The new icons in Canary make Edge's design feel even more disconnected from Windows.

Iron Contributor

The new icons in Canary don't match those of the rest of the Windows operating system. In any Windows app, the settings icon has 8 spokes on the gear--you can see this in the Start menu and in the settings icon in apps like Microsoft News, Photos, and Camera. The normal Home icon can be seen in the Windows Settings app and in Backstage View in the Microsoft Office apps.

 

The new Canary channel icons don't match those anymore. It makes Edge's design even more inconsistent with Windows's design than it already is. It's bad enough that Edge retains  Material Design from Chromium, but it's worse that Edge is going to replace the only parts of the design that feel consistent with Windows.

 

To my knowledge, Fluent design has separate mobile and desktop icons to feel natural on every device. Mobile icons should not be used on Windows.

 

EDIT: looking more closely at their wording on the iconography and here, it looks like the new icons are going to be the same across all of Microsoft.

6 Replies

Well there are 2 things that could be related to this decision:

1. Windows 10 is used on a wide variety of devices, from HoloLens to Laptops to Desktops to Tablets etc. Touch/Keyboard/Mouse
2. Edge is a multiplatform browser, for all OSes out there.

for me when I installed Canary and noticed the new icons, I liked them (just because they felt new)
I would also like to see consistency between Windows 10 and Edge icons.

and hopefully someone from Edge team will explain why this radical change happened to Edge icons.

AFAIK Microsoft is going to update Windows 10 UI (and icons) in 2021, so they will be consistent
Yeah I remember reading about Panos Panay taking over the design part of Windows
As I mentioned in the post, I think the current icons are the ones that are consistent with Windows. Yes, Edge is multiplatform, but all of Microsoft's multiplatform apps have different icons for each platform. To Do is a great example of this--the app on mobile and on Windows has different icons for the default lists (different icons for My Day, Planned, and Tasks for example). Currently, the icons for Windows apps all have a consistent feel to them: thinner lines and sharper corners. The icons for mobile apps have a consistent feel too: thicker lines and rounder corners. But the new Edge Canary icons look like mobile icons on a Windows app and feel out of place.
As long as the UI update includes updating the icons to be the same as the icons for Microsoft's mobile apps, then it will be fine that Edge does this change. But they should definitely not implement this change in Edge before it comes to Windows. Edge already has a completely different design from Windows and they shouldn't make it worse than it already is.
It doesn't feel out of place for me. like I said icons were the first thing I noticed and liked when I installed Edge canary recently