Some thoughts on the New Tab Page ...
I have always wanted, and have in Firefox and Google Chrome, a (built in, not by 3rd party extension) simple New Tab Page with just a search box and some links - links chosen and arranged by me, not what the program chooses as my 'Top sites'. No feeds etc.
I appear to have that here, to an extent, although that is assuming two things I'm not absolutely certain about yet: that the links I wanted and created with the + box, which replaced the ones that appeared by default, will 'stick'; and that the Show Feeds set to On Scroll means the feed won't actually load at all unless I scroll or hit the 'Personalised news & more' button - which I won't, but I'd like the option to not have that button.
Assuming I'm right about those, there are still some features I would really like to see.
1 In Firefox and Google Chrome, there is a three dot menu visible on hovering over the link tile with an edit option for the link, which allows entering a name that is displayed under the icon for the link rather than the www.somewhere.com URL. You really need to add that.
2 At the moment, the choice for the background of the NTP appears to be just blank or a changing image provided by Microsoft. While it doesn't actually matter to me much, I rather think some users would like to be able to pick a particular image for the background.
3 The number of link tiles. Currently in Edge Dev it is one row of 8 - and the positioning of the one row and the search box just looks wrong, unbalanced. Google Chrome has two rows of 5 tiles per row. Firefox has an option of one or two rows, with 8 tiles per row. Personally the best for me is what Firefox used to have: two rows of 6 tiles. I rather suspect that this varies from person to person, but with 8 tiles per row, as in Firefox since ... 58, I think it was, and here in Edge Dev now, for me I can't take them in at a glance and actually have to focus on them individually to find the tile I want and then click, whereas with 6, whether in one row or two, I can somehow take them in just with a glance and just click the one I want without concentrating and focusing them individually. I would suggest and request that in your NTP you provide options for one row or two, AND a user option for how many link-tiles per row. (Although I won't complain if you make it a fixed 6 tiles per row, I'm sure some others will, like the people who pressed for the change to 8 per row in Firefox. I really do think it is quite individual the number different people find most comfortable, so it should be a user choice.)
4 For people like me who want particular links for the 'top sites', there really needs to be an easy way to change the order; e.g. in Firefox and Chrome you can just drag and drop the tiles to swap round the positions. Currently in Edge Dev one has to think ahead and create the links in the desired order, left to right. But if you wanted later to move the last one to the second position, it would mean deleting all but the first link, then re-creating the one that used to be last so it is now second, then re-creating all the others. Major pain.
I'm hoping some or all of these features are already planned and will turn up in due course. But for any not in the current roadmap I would like to make the case for adding them. I especially would like to see some options that would let me have two rows of 6 link-tiles per row (whatever else they do or don't allow).
