Option for a slimmer tab and address bar

Brass Contributor

I personally find the tab and address bar slightly obstructive.

 

I both have a classical desktop and a Surface. The size of the tab bar and the address bar is nice for a touch-friendly interface perhaps, but for either of my devices, I would prefer a slimmer border in my browser accommodating a larger area for browsing. Firefox has the "compact" option (alongside Normal and Touch) for such a feature, and I find it neat.

 

I think just 2 options will be better/fine, like in the Office products.

 

image.png

 

 

Thanks, and bye!

4 Replies

Thank you for your feedback, @utkangezer.  I will send this on to the team that owns tab management.  Thanks - Elliot

On Mac, Safari is the clear winner when it comes to the screen real estate. If it was not for the cross-device synchronization, I would definitely be skipping Edge on a Mac.

 

  • With a single tab open, Safari's entire top UI is narrower than half of the thickness of Edge's top UI: [[37px vs. 82px]]
  • With multiple tabs open, Safari's entire top UI is 3/4 as thick as the top UI of Edge: [[62px vs. 82px]]

See the image for comparison:

Screen Shot 2020-01-14 at 09.13.57.png

 

 

 

It isn't that big of an issue on Surface Pro with the taller aspect ratio, but it is very much obnoxious on a short-screen (=wide-screen={16:10, 16:9}) device. I dream of a future without 16:10/9 devices, and 3:2 being the most widespread option. For now, 16:10/9 is the most widespread, calling for this to be addressed.

I would love a feature that allows autohide of the top bar, perhaps more like Apple does with its mobile Safari. Another nice feature of mobile chrome is the ability to pull down on the top bar to see all tabs and I can easily see this being useful on a full desktop browser: Imagine going to your tabs and scrolling down to see the entire tab previews (kind of like legacy edge had a way of doing) and then scrolling down again to see all your tab previews, kind of like on Mac Safari.
I think a big reason for Edge not changing the UI too much from chrome (even where improvement is sorely needed) is that people are used to chrome. Many people, if not most, want to feel like they're still in chrome. It was certainly welcoming for me when I changed to Edge and found everything where I thought it would be.

I would still like to see UI improvements though. The old edge was beautiful in many ways, though often at the expense of feeling basic in my opinion. Still, it was more beautiful than Chrome.