*UPDATED* Dev channel update to 88.0.705.9 is live

[josh_bodner]

Hello Insiders!  Today we’re releasing build 88.0.705.9 to the Dev channel.  This is the final build for version 88, and is what will be going out to Beta soon, give or take another small patch or two.  We’re also excited to announce the general availability of WebView2 for .NET as well as WebView2’s fixed distribution model:  https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2020/11/20/announcing-general-availability-of-microsoft-edge-web....  As for what’s new and exciting in this build: 

Added features: 

• *UPDATED* Added the ability to view 2 PDF pages side-by-side.  Note that this did not make it into the original .9 release.  
• Improved the History menu to be able to have an icon next to the address bar, to show all the tabs available in recently closed windows, and to be pinnable as a side pane like the recently improved Favorites menu.  For more details, see https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/articles/improvements-to-history-in-microsoft-edge/td-p/18965.... 
• Added the ability for Edge to generate new passwords. 
• Added the ability to copy and edit passwords stored in the browser. 
• Add price comparison capabilities to the coupons flyout. 
• Added Picture in Picture support on Mac OS.  Support on other devices coming later.
• Finished rolling out the search Sidebar. 
• Enabled the creation of text notes in PDFs on non-Windows platforms.   
• Added a new management policy to Allow Vertical Tabs.  Note that updates to administrative templates or documentation may not be available yet. 
• Improved the layout of the Cookies and Site Permissions Settings. 
• Added a management policy on Mac OS to Override the Update Policy normally used on that OS.  Note that updates to administrative templates or documentation may not be available yet. 
• Enabled support for the management policies to Allow Legacy TLS Protocols in Web RTC, set a Printer Type Deny List, and change Intranet Redirect Behavior from Chromium. 

Improved reliability: 

• Fixed a crash on launch on Mac with the error message "AlertNotificationService cannot be opened because of a problem."
• Fixed a crash when navigating to different websites while certain extensions are installed. 
• Fixed a crash when using Pinterest suggestions in Collections. 
• Fixed an issue where clicking the … menu inside a collection sometimes crashes the Collections pane. 
• Fixed an issue where websites sometimes fail to sign in with an ERR_SSL_CLIENT_AUTH_CERT_NEEDED error after rebooting the device. 

Changed behavior: 

• Changed favorite folder flyouts from the Favorites Bar to no longer dismiss when opening a favorite in a new tab. 
• Fixed an issue where streaming music from Spotify when it’s installed as an app/PWA sometimes fails. 
• Fixed an issue where extension icons can’t be moved between the address bar and the … menu because the context menu option to do so is grayed out. 
• Fixed an issue where the search box on the new tab page sometimes doesn’t work after entering full screen mode. 
• Fixed an issue where autofill suggestions aren’t appearing on webpages where they should be. 
• Fixed an issue where annotations on a Web Capture sometimes get unintentionally erased. 
• Fixed an issue where certain Collections features aren’t accessible if the pane is zoomed beyond a certain level. 
• Fixed an issue where Text Notes in a read-only PDF aren’t accessible. 
• Obsoleted the management policies for Default Plugin Settings, Plugins Allowed For Urls, Plugins Blocked For Urls, and Run All Flash In Allow Mode due to the impending retirement of Flash. 

Known issues: 

• The new tab button sometimes is placed incorrectly after closing a tab.  It should still be functional. 
• Certain extensions such as the Microsoft Editor extension don’t work on Linux.  As soon as they’re installed, they crash and are disabled.  We’re currently investigating. 
• Users of certain ad blocking extensions may experience playback errors on Youtube.  As a workaround, temporarily disabling the extension should allow playback to proceed.  See https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/articles/known-issue-adblock-causing-errors-on-youtube/m-p/14... for more details. 
• Some users are still running into an issue where all tabs and extensions immediately crash with a STATUS_INVALID_IMAGE_HASH error.  The most common cause of this error is outdated security or antivirus software from vendors like Symantec, and in those cases, updating that software will fix it. 
• Users of the Kaspersky Internet Suite who have the associated extension installed may sometimes see webpages like Gmail fail to load.  This failure is due to the main Kaspersky software being out of date, and is thus fixed by making sure the latest version is installed. 
• Some users are seeing favorites get duplicated after we made some previous fixes in that area. The most common way this is triggered is by installing the Stable channel of Edge and then signing into it with an account that has already signed into Edge before.  This issue should be reduced now that automatic deduplication has been introduced into Insider channels.  However, we’ve also seen duplication happen when running the manual deduplicator on multiple machines before either machine has a chance to fully sync its changes, so while we wait for the automatic deduplication to make it to Stable, make sure to leave plenty of time in between runs of the deduplicator. 
• After an initial fix for it recently, some users are still experiencing Edge windows becoming all black.  Opening the Browser Task Manager (keyboard shortcut is shift + esc) and killing the GPU process usually fixes it.  Note that this only appears to affect users with certain hardware and is most easily triggered by resizing an Edge window.  For users with discrete GPUs, updating graphics drivers may help. 
• Some users are seeing “wobbling” behavior when scrolling using trackpad gestures or touchscreens, where scrolling in one dimension also causes the page to subtly scroll back and forth in the other.  Note that this only affects certain websites and seems to be worse on certain devices.  This is most likely related to our ongoing work to bring scrolling back to parity with Edge Legacy’s behavior, so if this behavior is undesirable, you can temporarily turn it off by disabling the edge://flags/#edge-experimental-scrolling flag. 
• There are some issues where users with multiple audio output devices sometimes don’t get any sound from Edge.  In one case, Edge becomes muted in the Windows Volume Mixer and unmuting it fixes it.  In another, restarting the browser fixes it. 

As always, we couldn’t do this without all your valuable input! 

[#2]

@moghaazi Any sites specifically it's not working on, or just in general?  

[#3]

@josh_bodner Is it just me who gets the "Restore pages" dialogue box every time Edge is opened after starting the PC? Edge does not crash but it still shows this dialogue box on every first run after starting the PC. Been happening since the previous one or two updates.

[#4]

@josh_bodner  are there any new news about the compatibility to the new M1 MacBooks ?

chrome enabled this already in Version 87 

[#5]

@HotCakeX Of course, in English.

There's one thing to be a fan, another to give feedback.

I have one page bookmarked for Google UK, and I know it has more entries, and it never crashes. Bing searches crashes non-stop, either error code: SIGIL or 64000.

[#6]

@chdslv It never crashes for me.

[#7]

@Kam 

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@Kam wrote:
@chdslvIt never crashes for me.

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1. he is on Linux, you are not.

2. each user has different hardware.

3. Edge has controlled feature rollouts, makes experience different for people.

[#8]

@chdslv 

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@chdslv wrote:

@HotCakeX Of course, in English.

There's one thing to be a fan, another to give feedback.

I have one page bookmarked for Google UK, and I know it has more entries, and it never crashes. Bing searches crashes non-stop, either error code: SIGIL or 64000.

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if you have feedback and experiencing crashes, then use the feedback button on Edge.

go to attachments => recreate my problem => start recording (if it's available on Linux) and make Bing crash again while it's being recorded.

that's the best way diagnostics, crash reports etc. can be realizably sent to developers.

[#9]

I agree, "convert to sidebar" would be better.

[#10]

@foo_bar Are you closing Edge before restarting the computer?  If not, then that's intentional, since we got lots of complaints that Windows Updates were restarting peoples' computers and losing their Edge tabs in the process.  If you are, this may be a crash when closing Edge.  We fixed a couple of those in today's Dev update.  

[#11]

@HotCakeX 

Every time it happens, I sent a feedback, but after 10th time, I stopped. 🙂

[#12]

@josh_bodner In all websites desktop/push notifications doesn't work.

[#13]

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@josh_bodner wrote:

@foo_bar Are you closing Edge before restarting the computer?

@josh_bodner Yes, I close Edge, and all other programs, every time before shutting Windows down. Fast startup is enabled, btw.

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@josh_bodner wrote:

@foo_bar If you are, this may be a crash when closing Edge. We fixed a couple of those in today's Dev update.  

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Okay. Just fyi, I'm getting that 'Restore pages' dialogue box again after updating to Dev version 89.

[#14]

@moghaazi and you're on the latest update to version 89, right? 

[#15]

@foo_bar I suspect this is happening because of Edge's fast startup feature where closing Edge causes it to re-launch in the background so the next startup will be faster.  One way to confirm would be to close Edge, then look in Task Manager to see if there are still any Edge processes hanging around.  If so, killing them and then restarting the computer will prevent this message, I suspect.  Either way, this shouldn't be happening though, so I'll let the team know.  

[#16]

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@josh_bodner wrote:

@foo_bar I suspect this is happening because of Edge's fast startup feature where closing Edge causes it to re-launch in the background so the next startup will be faster.  One way to confirm would be to close Edge, then look in Task Manager to see if there are still any Edge processes hanging around.  If so, killing them and then restarting the computer will prevent this message, I suspect.  Either way, this shouldn't be happening though, so I'll let the team know.  

@josh_bodner I guess that is in fact the problem. I closed Edge and opened the task manager and found several msedge.exe processes still running. I ended the process tree for those and then re-opened Edge. Again got the restore pages dialogue box.

[#17]

@josh_bodner Yes, I immediately download any new version

[#18]

@foo_bar Good to know!  We've been trying to re-create this ourselves and also think that some of the extensions you have installed may also be a contributing factor if some of them are running background processes that live even after the browser closes (which may also be one of the reasons you're seeing background Edge processes).  It would then be expected that you'd also see the prompt when you kill those background processes since killing a process is indistinguishable from it crashing (which means you should have seen a slightly different message).  

[#19]

@moghaazi We just made a potential fix for this that will be in tomorrow's Canary if you've got it installed and want to confirm that that fixes it.  If so, that fix will be in our next Dev build.  

[#20]

@josh_bodner I didn't see any replies if the potential fix was helping, however, you hit the nail on the head with extensions still running in the background when Edge closes. I am running Version 88.0.705.63 and disabling the setting "Continue running background apps when Microsoft Edge is closed" fixed the issue for me. It may not be a true "fix", but I prefer to have this setting disabled anyway, so for me it works perfect. Thanks!

[#21]

@foo_bar 

This was bugging (pun intended) me too. I'm using Windows 10 with Edge, so YRMV, but this worked for me:

Open your browser. Click on the 3 dots all the way to the top right of the screen. 

Click on "Settings"

Click "System"

At the top right, turn off "Startup Boost"

If you have an old school hard drive, this might slow down startup of your browser a bit, but if you have a SSD, probably won't notice a difference.