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dvdwnd
Brass Contributor
Joined May 16, 2019
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Re: Dev channel update to 81.0.381.0 is live
josh_bodner It's very encouraging to see that you believe so strongly that the sync problems finally are a thing of the past. It does look promising so far, but I have a few questions: What happened to the built-in "deduplication" that was hinted at earlier? When my DEV install started syncing again, the duplicates that were still there propagated back to my other installs. For the last time, I hope, but it seems quite unnecessary to allow creation of two favorites with the same title and URL in the same folder. Surely these could be merged automatically. Isn't the "Tabs set aside" folder supposed to sync? It and all favorites in it stay on the browser on which they were imported. If the groups were named after the date of creation instead of a counter, contents from different browser instances could be merged without creating a mess. Are Collections using a different sync engine? I haven't seen any duplicates there, but sync eventually stops working in one or more directions.Re: Now Turns On
HotCakeX You're absolutely right - Favorite sync on Edge has been a dumpster fire for years. IE11 on Windows 8 had its share of problems, but as I remember it, sync worked flawlessly. I have had all my Favorites and Reading List wiped on all but one device (where sync has been permenently broken) - twice! - on Legacy Edge. The problems in New Edge are slightly different in nature, but it's clear that you can't trust the browser to store links for you and need a backup plan. Taking a step back, Favorites/Bookmarks are a very 90's thing, and just like organizing your email into neat folders is a waste of time, so is probably also bookmarking pages of interest. Links rot, so solutions for more short-lived links like Reading List, tab and history sync are probably more useful. However, they also require a working sync engine, and Favorites sync is a good litmus test for how reliable the underlying tech is. My Favorites collection is now a disorganized graveyard that I use for testing only. Pages I like to keep go into OneNote (so it doesn't matter if they 404), and Sticky Notes can be used for short-term link storage etc. Your Phone and Timeline mostly work for handing off between devices. At no point do I rely on Edge for handling links, which makes you wonder why I just don't switch to another major browser (and maybe also get some more relevant ads thanks to better tracking).Re: Now Turns On
Quick follow-up: Last night all 5 installs had more or less the same Favorites, no duplicates (after me deleting them for the n:th time). I made some modifications in the Beta and then - bam! - all duplicates returned on the Dev channel. Where did they come from? Furthermore, the sync button is now disabled on that browser (wasn't last night), so they're not (yet) spreading to the other browser instances. But when sync is enabled again... I'd say the situation is pretty much as before. I also made some experiments to see what happens if you sign out of a browser or disable sync. I learned that every time you re-enable sync or sign in, the set of Favorites will be come the union of what you have on that browser and the others that were signed in. That is, any deleted Favorites (on the signed-out or signed-in browsers) will return, and any renamed will be duplicated. This doesn't appear to happen if I just close the browser, but I'm not 100% sure that there isn't some background process left. I guess that's good to know. There doesn't seem to be any delta tracking while sync is disabled. What if sync is disabled because of network problems? I don't know yet, but it's soon Christmas and I'm ready to be pleasantly surprised.Re: Now Turns On
HotCakeX I should be more clear - if you had any tabs set aside in Classic Edge, they are put in a Favorites folder called Tabs set aside at install time, but this folder won't sync. Even if you move items out of that folder, they never sync. I wonder if that is what is causing the slight ordering differences between different installs, since you don't have the exact same set of items on different devices to begin with. As for the situation being identical to 6 weeks ago, I don't really know. If deleted Favorites no longer return when I update any of the installs (which used to happen), I guess it's an improvement. One thing I did notice during my experiment last night was that if not all browsers were online when I deleted duplicates on one install, they would return as I signed in. I have to do some more testing to see if this is true for any new Favorites.Re: Now Turns On
MissyQ I get a bit worried when I hear that you think you've fixed the duplication problem. This is what I did: Signed out of all 5 installs (same MS account, 2*(Can+Beta) + 1 * Dev) Signed in on one Canary again. Deleted hundreds of duplicates using the extension suggested by HotCakeX, as I've done many times now. Signed in on one Beta install - duplicates now reappear on Canary, and remain on Beta. Signed in on the remaining installs - all duplicates are still there. Collections not syncing between the two Canary installs. While signed in everywhere, deleted all duplicates again with the extension on one of the Canary installs. The other 4 installs now sync (!) and have almost the same set of Favorites. Tried signing out/in again - Favorites stay the same (for now). Now, there is no trace of the duplicate deletion feature that was mentioned in the blog post - I have to use a tool to delete them. We'll see if this lasts, because I had all duplicates reappear yesterday when I installed a new Beta. To sum up: Good: Favorites are syncing across all channels, and pretty fast too. Bad: Duplicates must be removed manually, and display order of Favorites is slightly different between installs. Tabs set aside and Collections don't sync at all. After literally years of Edge sync woes, it will take some time of glitch-free use before I definitely call this "fixed". Maybe it is, or maybe I'll have all duplicates appear once more. Fingers crossed!Re: Now Turns On
MissyQ The sync options are there and enabled alright, but nothing is working better than before you disabled sync. I've got all three channels installed on 2 PCs (Dev only on 1), and can see Canary and Beta sort-of syncing the same set of Favorites, but Dev isn't syncing any. Collections have stopped syncing completely. However, all the problems that caused you to halt sync are still there: Ever increasing amount of duplicates, deleted Favorites reappearing, some Favorites not syncing at all etc. It looked better for a while when I only had the Beta channel syncing with itself between two PCs, but everything went back to "normal" when the Canary channel updated just now. So, can we have some information on what is going on?Re: Now Turns On
HotCakeX Heh, I just upgraded the Canary version (81.0.369.0) and got all of my hundreds of doubles back - both on Canary and Beta. Stuff I deleted long ago is now back. There is no sign of any attempt to merge doubles, as was mentioned in a blog post, but I have to resort to an extension to clean this up, but why should I bother? Deleted Favorites have always come back and multiplied so far, and why should it be different this time? It's 2019 and implementing Favorites sync is still a Hard Computer Science Problem. And there goes all hope that this mess will be fixed by January 15.Re: Now Turns On
HotCakeX Previously I only had the Beta on one PC, but I installed it on a second so I could see that sync is in fact working quite well there. After years of sync fiasco in Edge, it's quite comforting to see it working, although there are imperfections. Why, for instance, is it still disabled in the other channels? I also noticed that the Tabs Set Aside folder wasn't syncing. Neither its contents nor its location relative other folders. The same goes for Favorites I move out of the Tabs Set Aside folder - they stay on the browser they were created on. Edge has a lot to prove before I rely on it for storing links again, so every little thing makes me hesitate.Re: Now Turns On
HotCakeX Is Collections sync supposed to work now, though? A couple of weeks ago it was in fact working (and really fast too), even though Favorites sync was disabled. Today, Collections no longer sync in latest Canary. And of course, Favorites are not syncing either. Is the browser going to launch on Jan 15 with all sync disabled? That would raise a few eyebrows.Re: [UPDATE: FIXED] Favorites syncing not available in Edge Chromium Canary channel
HotCakeX Great tip! I tried it, got rid of all the duplicates, waited for the changes to propagate, only to see every single one (plus two new ones, I think) reappear. So, sync is doing something, but it isn't helpful, and it doesn't even result in all Edge installs having the same set of duplicated settings. (Sad trombone.)Re: [UPDATE: FIXED] Favorites syncing not available in Edge Chromium Canary channel
Xzavier I too have high hopes for the Chromium Edge, but the devs really need to get their act together when it comes to sync. Any sync engine would have to assume that there will be errors and conflicts, but it should also be possible to reach an "equilibrium" among all sync clients if the user doesn't constantly make conflikting edits. However, that requires merging duplicates and making occasional "full syncs" instead of simply propagating incremental edits. Worst case, I would (very) occasionally see a deleted Favorite reappearing, but never see duplicates or changes on one client never being synced. However, all Favorite/Read List sync engines so far have failed in the worst possible manner, including deleting everything twice from my account. So, still a long way to go and January 15 is approaching quickly.Re: [UPDATE: FIXED] Favorites syncing not available in Edge Chromium Canary channel
Xzavier Yup, I can also see some Favorites sync action across all channels now. But like you say, there are a lot of duplicates. I can't for my life see how the sync engine isn't capable of simply merging favorites with identical name, path, and URL. It's nice to see that there is an extension to clean up the mess (will try it!), but how could we end up here in the first place? This was also a problem with the original Edge sync engine, which never got fixed.Re: Syncing
cjc2112 That's my experience as well - nearly nothing syncs, including Favorites (which supposedly should sync, but I see nothing to that effect). Also, one of the few settings that I see sync in Beta and Dev - Show Home button - doesn't on Canary anymore. So, I am also a bit worried about the new sync engine, which doesn't look any better than the old one.Re: [UPDATE: FIXED] Favorites syncing not available in Edge Chromium Canary channel
Xzavier I have all three channels, on two PCs, and the sets of Favorites on all 4 installs are completely different. From what I can see nothing ever syncs - I only get an initial Favorites collection, with many duplicates (but not exactly the same). For me, this is how sync was been in Legacy Edge for years. I had expected the new Edge to be an improvement, but even the new sync engine completely falls on its face. Since not everybody is complaining, I assume that there is something wrong with my (quite old) MS Account, but obviously I can't just change that. Is there a way to diagnose what goes wrong in sync?Re: Dev Update to 76.0.159.0 is live
sambul95 wrote: However, without fixing the High CPU Load bug, its all meaningless. So you're also seeing high CPU? I guess it must be quite common. I just installed Canary on a more capable desktop PC in addition to a laptop I've been testing it on, with different CPU/GPU and OS version, and sure enough it's there too (although not as bad): This is from having a single tab with example.com in Edge Canary, compared to a few "real" sites in Edge Classic. The only way to get the CPU usage to a manageable level is to minimize the browser, but it never gets the Suspended (green leaf) indication.
