Tab Preview - Discussion

[Elliot Kirk]

Hi Insiders, thanks so much for your feedback on the tab experience in the new Microsoft Edge. From reading your comments, it is clear that many of you would like an easy way to view more information about your tabs to quickly identify which one you are looking for. This problem can be particularly painful when you have many tabs open at once, perhaps appearing similar to each other with repeated site titles or icons, and you'd like to avoid having to switch to each of them to find the right one. Many of you specifically cite "tab preview" from the legacy version of Microsoft Edge as a helpful tool in this situation.

Top Feedback Item: Bring the tab preview feature from the current version of Microsoft Edge

As we investigate this feedback further, we'd like to ask for your help to make sure we are solving the right problem and get the experience just right. For example, in the Microsoft Edge Legacy , there were actually a couple of methods to preview the contents of a tab. One way was to hover over a tab, and a little thumbnail and description of that specific tab would appear with more information. Another method was to select an arrow to the right of the new tab button to open a persistent preview of all the open tabs simultaneously.

Could you tell us more about your experience in this area, and what you would like to see going forward? For example, which of the legacy version of Microsoft Edge tab preview features did you specifically use, and how did you use it? What problems did this feature help you solve and how? What types of information is particularly useful in a preview of a tab and why?

Thanks for your help, we look forward to working with you to improve the new Microsoft Edge in this area.

[#2]

@HotCakeX WE WANT BOTH? and also the buttons on the top left

[#3]

@Elliot Kirk  It seems to me that the standard of excellence is that when one is replacing a product with an "equivalent" product, the replacement MUST have, at a minimum, ALL the features of the product that it's replacing. Otherwise, it's a DOWNGRADE. Frankly, I can't imagine why this discussion has gone on for so long. It has to be running for a year, by now. The obvious thing is to give Edge Chromium the same features that legacy Edge had. (I might be wrong, and if I am someone will not hesitate to school me 😉 , but I don't even think I've seen this item on the list of features.)

Thanks for listening to my small rant! 🙂

Dan

[#4]

I've been using the Chromium flag to enable tab hover card images, but I'm still missing the arrow at the right most of the tabs to preview ALL tabs at once. Please implement this feature too!

[#5]

@YgorCortes 

I also have suggested the same feature in this forum and on Reddit. If you would send feedback about it through the in-app feedback tool (Alt+Shift+I) in Microsoft Edge, then the suggestion would get a +1 and help it to be a part of Microsoft Edge in the future 🙂

[#6]

@Elliot Kirk 

The tab preview was one feature that I use(d) a lot, especially when using PC doing research and general comparison type work. As a mechanical designer, it is nice to have a number of open tabs on Edge for research, comparisons, and listening to various tech videos whilst doing work. But, what I truly miss was the ability to preview the open tabs in the TASK BAR similar to WIN7 taskbar preview. I liked how I could just hover over the icon for a second or two and it would then show all my open windows - up to a certain number of tabs (which I think was maybe determined by screen size?). I ESPECIALLY LIKED the ability to use the scroll button click (MMB) to close them through this tab preview. I was able to close certain windows no longer used without actually having to open the Explorer window - it saved a lot to time for me and was really handy!

I included the format of view from a quick screen cap found online. 

[#7]

@Elliot Kirk Hello,

I think the tab hover cards feature in the new edge is better compared to the tab preview pane in legacy.

Reasons :

1. Aesthetically pleasing : This pops up on separate tabs and looks very nice

2. Takes up less space : It only shows the preview of each specific tab when we hover on it, as compared to a whole big pane opening up and showing all tabs, which I think takes lot of space and doesn't look so good either.

So yeah, tab hover cards has successfully taken the place of tab preview, and I don't think it's really needed, it would only be a utility at best.

Yet again, an option could be given to enable or disable tab preview pane, in the settings.

Hope this throws some insight into the issue.

Thank you

[#8]

@Elliot Kirk  This is already available.

Tab info: edge://flags/#tab-hover-cards

Tab preview images: edge://flags/#tab-hover-card-images

I have enabled both of these, and I like it.

[#9]

@Kam, @Elliot Kirk I enabled those two flags, and it works, to some extent. Many of the web pages display; some don't, for some reason. It took several seconds for them to populate, but so far it's very, very promising.

Regards,

Dan

[#10]

Can we possibly get both of these for verticle tabs as well?

[#11]

They work for me on Vert Tabs as well already. If they are not for you, then pls submit feedback with the in-browser feedback button with all your diag data so they can look and figure out why...

Dennis5mile

[#12]

@TheShaunSaw  both 

Tab info: edge://flags/#tab-hover-cards

Tab preview images: edge://flags/#tab-hover-card-images

[#13]

@globus5000 Hey! I already said that above!

[#14]

i now but i like the same thing

[#15]

@HotCakeX I'm using Edge Canary and that is what I was used to seeing after I enabled the flag, but now all I get is the text, eve with the flag enabled. don't know what's going on Hope they get it fixed though

[#16]

@John__JohnS 

These things are normal in canary, it's unstable

[#17]

True

[#18]

So far, I really like tab preview, a lot! I'm noticing that the previews don't seen to populate until I've actually viewed the web page--e.g., if I open the browser to reopen tabs from the last instance.

[#19]

@Elliot Kirk We can choose alternate that is Link Preview.

consider when you right-click on a link and choose link preview and the web link shown in a small rectangle box without needed to open it on new tab and this will save time and at the same time loading problems.

I got this idea from Wikipedia preview like this one.

Just Consider about it.

Thank You.

[#20]

Could we get the ability to turn on hovering for tab preview or hovering for the text or even both because I like how the text appears in some versions of edge but If we get tab previews the text will be completely gone as in the legacy edge

[#21]

I feel that a lot of the time in verticle tabs that the text gets cut off and is hard to read. Having the ability when verticle tabs are pinned to make the side panel resizable/adjustable to how wide you want it so that we can possibly read the text for the tab. Or you could make the text for the tab move like with song titles in music players so that you would be able to read the entire text.