Dev channel update to 88.0.680.1 is live

[josh_bodner]

Hello Insiders!  Today we’re releasing build 88.0.680.1 to the Dev channel.  To start with, we want to mention a specific issue that we know some of you have been running into where Edge won’t launch.  One of the causes occurs when an old Edge process is running in the background and won’t close to make way for the new one to start.  This cause requires a fix in Windows, and as of right now, that fix is beginning to roll out, so we hope that many of you who are seeing this issue will see far less of it after this. 

Next, for those of you who mentioned that National Cyber Security Awareness Month would be a perfect time for us to talk about safety and security in Edge, here you go!  We’ve got an overview of the latest updates to all our unique security features:  https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2020/10/26/safety-privacy-cyber-security-awareness-month/.  Along the same enterprise-focused lines, we’ve also got an overview of our recent updates to the enterprise new tab page:  https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2020/10/29/enterprise-new-tab-page-my-feed/.  Finally, for everything new that’s worth mentioning in the browser: 

Added features: 

• Adding support for Caret Mode to PDFs. 
• Added a warning dialog when closing a Web Capture that’s been inked on but not saved. 
• Added support for enhanced copy and paste on Mac. 
• Added a management policy to control Startup Boost.  Note that updates to documentation and administrative templates haven’t happened yet. 

Improved reliability: 

• Fixed a crash on launch. 
• Fixed a crash when viewing PDFs. 
• Fixed a crash when printing a PDF. 
• Fixed a crash that sometimes shows an error with cookie_exporter.exe. 
• Fixed a hang when running the favorites deduplicator. 
• Fixed an issue where edge://tracing fails to load. 

Changed behavior: 

• Fixed an issue where the Security section in Settings is missing. 
• Fixed an issue where the Downloads management page only shows the 30 most recent downloads. 
• Fixed an issue where Web Captures are sometimes taken at the wrong page zoom level. 
• Fixed an issue when taking a Web Capture where pages with fixed headers or footers aren’t captured properly. 
• Fixed an issue where Password Monitor alerts are seen even when the feature is turned off. 
• Fixed an issue where websites installed as apps sometimes use icons that are too big on the Start menu.
• Fixed an issue where using the Highlighter tool on a PDF sometimes results in more text being highlighted than intended. 
• Fixed an issue where the search Sidebar can’t be closed because the close button is missing. 
• Fixed an issue where data is sometimes able to be copied from Information Protected files when it shouldn’t be. 
• Fixed an issue where text notes sometimes get created unintentionally in a Collection. 
• Deprecated the ProxyMode, ProxyServer, ProxyPacUrl, and ProxyBypassList management policies since they’re all superseded by the ProxySettings policy. 

Known issues: 

• Users of certain ad blocking extensions may experience playback errors on Youtube.  As a workaround, temporarily disabling the extension should allow playback to proceed.  See https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/articles/known-issue-adblock-causing-errors-on-youtube/m-p/14... for more details. 
• Some users are still running into an issue where all tabs and extensions immediately crash with a STATUS_INVALID_IMAGE_HASH error.  The most common cause of this error is outdated security or antivirus software from vendors like Symantec, and in those cases, updating that software will fix it. 
• 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. 
• 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.  For users with discrete GPUs, updating graphics drivers may help. 
• 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, we couldn’t do this without you! 

[#2]

@ylefebvre we're still rolling vertical tabs out as an experiment, so there isn't a way to manually enable or disable them yet.  

[#3]

@xyzxyzxyz if this starts happening again, can you file feedback while you're in that state?  That will get us useful logs from your machine.  

[#4]

@Mapantz Ah, that's the "offline" new tab page.  It shows up whenever we can't hit the network to grab your real new tab page, and there's a known issue right now where if you open too many new tabs at once, you're more likely to see this.  If you haven't yet, can you also file feedback so we get an accurate count of how many people are seeing this?  

[#5]

@josh_bodner 

Hi Josh

I tried Canary and the same thing occurs.

[#6]

@Mapantz Are you seeing it for every new tab, or just occasionally?  Also, what happens if you try to open it a new way, like via Settings?  

[#7]

@josh_bodner 

Sorry Josh, I meant that the video playback issues occur with Edge Canary as well.

[#8]

@Mapantz we've had a few other reports specifically with 4K video being problematic.  Do you have any other non-4K screens you can try to see if it's specifically that?  

[#9]

@josh_bodner 

Sorry. I don't have any other monitors to try.

I get the problem whether the video is 1440p, 1080p (60FPS) and 720p.

It doesn't happen using other Chrome based browsers, only Edge dev/Canary.

[#10]

@Mapantz Okay, a few more things to check.  If you turn the resolution of your monitor down to something lower, does it still happen?  Have you turned off hardware acceleration in Edge?  If you try in a Guest window, does the same thing happen?  

[#11]

@josh_bodner 

Tried around 10 different resolutions, same issue.

It still occurs under guest window.

Turning off hardware acceleration makes the issue even worse!

[#12]

@Mapantz Somebody else experiencing this issue also noticed that, in order to compensate, Youtube was automatically decreasing the resolution of the video.  Like, if you let it automatically choose the quality, it will bump itself down to something pitiful like 360p even when you're fullscreen and can use 10x that.  Is that happening to you by any chance?  Also, when this is happening, do you notice the tab using a lot of CPU according to the browser task manager?  It sounds like this might be something specific to your kind of device since it's hardware dependent (turning off acceleration makes it worse) and not specific to your profile, so what kind of CPU and graphics do you have, and are your drivers up to date?  

[#13]

@josh_bodner 

The res doesn't decrease for me.

The video speeds up when I go in to full screen - like 10x faster, but the sound continues as normal. The picture then freezes and the sound continues.

It doesn't do it on every video, but it does do it whether it's 1080p, 2K or 4K etc

CPU spikes to around 20%.

CPU is a Core i9 9900K

Using the onboard intel graphics (UHD 630) drivers are all up to date.

[#14]

@Mapantz Is that 20% according to the browser task manager or Window's task manager?  If it's Windows, it sounds like it's maxing out a single core, which means the CPU is likely a victim, since I see no reason why one that new and powerful should be maxing out!  I think at this point, since you've got a way to consistently trigger this behavior and it's persisted through multiple Dev updates, we'd need to get more detailed information from you, which can't be done here.  If you go to https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com/en-us/support/request and open a support ticket (and also mention this thread since you've already put so much info here), they'll be able to get the more detailed logs we'll need to get this figured out.