the news by enabling "Enable using the Microsoft Edge local NTP" in edge://flags" and it looks much tidier. It's such as shame to have these great Bing images obscured by clutter.
  • If you have the NTP in full-screen, then the search bar on the page makes sense, as the omnibox isn't visible.
  • My second point raises the following questions:
    • Is it possible to automatically open Edge C in full-screen mode?
    • When in full-screen, the ability to hover the mouse at the top to see other open tabs and be able to switch to them while remaining in full-screen would be awesome. Especially on a smaller screen, you could really make the most of your screen real estate while keeping maximum productivity if you need to switch between tabs. Same applies to having the taskbar come into view when hovering the mouse at the bottom.
I'm partial to Focused with the light theme. In terms of additions, if we could turn off the news feed if we don't use it at all would be nice. Also, if we could customize the sites on our new tab page further, like renaming them, would be helpful. In your example screenshots you show full names on each but in my usage I'm getting URLs which aren't easily reable or commonly get cut off (example "mobile.twitter...." or "www.youtube....")
Custom title for manual add quick links will be great. 
Aside from most visited sites which should sync with history sync. Is manual quick links sync across devices?