Collections UI

Brass Contributor

Hey All,

 

I like the idea of Collections a lot because it can group my most important pages. That said, I've got a few suggestions and would like to hear thoughts:

 

  1. The panel itself is too wide, especially since it's width is not adjustable. Not only would I like it to be adjustable, it would be nice if it collapsed into a bar, that would then expand when I put my mouse over it. Otherwise it doesn't feel like a tool I'd easily use all day, every day.
  2. The size if the page entries within it are huge. I'd like to be able to make them smaller so, should I add a bunch of them, I wouldn't have to scroll so much.
  3. It would be nice if you could assign a color to a Collection that would fill the background of it when it expands, which then also becomes the color of the tab itself when you open the page, so you have a visual cue as to where it came from.
  4. I'd like to be able to set pages within a collection to always open pinned.

That's it for now. The Chromium-based Edge is really great, and I love using it.

 

Thanks,

Scott

19 Replies
Nice suggestions, I want all of them too!

@rosenbloomsnka @HotCakeX I concur. Excellent suggestions. Hope they make it through.

These are great ideas.

@rosenbloomsnka Thanks for the great suggestions, I'll pass this on to the Collections Team.

 

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

@rosenbloomsnka 

 

Agree and would also like to add that when entries have a thumbnail they take up even more space yet there doesnt seem to be a way to remove the thumbnail. I dont even think the thumbnail serves much purpose anyway to be honest , but at least we should be able to remove them individually or as a global setting to 'not display thumbnails'

+1 for all, and it would be great if collection was like a dropdown just like favorites, instead of such a big bully who collapses the web interface every time I use it.

@hussain5416 

 

I personally quite like the sidebar and styling as it currently is but would welcome the ability to reduce the screen real estate it uses. I am using large screens though , so I imagine on a smaller screen / laptop it would become more of an annoyance. Flexibility and configuration options I guess are the key issues here. As it stands you get what you are given and for many people it wont be ideal.

Well in that case Favorites are there to use, if they made Collections simple as Favorites then why even keep 2 identical features..
Spoiler

@philrice wrote:

@hussain5416 

 

I personally quite like the sidebar and styling as it currently is but would welcome the ability to reduce the screen real estate it uses. I am using large screens though , so I imagine on a smaller screen / laptop it would become more of an annoyance. Flexibility and configuration options I guess are the key issues here. As it stands you get what you are given and for many people it wont be ideal.


Well no need to imagine because I have a standard 13" Inches Laptop beside my PC and I use it regularly, Edge collections panel never felt too big or too small in it.

 

also it's not like Collections panel is visible all the time, I only open it when I need to save something there or take something from it. so most of the time it's collapsed. when it's not collapsed and visible, I need the thumbnails to be my guide to know quickly what product, article, video, image, gif etc is saved there, otherwise I would have to open them all in tabs to see the contents which would be the same as favorites.

@HotCakeX 

it will of course come down to people personal preferences as to if they feel it takes up too much space or not, so having the ability to configure it will mean the feature will be suitable for more people.
Same with the thumbnails, it depends on how you use the feature. For me in some of my collections the thumbnails are useless and just take up space. I make sure I know what the items are by editing and naming them in a way that I can quickly identify what each one is.  I can also see that in some cases the thumbnail could be useful though , so Im certainly not suggesting that the feature be removed, just the ability to remove thumbnails if you wanted to would be nice ( I would rather have them than not have them at all though)

Well, they would be similar in opening (like dropdown). I don't get the point how could just making it dropdown would change it's functionality. Functionality would be same as it is now (improving gradually). It would be just easy to use as dropdown instead of some sideshow which collapses the original window.
The point is ' I don't care if it comes from up or side , just Original website should not be collapsed everytime I open the collections,'

@philrice 

Spoiler

@philrice wrote:

@HotCakeX 

it will of course come down to people personal preferences as to if they feel it takes up too much space or not, so having the ability to configure it will mean the feature will be suitable for more people.
Same with the thumbnails, it depends on how you use the feature. For me in some of my collections the thumbnails are useless and just take up space. I make sure I know what the items are by editing and naming them in a way that I can quickly identify what each one is.  I can also see that in some cases the thumbnail could be useful though , so Im certainly not suggesting that the feature be removed, just the ability to remove thumbnails if you wanted to would be nice ( I would rather have them than not have them at all though)


Why not use favorites though? you can do the same in favorites. they are without thumbnails as you like, they can be synced, put into folders, given custom names etc.

@hussain5416 

Spoiler

@hussain5416 wrote:

Well, they would be similar in opening (like dropdown). I don't get the point how could just making it dropdown would change it's functionality. Functionality would be same as it is now (improving gradually). It would be just easy to use as dropdown instead of some sideshow which collapses the original window.
The point is ' I don't care if it comes from up or side , just Original website should not be collapsed everytime I open the collections,'


Which comment are you replying to?

@HotCakeX 

because favorites and collections are different, sometimes it is subtle but it makes a difference in how you use them. For example some of my reasons would be:

 

- You can add notes to collections , you cannot to favorites

- You can add 'snippets' of text selected from within a webpage, or an image to a collection which you cannot do with favorites

- You can easily send to excel or word the collection bringing it together in a nice format , which is good for research or sharing with others

- Collections (imho) are easier and quicker to navigate than favorites. I personally like to have the collection sidebar open most of the time on some of my desktops as it is a good quick way to navigate to certain Admin tools and pages

- with collections it is easy to 'open all' items in a collection (much like onetab works), in favorites it is not.

 

Now of course your point is why not use favorites instead when I want to not have thumbnails displayed, so the link to images feature  for example  sounds like a moot point, but it isnt really as for example I could have a collection with 7 or 8 items  which includes some images, some snippets, some notes and a couple of direct web page links. The web page links then display thumbnails that give no useful indication of what they are or have any usefulness. For example try adding azure portal and Endpoint manager in the same collection  you get the same useless thumbnail for both that just takes up lots of space :

philrice_0-1586013503184.png

In this case the ability to remove the thumbnail from individual items would be useful.

 

 

@philrice 

Spoiler

@philrice wrote:

@HotCakeX 

because favorites and collections are different, sometimes it is subtle but it makes a difference in how you use them. For example some of my reasons would be:

 

- You can add notes to collections , you cannot to favorites

- You can add 'snippets' of text selected from within a webpage, or an image to a collection which you cannot do with favorites

- You can easily send to excel or word the collection bringing it together in a nice format , which is good for research or sharing with others

- Collections (imho) are easier and quicker to navigate than favorites. I personally like to have the collection sidebar open most of the time on some of my desktops as it is a good quick way to navigate to certain Admin tools and pages

- with collections it is easy to 'open all' items in a collection (much like onetab works), in favorites it is not.

 

Now of course your point is why not use favorites instead when I want to not have thumbnails displayed, so the link to images feature  for example  sounds like a moot point, but it isnt really as for example I could have a collection with 7 or 8 items  which includes some images, some snippets, some notes and a couple of direct web page links. The web page links then display thumbnails that give no useful indication of what they are or have any usefulness. For example try adding azure portal and Endpoint manager in the same collection  you get the same useless thumbnail for both that just takes up lots of space :

philrice_0-1586013503184.png

In this case the ability to remove the thumbnail from individual items would be useful.

 

 


There is no snippet.

how Collections work is that they add a link to whatever piece of content you add to a Collection. if you add an image or video, their URL is added to the Collection.

that's why favorites can do the same.

as an example, you can't add an Instagram picture to a Collection, you instead add the link/URL of that picture to the Collection.

@HotCakeX 

 

Not exactly, and partly why I said 'sometimes it is subtle'

 

With snippets , yes it does just add a link but with a couple of slightly different behaviors.

 

Firstly in the way the link itself behaves more like a link to an anchor, taking you directly to that part of the page you are referring to. Now technically you could setup a favorite to do the same but far less user friendly or convenient. Often this feature might make little difference and a normal link might function just the same but if a page, say a medical paper published in a journal, is very lengthy then the ability to have the item link to an anchor point within that page can be useful.

 

Secondly, is in the way it displays the item in a collection. If you highlight a paragraph of text and add that as an item then that actual text is displayed in the collection. Following the item link takes you to the page yes - much like a favorite would but with the anchor type behavior I explain above - but the displaying of the text in the collection in that way can be very useful and quite a powerful tool for some. Im sure many will find it useful to have a key phrase displayed but with the ability to then go to the source of the whole article / page.

@philrice 

 

Spoiler

@philrice wrote:

@HotCakeX 

 

Not exactly, and partly why I said 'sometimes it is subtle'

 

With snippets , yes it does just add a link but with a couple of slightly different behaviors.

 

Firstly in the way the link itself behaves more like a link to an anchor, taking you directly to that part of the page you are referring to. Now technically you could setup a favorite to do the same but far less user friendly or convenient. Often this feature might make little difference and a normal link might function just the same but if a page, say a medical paper published in a journal, is very lengthy then the ability to have the item link to an anchor point within that page can be useful.

 

Secondly, is in the way it displays the item in a collection. If you highlight a paragraph of text and add that as an item then that actual text is displayed in the collection. Following the item link takes you to the page yes - much like a favorite would but with the anchor type behavior I explain above - but the displaying of the text in the collection in that way can be very useful and quite a powerful tool for some. Im sure many will find it useful to have a key phrase displayed but with the ability to then go to the source of the whole article / page.


 

 

I'm not talking about the way it displays. I'm saying that there is no snippet, Collections only save links to web contents. that's all. and it is exactly what favorites do.

 

anchor links are links and favorites and Collections both use links. this is something I've been using since the feature first was introduced.

I'm trying it even right now. went to a Wikipedia page, highlighted a paragraph from the middle of the page and added to Collection, after closing the page and clicking on that Collection item, it loaded the page from the top, didn't take me anywhere.

 

 

 

@HotCakeX 

 

What I mean is that the snippet of text is displayed in the collection sidebar like this :

philrice_0-1586019412049.png

 

which might be everything you need to save from a page, but you also have the ability to go to that page via the link. You wouldnt see that text in a favorite saved of the same page.

 

Re the anchor links comment I made , I just tried testing and you are completely right and it does not jump to an anchor point in the page. Strange as I swear I was experiencing that behavior yesterday but I cannot recreate it now. I remember thinking it was a useful feature. If I can I will put examples here of course but it certainly doesn't behave in that way by default.

 

@philrice 

Spoiler

@philrice wrote:

@HotCakeX 

 

What I mean is that the snippet of text is displayed in the collection sidebar like this :

philrice_0-1586019412049.png

 

which might be everything you need to save from a page, but you also have the ability to go to that page via the link. You wouldnt see that text in a favorite saved of the same page.

 

Re the anchor links comment I made , I just tried testing and you are completely right and it does not jump to an anchor point in the page. Strange as I swear I was experiencing that behavior yesterday but I cannot recreate it now. I remember thinking it was a useful feature. If I can I will put examples here of course but it certainly doesn't behave in that way by default.

 


Website developers add those anchor links to their website and not everyone do that. Microsoft Docs website is one of them that does it.

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/