Discussion - Getting back to websites important to you

[kopoku]

Hi, 

Thank you all for the insightful discussion about your use cases of the Legacy Microsoft Edge's Tab Set Aside feature and confirmation prompt when closing a browser window. 

In that thread, some of you have mentioned how seamlessly Collections could work with the Legacy Microsoft Edge's Tab Set Aside feature while others see these features as having distinct use cases. 

We continue to explore how we can improve existing features and their integration with one another to help you pick up where you left off with your browsing.

To get a better understanding of your scenarios, I have a few questions I'd like to ask:

1.  How many groups of tabs did you have set aside in the Legacy Microsoft Edge?
2. How long did you typically keep these groups of set aside tabs?
3. Are you aware of or have you used the Recently closed tabs experience which is accessible in the More menu (…) and in the full page History experience (Edge 83 Canary/Dev/Beta)?
   1. Recently closed tabs automatically saves your 25 most recently closed tabs and browser windows with their tab history for 2 browser sessions. When you restore a recently closed tab or browser window, it is removed from Recently closed. You can use the Ctrl (CMD on macOS) + Shift + T shortcut to quickly restore closed tabs or browser windows. 

   2. What do you think about the Recently closed tabs experience?

4. Do you use the "Continue where you left" setting (edge://settings/onStartup) which automatically restores the tabs from your last active browser window on browser restart? Why or why not?

5. How do your use cases differ amongst Tab Set Aside, Collections, and Recently closed tabs? 

Regarding some of your specific feedback: 

• The tabs you set aside in the Legacy Microsoft Edge were migrated to the "Other favorites" folder during the first run experience. 
• Collections created using the "Add all tabs to a new Collection" are named using a date-time format e.g. Month Day, Year. 

Thanks, 

Kofi from the Edge Localization, Collections, and History teams

[#2]

@kopoku 

Answers to Questions

1.  How many groups of tabs did you have set aside in the Legacy Microsoft Edge?
   • 50+ on home computer and 50+ on work computer. 
2. How long did you typically keep these groups of set aside tabs?
   • Some are stored for months, over a year. 
   • Some are reviewed and saved again quite often, returning back to them every week or month to pick up where I left off. 
   • Some are temporary and returning back to it after I restart my computer
   • Some are saved for a couple days and then reviewed, read, watched and close.
3. Are you aware of or have you used the Recently closed tabs experience which is accessible in the More menu (…) and in the full page History experience (Edge 83 Canary/Dev/Beta)?
   
   1. Recently closed tabs automatically saves your 25 most recently closed tabs and browser windows with their tab history for 2 browser sessions. When you restore a recently closed tab or browser window, it is removed from Recently closed. You can use the Ctrl (CMD on macOS) + Shift + T shortcut to quickly restore closed tabs or browser windows. 
      •  I need saved grouped sessions, not single-tab history which quickly is lost when I browse over 100 websites a day.

   2. What do you think about the Recently closed tabs experience?

      • Useful if I accidently close a tab, browser crash, or accidently closing of browser. NOT the same as Set Tabs Aside and is not a useful replacement at all. 

4. Do you use the "Continue where you left" setting (edge://settings/onStartup) which automatically restores the tabs from your last active browser window on browser restart? Why or why not?

   • No because Edge Legacy is my primary browser. This may be useful for crashing a browser but does not address Set Tabs Aside use cases.

5. How do your use cases differ amongst Tab Set Aside, Collections, and Recently closed tabs? 

   • Collections has not filled any of my cases to-date. I see some useful features in exporting but is a mess and a pain to use. I much prefer Set Tabs Aside with the export features
   • Recently Closed Tabs is useful for immediate needs to recall a accidently closed tab or browser crash. Not useful for reviewing related tabs that were part of a browser session.
   • Set Tabs Aside I will detail separately 

• The tabs you set aside in the Legacy Microsoft Edge were migrated to the "Other favorites" folder during the first run experience. 
  • Horrific. I now have 69 sub folders and difficult to see what all of it is and is polluting my favorite list. Favorites/Bookmarks are sites I visit everyday, not a sampling of my browsing history. I need them migrated back to Set Tabs Aside feature!
• Collections created using the "Add all tabs to a new Collection" are named using a date-time format e.g. Month Day, Year. 
  • Closer, but missing 2 critical features. First, it needs to close all tabs in window when adding to collection. Second, it needs to remove that group and all tabs from Collections when opening them all.

Set Tabs Aside Use Cases:

As a DevOps Engineer, I am constantly searching Google/Bing for how to do something in PowerShell, C#, or other language. I find multiple examples of what may or may not work. This brings me to 5-7 related tabs plus the search tab. Quite often, I have to stop and come back to this work. I Set Tabs Aside to put that research into a grouped session. Now I have a clean browser to work on a different task. I may or may not come back to this for a few weeks. When I do, I click to return all the tabs and pick up where I left off. The tabs that provide the most useful information, I send the article to OneNote for permanent reference with link and data intact. 

As an IT user, I often start reading a Wiki to learn a new topic. I click on 5-7 different links and start reading. Sometimes, I have actions to take such as figuring out how to do this install or get access to all that I need. As this is something I do partially through the day and have other tasks to complete, I will Set Tabs Aside so that I can pick back up later and have a clean browser to work on the next task.

As a user, I go through headlines on a site and open up several tabs of what I would like to read. Some are longer than I want to read at the moment. I go to next tab and read it's story. This can lead to 50 tabs open and reading maybe 45 of them at a time. I don't want to lose the others, so I Set Tabs Aside and close everything down. I do something else for a bit, watching tv, gaming, life. I may come back and read the latest news. Maybe a day later, or weeks later, I will pick up where I left off on the larger articles and restore those tabs and then close them when I'm done.

In all of these scenarios, I am wanting to group a set of tabs together to triage/review/read later. The goal is get them out of the way so I can have a clutter free browsing experience for other tasks. When I'm ready, I restore them to continue working towards closing them. This is why they are not Favorites. Favorites are intended to be revisited over and over again. For example, going to TechCommunity for regular consumption. Collections is close, but it is keeping my tabs when I add to them and not removing the temporary session when I open them. I need the same behavior of Set Tabs Aside which allows me to group these tabs into a session and close the other tabs. When I restore them, I need the Collection to go away. If I need to save them again, I will set them aside with what is left.

[#3]

1.  How many groups of tabs did you have set aside in the Legacy Microsoft Edge?

Spoiler

30+ & sometimes more than 50.

2. How long did you typically keep these groups of set aside tabs?

Spoiler

Some forever, while others for months & some are temporary.

3. Are you aware of or have you used the Recently closed tabs experience which is accessible in the More menu (…) and in the full page History experience (Edge 83 Canary/Dev/Beta)?

1. Recently closed tabs automatically saves your 25 most recently closed tabs and browser windows with their tab history for 2 browser sessions. When you restore a recently closed tab or browser window, it is removed from Recently closed. You can use the Ctrl (CMD on macOS) + Shift + T shortcut to quickly restore closed tabs or browser windows. 

2. What do you think about the Recently closed tabs experience?

Spoiler

That's useless, I never used it, except that I just use Ctrl (CMD on macOS) + Shift + T shortcut to quickly restore closed tabs or browser windows. (closed because of some crash or by accident.)

4. Do you use the "Continue where you left" setting (edge://settings/onStartup) which automatically restores the tabs from your last active browser window on browser restart? Why or why not?

Spoiler

Yes, I use it all the time, why?

• useful in many scenarios like when accidental closed browser,
• I want to use the tabs I was using in earlier session (most important)

5. How do your use cases differ amongst Tab Set Aside, Collections, and Recently closed tabs? 

Spoiler

Tab set aside: 

• Useful for having different browser sessions for different type of tasks,
• Helpful in organizing the workflow efficiently (different groups for different works)
• Much easier to use than collections and recently closed tabs (actually recently closed tabs are horrific)

Collections: 

• As the name suggest, for collecting all types of things from internet
• like different types of shopping,
• like having an organized info or collection of articles and other useful stuff in a single collection
• adding different notes to those collections
• adding comments/notes to collections
• easily share with others (I hope this feature got extended)
• Add option to collaborate with other users collections (would be very useful)
• Many other threads on use cases are there in this forum regarding collections, you can search for them.

Recently closed tabs:

• I don't use them at all except the shortcut key Ctrl (CMD on macOS) + Shift + T shortcut to quickly restore closed tabs or browser windows. 

Note:

Spoiler

1. I hope you improve collections feature, Right now it's not that of useful and feels slow when compared to set aside tabs.
2. Either give support for set aside tabs or add similar capability to collections (unifying similar collections is always better), right now collections can't be used for replacement of set aside tabs.

[#4]

@kopoku 

1. How many groups of tabs did you have set aside in the Legacy Microsoft Edge?

Depend on the project that I'm working on. Most busy days up to 50.

2. How long did you typically keep these groups of set aside tabs?

Unless I will return to them or I will forgot the group exists. Usually normal time is a few hours (20%)/ few days (30%) / few months (10%) / never (40%). Sometimes I do not want to restore all tabs, but I would like to only add one or more pages to tabs aside.

3. Are you aware of or have you used the Recently closed tabs experience which is accessible in the More menu (…) and in the full page History experience (Edge 83 Canary/Dev/Beta)

3a. Does not store it between PC was turned down and is not synced. I have to keep the browser session between different classes at university (9 subjects each semester). I return to those sessions when I need. It is required for me. It takes too much time to organize (store and reopen saved links from collections). I and my friends at faculty stick to use legacy Edge.

3b. What do you think about the Recently closed tabs experience?

It is good only for tabs(one or entire set) accidently closed. It can not be trusted that tabs will not be overridden by opening limit (you store limited amount of tabs). I open up to 30 tabs from one web search results. How you think opening and closing tabs would mess up the recently closed tabs list?

4. Do you use the "Continue where you left" setting (edge://settings/onStartup) which automatically restores the tabs from your last active browser window on browser restart? Why or why not?

It would work when I have only one subject at the semester at the same point or create separate Edge profiles for each subject. It is crazy to do so. Also switching between many profiles need to configure all settings etc.... You should think about tabs aside like "a browser clipboard for the tabs"

5. How do your use cases differ amongst Tab Set Aside, Collections, and Recently closed tabs?

Tabs aside, to store current state of work, when you need to pick it up. Ex you work on the research for your project for given subject at university, but lecture ends and you need to start new browser and go on with next subject. When you get home you have state of your work from different lectures. (snapshot of your work to continue later). Mozilla Firefox had in the past possibility to keep all opened sessions and reopen them later, but idea was badly realized. There was not preview of the tabs stored in the session and comparison which session you want to open. It was not possible to merge tabs stored in session with current session. All that problems were solved in the Tabs aside function. It is easy to use thanks to button located in tabs bar. It is easy to compare different tabs aside(s) thanks to panel view. It will be much more complex to compare sets of tabs stored in collections. The view created for tabs aside is a breakthrough.
Collections - when you work on something structured (master thesis, shoping for Christmas) and you have time to take notes and organize your stored tabs (draft work).
Recently closed tabs - backup if you closed some page that you had open just 5 min ago to get it back. The browser history is a good place to get it too. But the recently closed tabs is quicker to access. (backup plan).

[#5]

@matt_bits 

(snapshot of your work to continue later).

---

I like this phrasing. We want a snapshot of the tabs and browsing history of that window to continue our work later.

From a UI perspective, Set Tabs Aside is much better for showing you at-a-glance details than Collections. Collections shows the tab previews with no details until you click on it. Then, you get a list of tabs. Set Tabs Aside, you get bigger tab previews and the page title at the bottom of the tab. This gives far more context to what tabs are part of the group. It also has horizontal scrolling so you can see more tabs. These 2 features make it much easier to quickly go through groups to find a tab session you want to restore. These features should be added to Collections to make it easier to browse and see what is inside Collections while keeping the detail list view when clicking on a collections.

[#6]

@kopoku 

1.  How many groups of tabs did you have set aside in the Legacy Microsoft Edge?
   1. About a dozen
2. How long did you typically keep these groups of set aside tabs?
   1. Typically just a few days but some were around for a month or so
3. Are you aware of or have you used the Recently closed tabs experience which is accessible in the More menu (…) and in the full page History experience (Edge 83 Canary/Dev/Beta)?
   1. Recently closed tabs automatically saves your 25 most recently closed tabs and browser windows with their tab history for 2 browser sessions. When you restore a recently closed tab or browser window, it is removed from Recently closed. You can use the Ctrl (CMD on macOS) + Shift + T shortcut to quickly restore closed tabs or browser windows. 

   2. What do you think about the Recently closed tabs experience?

      1. Yes, I've used it, and it's useful for pulling back tabs I accidentally closed "recently" but I open and close hundreds of tabs over the day, so it's never useful for restoring anything I did more than an hour or so ago

4. Do you use the "Continue where you left" setting (edge://settings/onStartup) which automatically restores the tabs from your last active browser window on browser restart? Why or why not?

   1. Yes! If I need to restart the browser or restart Windows to pick up an update, I want the browser to automatically come back to the last state it was in (note: I leave a browser window open 24x7 so it is only ever closed due to browser/system updates!)

5. How do your use cases differ amongst Tab Set Aside, Collections, and Recently closed tabs?

   1. See above for recently closed (useful for accidentally closed tabs); tab set aside was great for "context switching" because all the tabs went away and then stayed in the side drawer until you restored them; collections are more of a glorified favorites list (in fact I rarely use favorites at all); I have ten collections right now, each named for a theme, and I add notes to specific items to remind me of where I was or next steps to take -- I really miss the transient nature of tab set aside!

[#7]

@kopoku 

1.  How many groups of tabs did you have set aside in the Legacy Microsoft Edge?                           Around a dozen or so
2. How long did you typically keep these groups of set aside tabs?                                                      Around a week generally. Sometimes even for a month.
3. Are you aware of or have you used the Recently closed tabs experience which is accessible in the More menu (…) and in the full page History experience (Edge 83 Canary/Dev/Beta)?     Yes, I am aware of that feature. But I don't use it that often.
   1. Recently closed tabs automatically saves your 25 most recently closed tabs and browser windows with their tab history for 2 browser sessions. When you restore a recently closed tab or browser window, it is removed from Recently closed. You can use the Ctrl (CMD on macOS) + Shift + T shortcut to quickly restore closed tabs or browser windows.                                                                                                     

   2. What do you think about the Recently closed tabs experience?                                         It is good and does what it says.

4. Do you use the "Continue where you left" setting (edge://settings/onStartup) which automatically restores the tabs from your last active browser window on browser restart? Why or why not?                                                                                                                               No, I don't. I prefer a fresh window whenever I open the browser. If I want to continue with what I was doing earlier, I can easily use the Recently closed tabs feature.

5. How do your use cases differ amongst Tab Set Aside, Collections, and Recently closed tabs? 

I feel that an important difference is that Tab Set Aside is much faster and easier to continue with. For example, I am casually surfing on the web. I find many interesting news articles and open all of them in different tabs. i suddenly realise that I have to do research on a project. So, I set aside these news article tabs and get a fresh browser window. Later on, I can restore these tabs. I don't need to store them permanently. So, after I have restored them, they no longer remain stored in the browser. When I close the tabs after reading the news articles, I will probably not need them again. So, Set Aside Tabs is temporary storage of tabs.

While doing research, I want reliable information that I am going to store for a long period of time. So, I will add my tabs to a new collection so that I don't lose them and I can access them whenever I need them.

In my opinion, the collections feature is better in the sense that it is more organised and has quite a few useful tools. However, when I send all my tabs to a new collection, the tabs still remain on the Window. So, now, again, I have to right click and close all tabs. 

Similarly, in Edge legacy, when I restore all tabs, then they are removed from the list. In the case of collections, however, the tabs still remain in the collection.

So, I strongly believe that the new Edge should have a Tab Set Aside just like the previous Edge. These features should co-exist, each having their own use cases.

Also, in the "Tabs you have set aside" list, there should be an option that can send all those tabs to a new collection in case the user wants to store them more permanently in a categorised manner.

[#8]

Let me explain with some common scenario of using Set Aside:

Sometimes let say I am doing research on specific topics and I opens multiple tabs and some of them are helpful, so I want to make like a folder to have them all in that folder and instead while all of them were open , I click set aside and add a name for them.

In meantime, I had requirement to add side from other tabs into the like folder which I created and normally I will remove them once I done with my research or project unless website is important for future which I add them into favorite.

It is also helpful when let say I opened too many tabs and it is hard to see and browse over so I will set them all aside and open new tabs and I refer to set aside for old tabs to have some free space to work.

[#9]

@kopoku 

Hi,

I usually keep aside 10 tabs and I keep them for 12 hrs- 1 day.

[#10]

@kopoku 

Really history and favourites should be able to handle this task. The scenario my family encounter is where they don't close tabs when they have finished with them. This leaves them with maybe 40 tabs open and no idea what they are. History doesn't work terribly well and it is sometimes impossible to find pages for some reason. If the history recorded check points such as all the tabs open when the user stopped using the browser they would be able to go back and could safely close the entire lot.

We keep getting new ways of reinventing the same functionality such as the reading list, but I feel they divert attention away from improving the originals.

[#11]

@kopoku 

1. How many groups of tabs did you have set aside in the Legacy Microsoft Edge?
   1. alot see screenshot 
2. How long did you typically keep these groups of set aside tabs?
   1. I'm honest sometimes I forget to close them dates back up to 7 months a reminder for tabs that are kept aside for too long would be a nice touch for my forgetful :grinning_face_with_sweat:
3. Are you aware of or have you used the Recently closed tabs experience which is accessible in the More menu (…) and in the full page History experience (Edge 83 Canary/Dev/Beta)?
   1. Recently closed tabs automatically saves your 25 most recently closed tabs and browser windows with their tab history for 2 browser sessions. When you restore a recently closed tab or browser window, it is removed from Recently closed. You can use the Ctrl (CMD on macOS) + Shift + T shortcut to quickly restore closed tabs or browser windows. 
      1. Yeah its helpful sometimes but not as organized as Set Tabs aside and snapshots are the most helpful 

   2. What do you think about the Recently closed tabs experience?

      1. So far its great and a nice addition 

4. Do you use the "Continue where you left" setting (edge://settings/onStartup) which automatically restores the tabs from your last active browser window on browser restart? Why or why not?

   1. Yes but the only reason for me to use that is because set tabs aside is gone like it was before but its still very convenient  I can see myself keep using it even if set tabs aside like in old Edge comes back.

5. How do your use cases differ amongst Tab Set Aside, Collections, and Recently closed tabs? 

   1. Recently closed tabs: easy I want to use that to start quickly where I left
   2. Collections: To be honest just a modern way of favorites.. too much interactions takes up time well thats picky 
   3. Tab Set Aside: To get different sessions organized I like that you can see a snapshot instead of relying on your memories of that provided link with some random images taken as preview image in comparison to Collection. And that you can open individual links with just one your second mouse click out of your Set Tabs Aside. Collections take up to 3 clicks plus your recognition on that tab. 

[#12]

@YasinAkimura 

Recently closed is very useful, but I wouldn't have expected to find the list in history. Perhaps a more on the primary list of 5 recent tabs would be more intuitive.

I always use continue where I left off.

I've never used set aside tabs or collections. Both appear to replicate favourites.

[#13]

@kopoku 

Please add the ability to set aside tabs in Microsoft Edge. I used it A LOT. 

[#14]

@kopoku 

Hello there, just wanted to answer about the "Set Aside Tab" thing that was on Legacy, and wanted to bring it back (hopefully) to new Edge. Well these are some of my answer regards to this questions.

1.  How many groups of tabs did you have set aside in the Legacy Microsoft Edge?
• Usually when I do my homeworks that require me to open at least more than 20 journals per day. That's only 1 topic of my homeworks though, if I want to search another topic, then it could be more than that with freshly opened another Legacy browser (so I do run many many tabs as I do the Legacy browser too.)
2. How long did you typically keep these groups of set aside tabs?
• Well, I'm very well aware that this thing could help me in the future, so I would say more than 6 months! Well some of them I could keep it for  a year and It was very very useful cause I just one-click away where I was and here you go!
3. Are you aware of or have you used the Recently closed tabs experience which is accessible in the More menu (…) and in the full page History experience (Edge 83 Canary/Dev/Beta)?
• I'm sorry if my words kinda harsh, but if I do know it, I wouldn't comment just like this. The Legacy one, for set-aside-tabs only just One-click-away to use it. So to answer to that question, no I do not know any of that. Just missing the easiness of the Legacy brought to me.
4. Do you use the "Continue where you left" setting (edge://settings/onStartup) which automatically restores the tabs from your last active browser window on browser restart? Why or why not?
• Maybe not. The legacy taught me the easiness to use it. So, my primary browser was the Legacy because it's very very useful and efficient (although it's not like the new one because of the speed and fluidity, but I would prefer the Legacy one, because the increased of my productivity of using the Legacy).
5. How do your use cases differ amongst Tab Set Aside, Collections, and Recently closed tabs? 
• Well, I'm gonna go a bit personal in terms that I use this 3. But, honestly, I do more tend to care the Set Aside Tabs cause it gives me something that I couldn't before like I can't do different browser sessions for each tasks that I'm doing instantaneously. Very very easy to organize the tasks that I want to work and I want to set aside for a moment. Also, then again, One-click-away to access the Set Aside Tabs. For the other 2, I'm sorry that I couldn’t give any comments about that because it's very inefficient to do.

Well, i hope you guys know what i want to say for this. I know you guys doing a tremendous job about this browser and it's impact for all the people who using this browser. This browser has been day-to-day use for me since the windows 10 came out. So, here i am and maybe that's it actually. The only downside of the new Edge (for me, personally) is just there isn't the Set Tab Aside feature though.  

[#15]

@kopoku

I was update Microsoft Edge to new Chromium-based Edge. Unfortunately, I lost all my set aside tabs nothing in my Favorites & Other favorites folder. Can I do system restore and back to previous state?

Please advice any solution to recover?

[#16]

@fgawinson 

You could reset the laptop. And then sign in to your Old Edge account.

[#17]

@Kam 

But before i didn't sign in within Microsoft Edge. 

[#18]

@fgawinson 

Then, sorry. I can't help. Your son might like this link. 

[#19]

@kopoku 

1. How many groups of tabs did you have set aside in the Legacy Microsoft Edge?
   6-20
   
   
2. How long did you typically keep these groups of set aside tabs?
   Up to 24 hours
   
   
3. Are you aware of or have you used the Recently closed tabs experience which is accessible in the More menu (…) and in the full page History experience (Edge 83 Canary/Dev/Beta)?
   Yes, but I wouldn’t use it for this purpose; I rarely use it in the first place. It’s difficult to locate the tabs you’re looking if you’re opening and closing tabs very often. I would rather favourite the tabs into a folder temporarily than rely on recently closed tabs.
   
   
4. Do you use the "Continue where you left" setting (edge://settings/onStartup) which automatically restores the tabs from your last active browser window on browser restart? Why or why not?
   Yes, but it has a completely different purpose for me.
   
   
5. How do your use cases differ amongst Tab Set Aside, Collections, and Recently closed tabs?
   
   Tab Set Aside: I have to focus on something else for now. I would like to set aside a group of tabs hassle-free for up to 24 hours. I don’t wish to rely on completely separate browser profiles requiring me to log in to sites again. I don’t wish to rely on recently closed tabs requiring me to manually locate and potentially lose important tabs. I don’t wish to rely on Collections which doesn’t fulfil the same needs. Please bring back Tab Set Aside!
   
   Collections: I was excited for the feature when it was introduced, and I’ve tried to use it as if it were Tab Set Aside. Unfortunately, it’s way too sluggish and doesn’t fulfil the same needs.
   
   Recently closed tabs: I’ve accidentally closed a tab recently which I want to recover.

[#20]

@fgawinson  I have a very similar problem where I saved like two months of research sources in favorites, now they're gone so if somebody from Microsoft could solve that, that would be kind of amazing.