Dev channel update to 84.0.502.0 is live

[josh_bodner]

Hello Insiders!  Today we’re releasing build 84.0.502.0 to the Dev channel.  This week, we’ve got an article describing Automatic Profile Switching (informally referred to as Guided Switch in the past) in more detail:  https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2020/04/30/automatic-profile-switching/.  As for all of this week’s most noteworthy additions: 

Added features: 

• Added a “don’t show again” option to the warning that appears when launching Edge with Administrator privileges. 
• Added the ability to exit ink/highlight mode in PDFs by hitting the Esc key on the keyboard. 
• Added security to the saved payment cards section of Settings by requiring extra authorization before editing a saved card. 
• Added the ability for Windows Information Protection for extend to the Share feature. 
• Added a red PDF highlighter color. 
• Added checkboxes to the entries on the Favorites and History management pages. 
• Added new Read Aloud voices. 

Improved reliability: 

• Fixed an issue where all webpages and extensions crash immediately upon load. 
• Fixed an issue where video on certain websites like Netflix sometimes doesn’t load properly. 
• Fixed an issue where viewing certain Settings pages crashes the browser. 
• Fixed an issue where right clicking a highlighted portion of a PDF crashes the browser. 
• Fixed a crash when signing into the browser. 
• Fixed a crash on Mac. 
• Fixed an issue where signing out of the browser and then attempting to sign back into the browser using the same email address fails. 
• Fixed an issue where exporting a Collection to Excel or Word fails for certain Collection names. 

Changed behavior: 

• Fixed an issue where the Shy UI was too eager to deploy when the mouse was near the top of the screen. 
• Fixed an issue where tooltips sometimes get stuck onscreen even when the Edge window is no longer in the foreground. 
• Fixed an issue where autofill popups sometimes appear over website-generated popups when typing into text fields on websites. 
• Fixed an issue where the Feedback dialog sometimes closes unexpectedly. 
• Fixed an issue where websites installed as apps sometimes uninstall themselves. 
• Fixed an issue where subsequent web pages from the same site sometimes can’t be installed as apps once one page from a site is. 
• Fixed an issue where the title bar for websites installed as apps is sometimes too short. 
• Fixed an issue with IE mode tabs where browser dialogs to log into websites are sometimes hidden. 
• Fixed an issue where IE mode tabs sometimes aren’t zoomed properly. 
• Fixed an issue where videos sometimes appear cut off or too small in their frame. 
• Fixed an issue where searching on the Favorites management page sometimes doesn’t initially scroll the page to where the first entry is found. 
• Fixed an issue on Mac where the media controls sometimes appear on the Touch Bar on webpages where there is no controllable media playing. 
• Fixed an issue where attempting to delete text when editing an item in a Collection sometimes exits editing unexpectedly. 
• Fixed an issue with the surf game where Time Trial mode sometimes doesn’t save high scores. 
• Removed the back button from certain websites installed as apps. 

Known issues: 

• Users of the Kaspersky Internet Suite who have the associated extension installed may sometimes see webpages like Gmail fail to load.  This failure is due to the main Kaspersky software being out of date, and is thus fixed by making sure the latest version is installed. 
• Some users are seeing favorites get duplicated after we made some previous fixes in that area. The most common way this is triggered is by installing the Stable channel of Edge and then signing into it with an account that has already signed into Edge before.  Fixing this should be easier now that the deduplicator tool is available.  However, we’ve also seen duplication happen when running the deduplicator on multiple machines before either machine has a chance to fully sync its changes, so while we wait for some of the fixes we’ve made to come to Stable, make sure to leave plenty of time in between runs of the deduplicator.  We hope that this will be improved now that version 81 is released to Stable. 
• After an initial fix for it recently, some users are still experiencing Edge windows becoming all black.  Opening the Browser Task Manager (keyboard shortcut is shift + esc) and killing the GPU process usually fixes it.  Note that this only appears to affect users with certain hardware and is most easily triggered by resizing an Edge window. 
• Some users are seeing “wobbling” behavior when scrolling using trackpad gestures or touchscreens, where scrolling in one dimension also causes the page to subtly scroll back and forth in the other.  Note that this only affects certain websites and seems to be worse on certain devices.  This is most likely related to our ongoing work to bring scrolling back to parity with Edge Legacy’s behavior, so if this behavior is undesirable, you can temporarily turn it off by disabling the edge://flags/#edge-experimental-scrolling flag. 
• There are some issues where users with multiple audio output devices sometimes don’t get any sound from Edge. In one case, Edge becomes muted in the Windows Volume Mixer and unmuting it fixes it.  In another, restarting the browser fixes it. 

As always, thanks for all your valuable feedback! 

[#2]

@josh_bodner 

Thank you very much for fixing the Shy UI deployment issue. This will now make my fullscreen experience truly great.

[#3]

I know we're not supposed to rely on flags settings, they may be removed at any time etc. But tab groups was revolutionary for me when I discovered it, and was hoping it would become a fully fledged official feature at some point. Is there any chance of this?

[#4]

@Jamie_Thelin @josh_bodner Yes, not only is tab groups gone from flags, but so is one of my personal favorites: focus mode. I liked the ability to focus a tab and treat it more like its own app just for that session (without installing it as an app). These were two Chromium features that worked perfectly well in Edge when enabled. Any reason they were removed?

I hope Microsoft is working on their own version of tab groups if they're not allowing the built in one.

[#5]

@josh_bodner So, Josh, when will the stable version be rolled out to everybody? I know you can go install it (put it on my home computers on January 15th), but when will the old Edge start to get upgraded automatically? Should be soon, but I thought this would have happened already.

[#6]

@josh_bodner 

I will not consider moving to Edge while I believe there is any chance you might remove the ability to turn off the abominable scrolling 'personality'. Make the switch a permanent on/off option in settings. Just to be clear, that one word 'temporarily' in the OP will mean me NOT choosing to move to Edge even if it otherwise qualifies.

I will not consider moving to Edge until desktop and Android versions can sync history.

I also will not consider moving to Edge (desktop and Android - it's both or neither) until Android Edge (i) provides an option to have the controls at the top; (ii) has access to the edge:// pages, especially flags; (iii) allows choice of sites pinned to new tab page; and (iv) has a method of 'darkifying' web pages. whether through an inbuilt option like in Android Google Chrome, or ability to use an extension like Dark Reader as with Android Firefox (old and new).

It's funny - or sad, depending how you look at it. Last November I was comparing the new replacement Firefox Android browser AKA Firefox Preview AKA Fenix with Android Edge, and realised I needed the exact same 5 things missing from both (the 4 in the paragraph above plus full syncing between Android and Desktop where for me 'full' syncing means passwords, favorites AND history). I provided feedback and reviews to both, and pretty much committed to going forwards long term either with Firefox or Edge (desktop and phone together) depending on which of you, Mozilla or Microsoft, dealt with my 5 issues first in your respective Android platforms. I moved onto testing Firefox Preview Nightly and Android Edge Beta, checking for those 5 things in each release - but not switching to either as default browser as I wouldn't until all 5 issues were addressed in one or other.

Here we are now in May. Mozilla added an option to move the controls back to the top in December (1/5), then gave access to their equivalent to the flags page (2/5), sync of passwords, favorites AND history (3/5), and pinning chosen sites to new tab page (4/5). Two weeks ago that moved to being the Android Firefox Beta; and at the same time Nightly gained the ability to use the Dark Reader extension (and zippily, not slow and crawling like in old Android Firefox). 5/5 and Firefox Nightly became eligible for me to make it my default browser on my phone. In that same November to May, Microsoft with the Android Edge have managed ... 0/5. Partial but not complete syncing (no History) and none of the rest.

When ability to use Dark Reader moves from Nightly to Beta, then I'll move my default phone browser to Firefox Beta. And when Fenix becomes the replacement main Android app, then that will become my default phone browser, Firefox will remain my desktop browser, and the Microsoft dev team will have lost. So, Microsoft, if you want me to change to being an Edge user you have that limited window left. You need to produce a BIG Android Edge update, addressing all 5 issues, plus the desktop update to give the history syncing with the phone, before Mozilla moves everything from the current Nightly to the main public Android Firefox. Given the deafening lack of Android Edge progress over the last 5 months I'm not holding my breath.

[#7]

Good stuff! Any word on when the password GUI for the Mac builds will be operational again? Right now, it only shows a blank page. A bug report was filed for this. Thanks!

[#8]

@josh_bodner Great update this week too ! Shyer Shy UI, tooltips issue (I thought it was definitely an issue with a Windows Insider build, so it's surprising to see here hahah), and security for the payment cards (The only reason I didn't add any yet !) are especially interesting to me 🙂 .

Sadly it also looks like the issue with clearing data on browser close is still there - Exceptions to the "Clear cookies and site data on close" rule are disregarded : while the cookies are persisted for these exceptions, the local storage is deleted regardless.


And finally, the expiration of some flags is a bit saddening as well - Tab groups for example, which got into Stable chrome, can still be enabled on Chrome canary with chrome://flags/#temporary-unexpire-flags-m82 , but not on Edge I'm afraid. Same for Tab hover cards, which were easier to use than tooltips. I'll be on the lookout for their comeback, hopefully 🙂 !

[#9]

@josh_bodner is there any action required to enable Password Monitor? Should the assumption be that if we are not seeing any warning dialogs that our credentials haven't shown up in any leaks?

[#10]

@josh_bodner I have Discord intalled as a PWA and now it shows this bar whenever I navigate to a different server away from the page where I installed it from.

It used to not show this for URLs in the same domain but now it shows up if the path just changes slightly. 😞

[#11]

It also happens with a bunch of other installed PWAs like Canva or Trello. The extra URL bar takes up a lot of space. I understand the need for safety and to warn users of cross-site navigation, maybe the devs could put it in the title bar instead?

[#12]

Thanks for the PDF editing changes, Edge Dev is now easier to use with Surface pens. How about having a touch option to bring up Shy UI? I can't trigger it at all using touch. Using the Surface pen, it takes a downward swipe and even that doesn't work half the time.

[#13]

@josh_bodner After some digging in Settings, I don't see any place where you can enable the password monitor. Even the link shown in the promotional gif (edge://settings/passwords/passwordMonitor) simply tells you to enable the Password Leak Detection feature. Any help would be appreciated.

[#14]

@green_toe I don't mind the bar when it only showed up once the domain name changed, but now this implementation which makes it show up on the slightest path change is a bit excessive IMO.

[#15]

@josh_bodner Lot of edge flags (20+ of them) are missing now (such as Group Tabs) , any reason why? and also this is not listed..

[#16]

Yes, where have the flags gone?

[#17]

Enjoy Firefox.

[#18]

@Dakico @josh_bodner 
Following-up on this, do the teams that update the announcements and tips not coordinate with each other?

How is it that a big flashy announcement is made about a new feature rolling out in Dev (password monitor), as a "Try It" tip, but this isn't announced or mentioned at all in the release notes for Dev?

This is all endlessly frustrating and confusing to Insider members and testers. 🤷‍:male_sign:

[#19]

> Fixed an issue where tooltips sometimes get stuck onscreen even when the Edge window is no longer in the foreground.

Thank you! I'd been meaning to report that via feedback but couldn't reproduce it reliably enough to do so.

[#20]

I noticed some things that have been removed from about:flags....what's going on? I lost tab groups and tab hover cards - both of which I loved and used daily. Why were these flags removed? Was this a mistake? I thought these would be added back in this update but I guess not (I checked stable and it's there but not in edge dev for whatever reason)