Have feedback on the performance of Edge? We're Listening!

Microsoft

Greetings Microsoft Edge Insiders!

 

My name is Eleanor and I am a Program Manager at Microsoft on the Edge team. I am new to this forum and am so excited to be here and learn from all of you! Thank you for all the feedback, ideas and discussions you have shared so far in this community. 

 

Echoing @Elliot Kirk's words here, the attributes that you say matter most in your browsing experience are performance, privacy, and reliability. We have heard your wish for a faster, safer, more reliable and more private web browser experience - one that uses less memory and battery and has higher rendering speed and better stability.  We'd love to learn more about this and are looking for places to do better in browser performance. If you have any feedback, feel free to share.

 

Thank you for being here. We look forward to listening and engaging with you.

 

Eleanor

-The Microsoft Edge Team-

 

16 Replies

@Eleanor_Huynh Thank you so much for this post! Some quick suggestions I've always wanted in browsers in terms of performance:

 

1. Almost everyone uses extensions. But sometimes, you use a browser and after years of slowly adding extensions, you don't realize how slow your browser has gotten. I would appreciate a speed impact list of the users's installed extensions, showing the relative performance loss--primarily focused on the worst offenders. I know a few extension developers might get upset ("It's not that bad!"), but directing users to slow/bloated extensions would be a huge benefit for both casual ("are nine toolbars bad?") and performance users ("Wow, Honey embeds how many bloated scripts?")

 

Because Microsoft's talented team can work incredibly hard on making a fast browser & a few bad extensions could absolutely tank a user's experience. This focus would guide extension developers, too, towards making modern, performant extensions. Or, if it's not a stick, a carrot isn't bad, either: "Performance-approved extension".

 

Making performance data user-friendly (i.e., see Screen Time by Apple in iOS 12) can be difficult, but when done properly, you'll get the most loyal evangelicals: the enthusiast community.

 

2. One elephant in the room: auto-playing video/audio advertisements. For users, these ads unequivocally degrade network performance, gobble bandwidth, steal CPU & GPU cycles, increase battery drain, etc. It's exchanging pennies to manipulate human psychology + degrade device performance: that's a bad deal. The Edge Team mentioned in your recent Reddit AMA for "user feedback whether Edge should block ads natively": 

 

Finally, we occasionally hear requests for a built in ad blocking experiences in Edge. For most users, we find that extensions (combined with strong defaults around tracking prevention) are the best option here because you can choose from a variety of experiences and defaults, but we absolutely want to hear from you if you think this should be built in.

 

For auto-playing videos & audio, make it built-in. Full stop. Blocking them should be on by default, with easy options to allow auto-play once and allow auto-play permanently on user-chosen domains. We killed pop-ups. Let's kill these, too: it's a hijack, pure and simple. I'll leave it at that for now: I don't want to derail this thread, as this ad-blocking discussion unfortunately crowds out other optimizations (i.e., for those who already block auto-playing ads, etc.).

 

3. Battery performance is critical and whatever can be done should be done. I've not benchmarked Chromium Edge on my laptop, but browsers are the top application used by the majority of consumers (i.e., not prosumers). If they're not optimized, we've already lost half the battle. 

 

With Edge Classic, I absolutely noticed an improvement in battery life, but due to website compatibility issues, I went back to Firefox. If we can bring ALL the battery performance optimizations (or as much as possible) from Classic Edge to Chromium Edge, that'd really motivate users on low-end and/or performance-optimized devices to migrate.

 

Who doesn't want a browser that improved battery life, vs the standard fare choicese? See here for the latest results from last December (though focused purely on video playback, which i...

 

2019-07-17_21-35-04.png

 

Perhaps the extension performance scores from the first idea can detail battery life impact, too. :)

 

//

 

All in all, Microsoft has an incredibly unique opportunity to meld the great majority of users' interests with Microsoft's own in this once-in-a-development-generation shift towards the Chromium engine. Be the performant browser and users will come in droves.

 

@Eleanor_Huynh 

One thing that is really crucial for me is the perceived speed of scrolling. A web browser should stay responsive at all time. Pure rendering speed is important, but even a slower browser can give a better impression to the user if that user can still scroll on a slow page without any latency or dropped frames.

The old Edge is pretty good at that. You can see sometime that the rendering is struggling behind the scene, but user inputs are always perfect.

Right now Chromium Edge has a little bit of latency on touchscreens and precision trackpads, compared to UWP apps on Windows 10. I think the user should have to same scrolling experience on Chromium Edge than any UWP app. 

Since watching movies is such an important part of a web browser experience these days, Chromium Edge should match the old Edge in term on performance and battery life when playing a video. Right now, GPU usage is higher.

@ikjadoon 

 

I totally agree with the adblocker built into Microsoft Edge we really need it, its something I have been waiting for ages, it would be a fantastic addition to a fantastic browser. I have moved over from Firefox Quantum and I am glad I did.  Keep up the good work.

@ikjadoon @Gerry5039  @vincethewipet Thank you SO MUCH for this detailed insights. I cannot tell you how helpful it is and how appreciative we are to know your thoughts. As you continue to think of more ideas, feel free to share.

@Eleanor_Huynh 

Hi Eleanor & Welcome,

This wee project ;) is looking, feeling, really good so far and overall behaving well, too. You mention "one that uses less memory"; I know that is what we want to achieve.  You should be aware many have been saying they are seeing high RAM levels.

It's fun being involved with this endeavour, it's early & there is heaps to do.  But, once all the (assumed) features (now, in Edge) are in Edge C., it seems destined to be one fine browser, indeed!

One thing I am anxious to see is to have ellipsis items access via fly-out panels, as Edge has now; NOT going to (other) full pages.  The > a full page approach is horrible for a few good reasons.

Cheers,
Drew
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@Eleanor_Huynh 

 

Hi, Eleanor & welcome.
Have read some of the posts to you. I don't know how it is you work around these things. Only a thought, I have tried for some years now almost every browser there is. Nowadays my default browser is edge chromium with 2 profiles. It's working very fine. I would recommend that you look at Slimjet. I have found that is the browser that uses the less RAM (I have only 4MB).
Thanks.

Hi @Drew1903! Thank you so much for the welcome! It is a lot of fun to be here - thank you for sharing your thoughts. 

 

This is great feedback! Can you share more about this: " The > a full page approach is horrible for a few good reasons" - I'd love more about those reasons. Thanks!

@josegime47

 

I must be one of the lucky ones then I have 64mb of ram and an AMD 12 compute core processor.  And mine flies along, only time I know something is happening in the background is when Windows 10 updates itself. My Edge C runs really fast, might have to find a way to tie it down  lol.

 

And yes Eleanor sorry I am late welcome :thumbs_up::thumbs_up:.

Hi Eleanor

 

I left Firefox Quantum because they were telling us who we could visit and who we cant, who we could talk to and who we cant, without even giving the us the right to choose, they are becoming the internet Police, started to control everything, and not for the better. That's why I chose Edge C now I have control Microsoft tells you its not safe to visit such and such and leaves me to make the choice, not stopping you dead and not allowing you to move, they have even made it now that you cannot make an exception and carry on, that to me is not the freedom to surf where ever I wish, that is telling me where I can and cannot go, they are now trying to be the cyber Police. I did write and tell them so, and where to stuff their Firefox, needless to say they did not get back to me LOL.

 

Edge C to me is like a breathe of fresh air, I hate IE with a vengeance, but now this is beautiful and will hit number #1 spot as soon as it is commercially released, and if I can help you in anyway to get it there, then you got me.

 

Keep up the good work everyone, then you can say " I did my bit " :thumbs_up::thumbs_up:.

 

All the best

 

Gerry 

Looks like some of my posts have gone from here ?

@Gerry5039  Oh no! I'm so sorry - I'm not sure what happened there. Would you be open to sharing again? I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on this. Thanks in advance!

@josegime47 Thanks so for your thoughts here and the suggestion! 

@Eleanor_Huynh 

 

To late now they are gone, out of mind.

 

Here is one for you been happening everytime I try to install, installs ok in Edge but refuses to work in Edge C

 

TweakPass: Password Manager

I will not be posting any further posts on here, It was nice talking to you all, all the best bye.

 

Gerry

Everything is perfect in terms of speed and performance, I've had (temporary) issues with the new Edge canary that got fixed quickly but none of them were about performance. you've done a great job so far. :crown:

@Eleanor_Huynh 

Oh, I am terribly late in noticing this request, oops:exclamation_mark::persevering_face:

Anyway, > ( some other, different) full page is dumb, illogical, counter-productive, inefficient, distracting and wastes time.  It is all of the above because one is no longer viewing, visually & mentally connected to & immersed with the site or page that has, make that had, one's interest, concern or attention.  They just left what they were doing, for no good reason... I say, no good reason since, obviously, there isn't any, just look at Edge for proof.  There is no good reason to change that or take a different approach; the status quo is brilliant:exclamation_mark: We are looking a site or page, working on something however important, concentrated, rapt, focused, but, with the silly swap page approach, one is suddenly, no longer 'on' what had their thoughts (or eyes)... it is bad compared to staying where you are AND NOT losing sight of it... what was wanted in ellipsis goes with where one is, at that moment... leaving (sight of) it is not sensible.

Moral: Don't make a silk purse into a sows ear.  <-- No that is not mis-worded :smiling_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Are you sorry you asked, Eleanor? :beaming_face_with_smiling_eyes:LOL  Just had to give you more than, it's dumb ;) 

 

On a positive note, the panel approach is smart. And we like smart.  Ok, smart wins ✔

And, the Edge C Team is smart.  Did I mention how we feel about smart?

Cheers,
Drew
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