Discussion - Set Aside Tabs and Warn on Close

Microsoft

Hi Insiders, we have received a lot of feedback about how you would like to close your tabs with the option of easily finding and reopening them later as you move between different workflows. Specifically, many of you are asking for the Tab Set Aside feature from the previous version of Microsoft Edge to be brought back. Some of you are also asking for a prompt to help avoid losing all your tabs such that you can’t find them again if you accidentally close the browser.


• Ask users if they want to close all tabs when they close a browser window
• Bring the tab set aside feature from the current version of Microsoft Edge

 

Each of these requests seem related to the fact that many of you have a lot of tabs open at once across many tasks and workflows. This leads to a situation where it can often be difficult to manage all of your tabs at the same time, and each additional tab makes it difficult to deal with all of the rest (e.g. tabs get smaller, harder to read each titles, many similar tab icons begin to blur together, etc.). But it can also be scary to close tabs and declutter your workspace, for fear of not being able to find things again later if you need to. We have definitely experienced this problem ourselves, observed it in our research and conversations with users, and agree it is an area where we want to invest in tools to help you be more productive across various tasks. We are actively investigating the best way to address this problem and would love your help and input as we proceed to make sure we get the experience just right.

 

We have looked through your feedback, and there are definitely some very valid reasons for why there was value in the Set Aside feature such as: Helping you pick up on a task later without leaving the tabs open when you aren’t using them, organizing your tabs into groups related to a similar task, and a short term home for more transient tasks that didn’t warrant saving in a permanent location such as Favorites.

 

We also reviewed feedback on the Set Aside feature itself from people actually using it in the previous version of Microsoft Edge, and there were some very valid critiques on how it worked and how it could be improved. For example, the Set Aside buttons being in a location where they were often accidentally clicked causing some to think their tabs had disappeared, requests to be able to set aside a subset of the currently open tabs rather than “all or nothing”, or requests to rename and personalize tab groups further to more easily find them again later.

 

The request for a prompt before closing the browser also feels related, because if people could always confidently find and reopen any of their previous tabs, then there would be less fear or concern about losing tabs if they are accidently closed. This would allow people to feel free to declutter and reduce the number of open tabs with no fear about finding them later if needed, and more easily focus on the subset of tabs they are working on now.

 

As we begin this journey of investigating how best to address these requests, we are asking for your help. Please continue to tell us more about your experience with Set Aside and closing tabs in Microsoft Edge, why these features are important to you in which types of tasks, what did and didn’t work for you about previous implementations, and how you would improve on these scenarios going forward.

334 Replies

@seancorfield @Elliot Kirk 

 

Sean, you captured my thoughts precisely! I've been in a bit of a hurry every time I try to get my thoughts on "paper," as it were. I'm not sure if you're saying you don't want or need the ability to name your set aside tabs groups, but I would like to have that option: it's not a deal breaker, but I'd like that.

 

Anyway, good job with your post.

 

Regards,

 

Dan

@Dan_AI4GK I wouldn't object to having the option to name groups of set-aside tabs, but given that tab groups are deleted from the sidebar when they are restored, I'm not convinced there's really much value in names -- since they'd "evaporate" any time you restored a tab group.

 

And if you say "Oh, but the browser could remember and reuse the name if you set aside tabs that came from a named group!", I'll offer these scenarios:

  1. Set Tabs Aside, name them Fred. Open three tabs, restore Fred. Now you have a mix of Fred tabs and non-Fred tabs. If you set them aside now, what happens?
  2. Set Tabs Aside, name them Fred. Continue working and Set Tabs Aside again and name this new group Joe. Now restore Fred and also restore Joe. Now you have a mix of Fred tabs and Joe tabs. If you set them aside now, what happens?

 

@seancorfield 

 


Set Tabs Aside, name them Fred. Continue working and Set Tabs Aside again and name this new group Joe. Now restore Fred and also restore Joe. Now you have a mix of Fred tabs and Joe tabs. If you set them aside now, what happens?

 


Ummmm... Mayhem?  :facepalm:  I do see your point. You would learn very quickly to keep your set-aside tabs pristine. There could be a warning that you have added new tabs; did you want to do that? Like I said, I could live with not naming set-aside tabs; just for my purposes it would help.

 

Regards,

 

Dan

I'm worry that only that some Edge legacy fans are replying to this thread @Elliot Kirk 

How could you justify to bring back the Set Aside Tabs when only a very small percentage of people used it. What's the point now that we have collections ?

I do not use Set Aside Tabs. I would like a prompt before a window is closed for the sole reason that I use Edge on a Surface Go, and I hit the close button by accident way too often while holding or carrying it. Ideally, this should be optional: I do not need it on my desktop.

@Yannick Plavonil 

as someone who barely used the legacy Edge, maybe only 0.001% of the time, I do feel the need for a Set tabs aside feature.

the difference with the collection is that, like @seancorfield  also mentioned, Set Tabs aside was a quick and single action button where you could put all your tabs aside and close your browser knowing that they are all safe. collections take more than 1 click and they are made for different purposes

@Elliot Kirk 

 

I really like both features, but it would be nice to have the option to toggle them.

For the Set Aside features, it would be nice to have a button to hide the button in the tab bar and use the feature in the tab's context menu and the ellipsis to make the UI cleaner if users prefer that. 

For the Warn on Close feature, it should behave exactly like the legacy Edge, with the toggle button to disable the feature the first time users see it, and the option in browser's settings menu to turn it on/off.

@Elliot Kirk Another former Edge Legacy user here. I loved Set Tabs Aside feature and I miss it in Edge Chromium. Sometimes I use Collections instead and its cumbersome for this use case at best. (I understand Collections are not meant to be used as a replacement of Set Tabs Aside.)

 

Many great ideas in this thread, I tend to agree with most of them.

 

Usually, I have more than one Edge windows open, each for a given context/task. It helps me focus on a given task, and I do not like too many tabs open in a single window, as I find it hard to navigate. I also rely on "Restore tabs from last session" feature, however it works only for the last closed windows. In multiple-windows scenario, I can restore only one of them this way. Set Tabs Aside would prove very useful.

 

While using Set Tabs Aside in Edge Legacy, I missed a few things (most already mentioned by others):

  • Sometimes I needed to name a group, as a reminder what I was doing with these tabs.
  • Sometimes I wanted to keep the group after reopening the tabs (or single tab). I want to have an option to either reopen all and let the group disappear, or keep it for later.
  • Sometimes I want to add a tab to an existing group. Otherwise I had to reopen the whole group, open one more tab and set it aside again.
  • Sync to other devices (esp. mobile Edge on Android) would be very helpful.
  • I can imagine using a whole tab for Set Tabs Aside interface instead of a flyout. Might use better screen real estate with bigger thumbnails.
  • I might be a minority on placement of the buttons though. I have a Surface Book with a touch screen and I use it a lot. Sometimes when I pressed Back button, I accidentally hit Set Tabs Aside instead, as these were really close to each other. It was really annoying :)

 

I believe Warn on Close might be useful for some people, as long as it is optional (like e.g. in Firefox). Especially when the dialog would have, besides Ok/Cancel buttons also Set Tabs Aside button as an option.

 

Also, as a multi-windows user, I would love to see an option to restore any session after I accidentally close a window or the browser crashes, not only the last one (which is, when browser crashes, basically random one). I believe using Set Tabs Aside interface for restoring such sessions would be natural.

@Elliot Kirk Setting tabs aside in the legacy Edge quickly became one of the most useful features, the lack of it in the new version has been painful - it was super useful when researching topics or working on a particular project and being able to set all tabs aside for later when moving on to something else. If you could bring it back that would be wonderful.

 

The warn on close dialogue was never as clear as it could be - there should always be a way to close the app while retaining tabs, as well as closing the app and deleting all tabs.

@seancorfield If there would be an option to keep a tab group after reopening (which I would really love to see, as an option), I would expect/prefer the feature to behave like this in your scenarios:

 

  • By default, pressing Set Tabs Aside would create a new group (single click, no hassle, default behavior).
  • Alternatively, I want to have an option to add all open tabs (or single open tab) to an existing group, named or not. Then I would expect all open tabs would be simply added, with removing duplicates.

@Elliot Kirk It's funny because it's one of those things that you really realise it's missing and needed after it's gone. I did use it before but in two circumstances. 1. When I want to clear up resources and come back to whatever research I was doing and 2. When I wanted to restart my PC for whatever reason but didn't want to add each tab as a favourite, just so I can revisit it upon restart. Let's say I installed a program that's requiring a restart. While that program was installing, I was doing extensive research on how to use it so I've got 10 tabs open, all of which I need to start using the program but in order to start using it, I need to restart. I also must add, that the position of where the "set aside" button was located, did deter me from using it as much as I would like. The two are too close together; the set-aside and the see all your tabs. 

@Elliot Kirk, I thought Collections was to replace Set Aside Tabs.  It's not as quick to save tabs but it is a better way to organize your tabs that you want to save or reopen quickly. I could see how Collections doesn't fully replace Set Aside Tabs but it could be in some way. Either set the tabs aside and give it a date and time in Collections and people can continue to use Collections as it's intended, organizing information for a trip, project or quick links to certain websites like royalty-free content (which I use to do with Favourite folders). I can see collections to replace Favourites in my use case unless you favourite random websites instead of websites themed, in my case, royalty-free content.

@JSyder I can relate to those use cases too. Right now to set resources aside, maybe I decided to game on the PC I currently open task manager and forcefully close Edgium/Chredge so when I open it again I can restart where I left off.

@pbilk Hahaha that's a good workaround, too. 

@JSyder Haha, yeah it is but it's definitely not a regular consumer method.

@pbilk @Elliot Kirk, there is no way that Collections can replace the ease and functionality of Set Aside Tabs. They're two different things that serve two different purposes, as far as I can see. Would it be possible to modify Collections so that it serves two purposes? Possibly; I don't really know. But, Set Aside Tabs was something that Microsoft already has developed and implemented.

 


@Yannick Plavonil wrote:

How could you justify to bring back the Set Aside Tabs when only a very small percentage of people used it. What's the point now that we have collections ?


@Yannick Plavonil 

 

First of all, it's not clear to me that "only a very small percentage of people used it (Set Aside Tabs)." How did you come to this conclusion? There seems to be a lot of interest in it, from my viewpoint. The simple fact that @Elliot Kirk opened a separate thread on this topic, saying "many of you are asking for the Tab Set Aside feature..." says a lot about that.

 

Secondly, if you don't use the feature, why are you concerned about Microsoft bringing it back? This sounds like a case of, "I don't have a need for it, so no one should have it." How about, "I don't have a need for it, but obviously a bunch of other folks do." I've always failed to understand the viewpoint of "I don't need it, so no one needs to have it."

 

Regards,

 

Dan

I believe the reason why this thread was started in the first place is because of interest/ need for this feature so we'd go with Microsoft's stats @Dan_AI4GK 

@Dan_AI4GK 

Spoiler

@Dan_AI4GK wrote:
@pbilk@Elliot Kirk, there is no way that Collections can replace the ease and functionality of Set Aside Tabs. They're two different things that serve two different purposes, as far as I can see. Would it be possible to modify Collections so that it serves two purposes? Possibly; I don't really know. But, Set Aside Tabs was something that Microsoft already has developed and implemented.

it is possible, collections just take more than mouse clicks and also Microsoft would need to add an option to add all open tabs to a collection.