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WolfIcefang
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Joined May 08, 2019
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Re: Introducing new Fluent Iconography for Microsoft Edge
IrinaL This is great; I really like the new "tab" icon and the refresh icon (even though it's just been rotated a bit) but why is the folder icon in the bookmarks bar going to different from the recently updated folder icon in my Windows 10 Start Menu? They share the same visual style, which I'm very happy to see, but they aren't actually the same, which just seems odd.CONCEPT: Improving Edge's context / right click menu
I think it's pretty safe to claim that the context menus in Edge are getting too big to work with effectively. For people who like using the navigation features, it can feel pretty disheartening to right click and see "back, forwards, refresh" appear halfway across the screen anyway. Additionally, it can be difficult to remember which options are part of the context menu and which are hidden away in Settings and More. In an attempt to highlight and address these issues, I came up with this concept: Left: Edge Legacy's context menu. Center: my context menu concept. Right: Edge Canary's context menu. My new context menu proposes two major improvements. First, the menu cuts down on bulky elements by using the address bar versions of the navigation cluster and extensions. The horizontal navigation cluster is already such a staple of modern web browsers that I don't believe it would confuse anyone. Extensions are usually chosen by the user (or their company) so turning these into icons shouldn't cause any issues. These edits give the added (albeit unintentional) benefit of color coding the different sections. I find the whole menu easier to look through because the actual "contextual" part is bounded by two grey sections. Another benefit is, because the names of extensions are hidden, Microsoft can have complete control over the width of the menu. Finally, shrinking the navigation cluster to one line makes it more reasonable to incorporate into every context menu. Right now, right clicking an image, a link, or selected text will not make the navigation options appear, and this unreliability undercuts any usefulness the buttons had in the first place. Second is the ability to "Customize your context menu in settings" as hinted by the dismissible bar under the menu. I see this as similar to the Customize Toolbar section of edge://settings/appearance . Many of the context menu items would be listed with toggle switches next to them. It (should be) easy to implement. Personally, I would turn off the "Print" and "Translate to English" options, which is why they are absent in the image above. I don't think any items should be hidden by default, and I don't think it should be possible to right click inside the right click menu to hide items. Some users might not know where to find the controls that make missing items reappear. (In other words, I want to lower the chance of having to explain it to my grandparents.) I also considered sorting the options into submenus, but forcing users to look through sub-menus sounded way worse than giving them the ability to customize the menu to their needs. I spent way too much time on this thing, mostly fixing mistakes I made with the image, so thank you very much for reading through this whole post.Re: Dev channel update to 85.0.545.0 is live
HereItis I still don't understand. I can have two different pdfs side by side by dragging and dropping tabs to create two different windows. See the first attachment: on the left is math homework and on the right is a D&D character sheet. If you're talking about seeing multiple pages of the same PDF side by side, then I agree that this is a feature of Edge Legacy that is lacking in Edge Chromium. See the second attachment.Re: Dev channel update to 85.0.552.1 is live
I think this is a really big deal. Pushing webpages to the left and right is, to me at least, a big part of what makes Edge... Edge. Collections and Sidebar search already do it, and Vertical Tabs are gearing up to implement it soon. Personally, I've only had mild issues with the mechanic; every once in a blue moon, a website will reload instead of resizing. My guess as to why it is so reliable is that it treats the situation the same was as it would if I restored down a maximized window. Websites and web browsers have already been doing it for... I don't know, 20 years? On the other hand, I have generally had much worse experiences when using "floating" menus, which some of my extensions use. With a pushing sidebar, I only have to scroll once to get back to the context I need. With a floating menu, especially if there is text that spans the width of the page, I might have to continuously juggle the menu just to read a few lines - and don't even think about trying to highlight something. That's also assuming the floating menus can be dragged to other parts of the screen in the first place. Take the description of images on NASA's APOD website as an example. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html If we let the right portion of the screen get covered, we're chopping off parts of sentences. I want to see Edge add MORE "pushing" sidebars, not less. For example, Edge Legacy's Hub had a useful "recently downloaded" pane that could make it easier to move a file from a cloud storage platform to a social media page. I just want to know what issues you're experiencing more specifically, since our views are polar opposites. If you already made a detailed post about it in the past, just tell me and I'll find it on your user profile. 👍Re: InPrivate theming
We've brought up "the chip" a lot, and I want to add a bit more about it. #1: Chip color = Accent color. In Edge Legacy, the chip color was always blue, but everything in Edge was blue. In Chromium Edge, the Title Bar's color is determined by my Windows Accent Color, and I believe the color of the inPrivate chip (along with other parts of the UI) should play along with this. #2: Incognito tabs are still tied to the profile of the window you opened them from, but the profile icon inside of the chip is always a faded version of the default profile icon, not my profile icon. I hadn't thought about this previously, but it's impossible to tell the difference between incognito tabs for two different profiles. I believe that the user's profile picture should appear within the chip instead of a generic icon. People wouldn't want to save personal incognito favorites to their spouse's or work's profiles! #3: I don't have any issue differentiating when the contents of the tabs in inPrivate mode are substantially different from normal mode. When the contents of my current inPrivate browsing tab is the same as the contents of my regular browsing window, and I am in dark theme, I can accidentally use the wrong window. (This has happened when testing Google Docs link settings). I believe a user-definable choice of in-private address bar accent color would be the best solution. (I am, like some others here, partial to dark purple, but do not want to speak for everyone when I say that.) ShirleyNgRe: Microsoft Edge extends tools for the PDF reader
I'm very excited for text boxes and notes. I have a Dell XPS laptop from 2017, so while I have a touch screen, it isn't good enough for precision styluses and it can't fold all the way around the screen. The keyboard is my most precise input method... Most PDF readers are workable when studying, but are not up to the challenge of taking notes in a lecture. A 2-in-1 laptop has already solved this problem, but perhaps more forgiving software would also allow me to reach that goal. For example: Some kind of "smart text box" (where the text automatically resizes based on the size of the text box) would make taking notes during class a lot easier. The ability to select a bunch of ink in order to move or resize it would also be useful. A smart "select" or "edit" tool, which would be able to do both of the above, might be very useful. Elliot KirkFrom a profit viewpoint, why should Microsoft support Edge?
EDIT: I should preface this message by saying that everything here is purely speculative, and is the result of, probably, 15 minutes of searching. I do not know what reasons Microsoft had for creating the original Microsoft Edge or this new version, and I do not know if Bing is important to Edge's success. Please don't think of any of these theories as facts. END OF EDIT. I think we can mostly agree that Microsoft Edge is, or at least will be, pretty great. It has collections, a music control thing, a development team that actively listens to user input, a nice looking NTP, and way more coming "soon". However, a big question started bothering me this afternoon: Why is Microsoft developing a Chromium Web Browser? Well, let's look back at where this all began: Project Spartan. https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2015/03/30/introducing-project-spartan-the-new-browser-built-for-windows-10/ Spartan was meant to be way more user-friendly, faster, and less power hungry than Chrome. It was supposed to do to Chrome what Chrome had done to Internet Explorer and Firefox. But more than that: Spartan's tagline was The New Browser Built for Windows 10. If you wanted to use the best new browser, you had to have a Windows machine. Furthermore, if you wanted to use some of Edge's best new features, like Inking on Web Pages, you would need a pen, and essentially, if you needed a pen, you needed a Microsoft Surface Tablet. So from my best guess, Microsoft saw that the web browser had become the most important piece of software and wanted to create a browser that would make their hardware sell like hotcakes. https://youtu.be/q4rL_Lnt6kA Obviously, that didn't happen. So, at the tail end of 2018, Microsoft announced that Spartan Edge would be replaced by Chromium Edge. This was so exciting; now Edge would be just as fast and stable as Chrome, but with a plethora of new Microsoft tools and UI enhancements! I'm really loving the new Microsoft Edge for exactly those reasons, but there's a problem: "from a profit standpoint, why should Microsoft support Edge?" Edge runs on Windows 7, 8.1 and Mac just as well as it runs on Windows 10. Furthermore, Edge inherited a lot of Chrome's clunky mouse / keyboard based UI, so it isn't a shining example of the Surface hardware or the Fluent UI software. If Edge isn't a tool to market Windows, and Edge can't generate profits on its own, then why is Microsoft spending so many resources on this project? Maybe we can look at the new marketing page for Edge: Oh no. Bing is supposedly one of the main reasons to download Edge. In fact, it gets its own page! Bing definitely generates revenue for Microsoft through the incorporation of advertising, but relying on Bing to fund Edge raises two really big alarms for me: First off, Bing is to Google Search what Spartan Edge was to Chrome. Sure, both Bing and Google work, but most people use Google. Second, Edge can't force users to search with Bing. Bing is a website, the same as Google.com. It's really easy to get to Google.com in Microsoft Edge. Maybe this is why Edge made it super difficult to change search providers? Seriously, "default search provider" is the very last option in Privacy and Services. The only way to hide it better would be to put it "in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard." - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy This partnership with Bing is strenuous at best, and the perceived reliance on Bing's revenue seems ill-fated. Regardless of how popular Edge becomes in two years, what will happen to it? In two years, how big will Edge's development team be? In two years, will the development team be able to pump out features like they have in 2019? I really want to see Edge achieve, and maintain, a status as one of the most innovative and well-designed web browsers available. As much as I am afraid to kick this beehive, the importance of the topic feels too great to let slide. Hopefully, someone can provide an answer.Re: Discussion - Set Aside Tabs and Warn on Close
Elliot Kirk Sorry in advance for the bad grammar, I have limited time today. Two parts to this reply: Keeping all my tabs in a window, and keeping my tabs open because they are doing something. Part 1: I always keep all my tabs in one window, but why is this? I could have a window for my scheduling, (list of tasks and calendar) a window for my music and entertainment (Pandora and Youtube) and a window for my each of my current projects. I keep everything in the same window because it's much easier and faster to jump between tabs than it is to jump between windows. There are two reasons for this. First, multiple windows means going to a tab is a two-step process. Click the window you want, then click the tab. However, more importantly, in my opinion, is the issue of identification. Windows of Edge can either look like this: or like this: Or maybe even like this: The issue is that tabs have favicons, making it easy to know the contents of every tab. Windows have the application's favicon, and the text depends on which tab is open in that window. Why is this important for setting aside tabs? Well, a large part of the reason why Set Aside Tabs was "all or nothing" for me was that I kept all my tabs together in an "all or nothing" window. Part 2: why the "close all tabs" warning is important. I am not concerned about losing all my tabs and not being able to reopen them. If I close all my tabs then reopen microsoft Edge, I can simply right click in the tab bar, choose "reopen closed window", and get all my tabs back. If that's too much of a chore, I can just hit ctrl+shift+t on my keyboard. The real reason why I don't want to close my tabs by accident is that some of my tabs are doing important things. If I have a 3 paragraph Amazon review in a tab, and the tab is closed, restoring the tab does not bring back my draft. When all my tabs close unexpectedly, I lose any in-progress downloads, music, video streams, and text box contents. The URL isn't the important part. I have to get to class now, have a great rest of your day!Smooth scrolling is not working in recent canary builds
I've already submitted this as feedback through the Send feedback tool, but I wanted to upload a video demonstrating the issue. Earlier this week, the scroll speed for Edge Canary was tweaked to carry more momentum. By that, I mean webpages travel farther when you flick the touch screen. It is now in line with my other Windows 10 apps. I really like this change, and I would have said it makes the experience smoother... except that, in upping the speed, the Edge team also brought back the choppy, stuttering effects with a vengeance. To put it in comparison, for those who can't see the attached video, I can only really tell that Chrome is imperfect when I put it side by side with Edge Dev. With the latest versions of Canary, I can tell there is a serious issue as soon as I try to use the browser. I have (hopefully successfully) attached a video of this problem in action. On the left is Edge Dev, which you can tell decelerates too quickly but is buttery smooth. On the right is Edge Canary, which keeps moving after you lift your finger, but is noticeably choppy. If you're having trouble seeing it, try glancing back and forth between the two browsers a few times, and watch what happens when I lift my fingers, not when I'm actively controlling where I scroll to. I'd also like to note that the new scrolling in Edge Canary is equally choppy when using a trackpad; it's just easier to show what's going on with the touch screen. Mouse wheel based scrolling seems fine, but don't quote me on that. Bonus fact: If you try to trim your video length using the photos app for Windows 10, it will cut the frame-rate to 30 fps. This makes the effect much harder to notice. If you want to contribute to this thread, make sure you keep your video frame-rate at 60 fps.
