Collections Feedback

[dgkimpton]

I wanted to offer some feedback on Collections. Overall I love the concept, being able to add notes, snippets, images, and links all in one place from the browser is exceedingly nice :)

1. Clicking on a link in a Collection sometimes immediately loads the page. I've gotten used to relying on the 'are you sure' prompt. Thus, I lost the first attempt at this post by accidentally clicking on a collection in the wrong tab. Super irritating, but I also can't reproduce this now :\

2. Have an option to always open the Collections panel when opening a new window. If I'm going to really use Collections, I want them to always be visible, so having to do this manually just adds an extra step for every window I open.

3. The collections panel can't hold more than eight items without scrolling. This number is quickly exceeded. Would it be possible to have each Collection take up less space? Possible thoughts on this: put the '# items' text on the same row as the title; use a 2 column 2D grid with just one thumbnail per collection; optionally hide the icons; spend less space on the title "Collections"; and/or something else. 

4. Sub-Categorisation. Being able to sub-categorise collections would be super handy. For example, I have a Collection for things I want to buy for my workshop; this includes such things as a table saw and airconditioning. Pages and snippets about the two items are now jumbled up together, but it would be much more helpful if I could have them grouped.

5.  De-duplication of links. I often end up finding the same information multiple times through different paths and adding it to a Collection. It would be awesome if Edge could detect this and silently not add the link a second time if it already exists.

6. Ability to share with Microsoft Word on my desktop. I have a desktop installation of Word, not the online version; it would be very helpful if the 'Send to Word' function worked for me too. Surely it is just a case of generating a .doc file? (I thought the CopyAll might work for this, but it didn't copy the images). Alternatively, make it possible to generate a local folder containing an HTML page of the Collection and all the images.

7. Resizable Collections panel. I want it visible all the time, but I don't always want it taking up 15% of my screen. If not resizable then maybe collapsible? Like to a thin vertical bar that shows the name of the current Collection, the 'add' button, and when clicked on expands to the full panel?

8. Cross-referencing. It would be useful to be able to refer to a snippet, image, or link from a Note. Imagine a button 'Link' in the note window that let you then click on another element in the current Collection which would then add an active hyperlink to the note. This would help me bring structure to my thoughts.

9. A way to un-delete Collections, or at least an 'are you sure' prompt when deleting a Collection. I'd much rather the undo option than the prompt, but either is better than nothing.

10. An option to chose which image to use for a hyperlink. Edge does a decent job at coming up with a default, but sometimes it would be nice to be able to pick a different one.

I see Collections as the killer feature over Chrome - it's something unique and extremely handy, so I don't want this to sound like a critical list. Just some thoughts on how to make it even better (for me). Thanks for reading.

[#2]

@dgkimpton Thank you for all of that thoughtful and detailed feedback! I'll pass this along to our Collections team, but it would also be great if you can submit the text of this post through our feedback tool (Shift+Alt+I), which would help the team keep track of it. (As a heads-up, we'd ideally love to have a separate submission for each idea/suggestion--which allows us to give them individualized attention--but I recognize that might be time-consuming.)

We appreciate your thoughts!

Fawkes (they/them)
Project & Community Manager - Microsoft Edge

[#3]

Hi @Deleted,

yes of course. Ironically I started there but decided that it didn't apply when I was asked "what's happening" and went looking for an alternative contact point. So that's feedback for the feedback system I guess. Not a problem to drop them into separate feedbacks next time, I mistakenly assumed that having them together would be less spammy. 

[#4]

@dgkimpton Great work on showing how collections could be improved.

The most important thing for me is to allow me to 'update' a collection. For example, if I have a collection of 'news sources' and open them all, I would like to choose to 'update the collection'. 

The way it works now is that it creates a completely new collection. Adding a website page to a collection just does not work well with many sites in a collection.

[#5]

@GGG444 

Yeah I agree, the process of adding tabs to a collection needs improvement. There's of course an option in the Collections panel to "add current page", and an option when right clicking to "Add all tabs", but both of these options pose their own problems.

If you open all pages of a collection, open additional tabs, then want to add the new tabs to the collection, using the "add current page" method is tedious because you have to do it for each individual tab. And if you do "add all tabs" and select the same Collection you initially opened all of the pages that were already in the collection that are currently open as tabs are duplicated inside of the Collection.

Ideally, using the "add all tabs" option should only add tabs that aren't already in the collection. This would be a decent enough implementation, and would essentially allow "updating" a collection, which would make the feature much more useful. Additionally, having an easy way to remove a specific tab from a collection without having to either have the Collections panel pinned, or opening the Collections dropdown and deleting it.

As it's implemented currently, it's just a slightly improved version of bookmarks. But with an update functionality like you suggest, it could become a very useful method of essentially suspending a browsing session dedicated to a specific task and coming back to it later. And I think that would make for a much more game-changing "Collections" feature .

Personally, if I were to design a Collections feature for a browser, I would include a per-collection toggle for a "dynamic collection". Any collections with the "dynamic" setting selected would essentially run as their own browsing session, with their own copy of the browsing history unique to that collection, and after ending the session would snapshot the current state for later. Then when you re-open the collection later you can pick up again right where you left off, no need to manually add or remove pages that way but it also doesn't prevent them from being used the way they are currently implemented either.

Maybe that's just me though, idk.

[#6]

Well done explanation.

I realize that I would also like to
* 'archive' some groups when a project is done.
* have the subgroup option you spoke of

In the end, AI will help us take browser tabs and the rest and manage it intelligently so we will have more complicated problems. hehe.