Actually as person who spend all day reading PDF and non-native English talker, I must admit I abandoned chrome for edge because of one simple feature: "Ask Cortana".
Chrome dev team has somekind of attitude ,"they don't give fuck about peoples feedback".
And as person which English is not his mother tongue I know simple built-in universal look up is game changer. Apple is first. But since I am PC user , it is not an option for me.So I am going to definitely stick with Edge, because reading PDF in edge when you can simply lookup any word definition is absolutely a game changer for me.
I run a virtual box VM provided by Microsoft to test my website on their new browser. It surprises me how much of a resource hog Windows can be... Is there really no way to turn off cortana and on access antivirus scan? I guess it is probably fine on a real machine but it sucks on a VM on a machine with a spinning disk where Windows is just a tenant among others.
> Is there really no way to turn off cortana and on access antivirus scan?
Cortana is a new name for an old process. It is SearchUI.exe. You can disable most of Cortana's functionality, it is currently "suspended" on my machine and using 38 MB of RAM, with 5 seconds of CPU time. Pretty low utilisation.
Here is a guide to disabling the anti-virus indefinitely:
> To validate our improvements and make sure we’re giving our customers the best experience possible, we monitor aggregated telemetry on power consumption from millions of Windows 10 devices around the world.
I don't know how I feel about this. On the one hand, the telemetry data is obviously very useful and will allow products to be improved greatly. On the other hand, how many of the "millions" of people know the data is being collected? Did every single one of them click a button that said "I know what data you want to collect and I accept your request to take it"? Definitely not. To pull stunts like this, they need absolute transparency on the telemetry collected, the encryption/sanitation methods, how they ensure anonymity, the security of the protocols used for collection, and ideally be an opt-in not an opt-out. I don't care if they collect battery usage of my new laptop playing games, and anything important is disabled, but there's absolutely no way I'm upgrading my development PC to Windows 10 or ever installing a Microsoft product on my Linux install.
I'm waiting for the inevitable day when Windows messes with other OSes that have been dual-booted. One day we'll log in and see a pop-up saying "We've detected you recently installed <Insert Linux Distro here> to <Insert Disk Drive here>! To provide the best service possible, we've installed a full Microsoft driver/software suite and changed the theme to something more Windows-like."
Edit: As a fun side-note, when copying the quote to my clipboard it automatically appended "Read more at <link to article here." The joke about Microsoft pushing their products into Linux distros was exactly that: A joke. But secretly adding data (even harmless links) into local memory that could be unknowingly stored/put anywhere because the user has no idea is unbelievable.
So, I'm glad that Microsoft is focusing on a real-world pain point for people on Edge. I don't think people can be talked into switching browsers by stuff like the Cortana integration, but this might convince some. One problem is that Edge really isn't quite ready for primetime yet. There's a few sharp edges here and there that make using it about 90% pleasant enough and 10% really painful. Some of it is that I don't think the UWP is as fully-baked as the old Win32 ecosystem yet, and it makes weird compromises. The multitasking model of UWP seems to be phone-first, which is just out of place for me. When I have a desktop PC that's plugged in and has 16gb of RAM, my web browser should never just spontaneously CLOSE because I tab out to another window. I get why Edge does this, believe me. (I just got out of a two-week stretch of using a cheap Nokia Lumia as my smartphone because of problems with my main device overheating, and there's such a tension between being impressed at what Windows 10 for Phones or whatever the hell they're calling it now can do in 512mb of RAM and thinking that 512mb of RAM is incredibly frustrating to live with.) But it doesn't make sense on the majority of devices that Edge runs on. Leave my browser window open. I'm going to come back to it. Also, Microsoft really needs to break the link between Edge updates and Windows updates. This doesn't affect me much at home because I'm Fast Ring so I get Windows updates more often than I eat meals sometimes, but in general I don't think it's great for the ecosystem.
Also, if by any chance someone working on Edge is reading this thread, can you make it so I can resize the text box for adding comments to Hacker News? Chrome lets me do this, and I would probably increase my Edge usage significantly with just that fix.
> The multitasking model of UWP seems to be phone-first, which is just out of place for me. When I have a desktop PC that's plugged in and has 16gb of RAM, my web browser should never just spontaneously CLOSE because I tab out to another window.
I haven't used Windows in a decade. This really happens? UWP programs just spontaneously close on desktop computers? I really can't believe that.
So, open/close is a bit of a weird distinction here? The program doesn't close in the way a Win32 program does, if I open Edge back up everything is as I left it -- all the tabs are still there, everything is where I left it, if I'm halfway through filling out a form everything I've filled out is still there. But yeah, at least when I first started using it, Edge would just vanish sometimes. I should note that I don't know if this is still an issue, I've basically given up on sustained Edge usage for now.
I've not seen that but I thought UWP apps don't really close either. They sort of hibernate because they should restore in whatever state you left them.
I guess there are a couple things this could refer to -
* On desktop Windows in desktop mode, modern apps are suspended when they're minimized or the user switches away from the virtual desktop they're on. Background operations that need to meant to continue are supposed to use various officially supported background task APIs. This is intended to be transparent to the user.
* AIUI in situations where the OS detects an app is hung and would put up a ghost window with a "not responding" message if it were a classic app, the OS will just straight up kill a modern app. The theory is that this will force developers to make more responsive apps.
So AFAIK there are no situations where a "well-behaved" app is supposed to spontaneously close from the user's POV, but for modern apps the OS is stricter about trying to enforce "good behavior". TBH though I think what the GP was seeing was probably just Edge crashing on its own.
> The multitasking model of UWP seems to be phone-first, which is just out of place for me. When I have a desktop PC that's plugged in and has 16gb of RAM, my web browser should never just spontaneously CLOSE because I tab out to another window.
What aggravates me more is that apps also suspend when you switch to other windows. When watching something on Netflix, I usually like to switch over to doing something else when a show's opening credits are playing. I can't do that in Netflix's UWP app because it suspends as soon as I switch to another window.
I regularly have 50 tabs open on my 8G MBA in 4-5 windows. Recently I moved from Chrome to Safari thinking it would save me battery. Well it didn't. Because Safari used so much more memory it started trashing. And I could forget about running virtualization...
I've 16g of ram for a reason. At the same time I'm only a bit angry with the modern web in that seeing a single tab take up 2g of memory is really starting to get to me. Not even flash was this bad.
I'd encourage you to try stuff like pinboard.in, having that many tabs while fun, and I probably have more right now, really does a number on battery life. I try to keep it to one window with full tab titlebars.
Dear Microsoft, I'm staying on Windows 7 (telemetry windows updates declined) with most of my work done on Linux because of stories like this. The whole stack comes off sounding like confusion and delay with zero payoff.
That would be unfair comparison in this case, because they are talking about browser vs browser comparison.But for safari , since neither support others platform, that would be whole stack vs whole stack.
It's pretty easy to get the update manually if you want it. Search for Microsoft's "Media Creation Tool" and run it. It'll offer to upgrade the PC you're on immediately, or download the installation media.
That is what I wanted: Mandated Telemetry in everything I do so the mothership knows everything I do everytime from a product I supposedly bought.
It is so great to know that today Microsoft and the US gobertment could use all this information to improve their products or directly control the people that use their computers.
I don't use edge until now the only reason being no support for extensions. Since they are arriving soon it's very exciting. Finally to save some more hours on the battery!
I'm a huge fan of Microsoft, heavy Azure and .NET stack user, and I can't find a single nice thing to say about Edge. Yes, it crashes constantly, but it's the easy stuff that is hopelessly and inexcusably broken.
Want a dozen tabs? No problem, just don't expect to be able to switch to the ones on the right because the hit boxes for selecting the tabs are hidden behind the hit box for minimizing the window. Want to resize the window? No problem, just don't try to do it by clicking on the top edge of the window because the hit box for resizing the window is hidden behind the hit boxes for selecting tabs. Want to set the default search engine to google or anything else? No problem, just don't expect to search for anything with a dot in the name because the unbelievably poorly written regex for detecting URLs overrides the search engine behavior in the address bar, preventing your search from hitting the search engine.
The list of unbelievable simple, horribly frustrating usability issues is so long and so easy to encounter, I refuse to believe anyone on the Edge team actually uses this thing.
Oh and it crashes constantly. Did I mention that it crashes constantly? Which is a shame because In my opinion it has the nicest developer toolset of any of the major browsers.
Are you using the Anniversary Update yet? Edge crashing was really, really bad in the 1511 build, but I've had almost no crashes on 1607. (Though in fairness, I rarely use browsers with more than five or six simultaneously open tabs.)
Im on my cell now, so I cant verify, but is it not possible to do ?<query> like in chrime?
You have to excuse the browsers now that the consept TLD has been watered down so much. How would you want them to do it? Whitelist of valid TLDs in the browser? What if a new TLD is released and the users browser for policy reason is not autoupdated? The domain name is not supposed to work? No, it basicly has to be like it is now.
Am I misunderstanding you, because I just typed "system.web" into my FF address bar (not search box) and it gave me a "can't find the server at system.web" error as I'd expect?
--This works for me on build 1511 for edge... Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I can search for anything as long as its not recognized as a TLD. It appears to have the same functionally as chrome in regards to searching vs. browsing.--
EDIT: Ok, I missed the part where you switched the search to google, now it fails completely, sad.
Why should it search for it rather than try to connect to it? It's a valid address. And ".web" is an assigned Top-Level Domain as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.web
Keyboard shortcut tip for anyone who uses search a lot: Ctrl+K. Focuses the search bar on Firefox, and focuses the address bar and replaces it with "?" on Chrome.
I really want to like Edge. I use it quite a bit in hopes that someone at MS is collecting usage reports. I agree that it crashes constantly. And > 5 or so tabs? Hoo boy - i don't even try.
The tabs-in-title bar stuff is just astonishingly broken. You can't use more tabs than fit, but you can open them. I can't believe that test haven't caught this either.
Oh, and AFAIK it only saves your tabs at powerdown, quitting the browser loses them all.
The most reliable way I've found of making sure Edge tabs get saved to reopen on the next launch is to kill Edge in the task manager. Normal window closes and device reboots sometimes restore on launch but not always.
Just laughed out loud at this. Even for Microsoft, this is hilarious. Force-killing the app is the BEST way to make a vital feature work reliably? That's amazing.
Yes that's how I used to 'reliably' get it to restore my 3 windows with some 15 tabs each. I say 'used to' because today it just crashed and when I restarted it opened 1 window with 1 tab open :/ and because I had not clicked on some of those tabs in a while they are buried in history. I know people will say that's not how I'm supposed to use it and should use the history but it's such a simple feature which they got wrong!
Also the amount of tab reloads is appalling. I really want to like using it and some of my friends are shocked that I use 'Internet Explorer'. But, sometimes they are right :(
I will add: Want to click to select a tab using a pen tablet? No problem, as long as you have the hand of a surgeon. (It's far too easy to accidentally pop a tab out to a new window.)
Though now that it supports extensions, I'm still giving it a try for a few weeks to see if it can replace Firefox, which has been going downhill for me lately.
This was always a huge issue on Tablet PC, and probably the number one usability issue from Microsoft. (The rest of the Tablet PC sinking was due to shitty OEMs.)
> I'm a huge fan of Microsoft, heavy Azure and .NET stack user, and I can't find a single nice thing to say about Edge.
It's touch-friendly.
I own a Surface Pro 3, and it's my go-to device when I'm laying on my couch. I obviously don't hook up the keyboard when doing this. No other browser on Windows is actually optimized for being used on a touchscreen. They all have tiny hit targets and are basically unusable without a keyboard and mouse. Edge also doesn't make the same mistake Chrome does and shrink the size of your tabs when you have a lot open; instead, it keeps all tabs at a fixed size and scrolls them when you have too many to fit on one screen, which is the more touch-friendly solution.
I wouldn't use Edge on a desktop, but my Surface needs it.
(as a side note, it's too bad Microsoft cancelled their Android runtime, because I'd love to be able to run Chrome for Android on my Surface)
Works nice on a touch-screen hi-dpi ASUS Zenbook as well, yes. Can scroll with the right thumb and so on -- feels more natural than using mouse, interestingly.
Are we using the same browser? I normally use chrome and only touch it when installing a new browser but I can't seem to reproduce the majority of your issues.
> the hit boxes for selecting the tabs are hidden behind the hit box for minimizing the window
There's just the right amount of space to drag the window for me, it's the same when maximised. At no point do I minimise the window while trying to click a tab: http://i.imgur.com/DtnVhml.png
I also have my display at 125% scaling so it handles that correctly.
> the hit box for resizing the window is hidden behind the hit boxes for selecting tabs.
I can reproduce this, but I could see this being intentional. Although it wouldn't affect me as I use Win + Arrow most of the time.
> just don't expect to search for anything with a dot in the name
I set my search to Google UK and searching for all the phrases below works:
hackernews.
hacker.news test
hackernews. test
.hackernews
foo.bar.baz
hackernews.xkcd
news.hacker
hacker.co.zz
hacker.news doesn't, but that's because I believe .news is an actual TLD.
> it crashes constantly.
I virtually never use it, but it has yet to crash for me.
> Want to click to select a tab using a pen tablet?
Either I have a good hand or it's not too difficult. And anyway, it's no worse than chrome.
---
If I didn't already use chrome with a bunch of extensions, I could honestly see me not bothering and just using edge. I just hope the little contest the two browsers are having continues.
Off-topic, it feels weird to argue for microsofts browser.
Your screenshot only has a couple tabs open. Try opening a dozen more tabs and watch what happens (and sure, you might not be the sort of person who normally has 20 tabs open but plenty of other people do and doing so shouldn't cause a UI fail)
... or that you can have a .local domain (added to hosts file) for a local VM, every other browser can hit with no problem but not Edge. The only solution I have found that consistently works is to start Fiddler4 (as described in the 4th comment down by Dave Kennard - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32384571/why-does-micros...). Then it works.
> Those who don't vote, don't get to complain about the problems caused by not voting.
Nice dichotomy there: privacy or quality. And people wonder why MS gets such a bad name.
What about their "walled garden" philosophy ? All tablets/laptops are one-size-fits all, only a handful of total models exist. All MS "updates" are shoved down the users' throats. There should be no need for telemetry to detect a bad user experience. The apps are all signed, binary blobs that run in their own private, signed environment. Unless MS has no QA department, they absolutely are aware of how crappy their browser runs.
I'm pretty sure that Microsoft actually does not have a QA department.
I can't seem to find a source which confirms specifically that, but after Nadella took over in 2014, he cut a bunch of jobs, which were mostly jobs from the Nokia acquisition, but he also specifically mentioned in this context that he wanted to go more into the direction of agile software development, which means no dedicated QA and rather the developers are supposed to test it as they build it.
> Those who don't vote, don't get to complain about the problems caused by not voting.
Slightly tangential, but those who don't read and/or listen to customers' feedback on online forums and sites don't deserve to achieve widespread use. Vocal users direct first impressions with a big influence, and saying that they should have telemetry on for the problems to be heard is practically useless.
If telemetry were to be absolutely important, then the release models and first time launch questions should be changed so more people can help provide technical information that may be useful. Add nightlies, alphas, betas, etc., and make telemetry prominently enabled in those. Have proper messages on the information shared, the risks on using pre-release software and a super easy way to turn telemetry off. Also have crash reporting built-in like how Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird have so users can choose whether to send it across and also see, for those who're technically inclined, what information is sent.
Hopefully this pushes Chrome team to improve the terrible battery management across the board. Even on OS X, Chrome eats battery significantly faster than Safari.
Which is becoming a larger and larger problem as apps are switching away from tiny efficient native runtimes to the Chromium driven Electron hogs :/
They are pushing for it, but it might take some time. IIRC their new V8 architecture is going to bring some big memory and battery savings in that area, but that's not going to be done until next year at the earliest (complete guess on my part).
> Hopefully this pushes Chrome team to improve the terrible battery management across the board. Even on OS X, Chrome eats battery significantly faster than Safari.
Why would this push them any more than Safari blowing them out the water on efficiency for years?
Because no one really cares about doing better than Safari, mostly because the amount of users is small and they all consider themselves better browsers. Apple or even Webkit never made any kind of waves about it themselves either.
However, Microsoft is pretty big. Edge is the default browser on Windows, a platform that has a significant amount of users, and they're making quite some noise in the area. Others have taken notice and are at least ensuring they keep up. Which is good, we all benefit.
At home when I'm all plugged in, I have 3 Chrome windows, each with multiple tabs, spread across my PLP setup. Whenever I pop into a client, and awake from sleep, you can almost see the battery draining in real time. Edge to the rescue; and I'm glad they're putting the pressure on Google to do better.
Pro Tip: You think Edge saves your battery? Sheeeeit....Try using the Movies & TV app vs VLC someday. M&TV is a certified power miser - I caught up on several TV shows plus The Martian on a flight from Montego Bay to Frankfurt a few months ago, using my Toshiba Encore 10" tablet that isn't exactly known for its battery life.
I never trust Microsoft benchmarks or studies they paid for.
Why?
Because they've lied so many times that it's impossible for me to trust them. Remember the TCO of Linux versus Windows? They used different machines AND tacked on thousands per individual in training if they used Linux. It was comparing apples and oranges.
Who knows what they came up with to show off Edge here...
Unfortunately, Netflix uses DRM which limits Firefox's ability to have control over the better usage in this test. The video decoding and decryption is done by the Adobe CDM. It would be interesting to see a comparison without DRM'd video.
Exactly! It's even worse because Netflix has specific deals with Microsoft/Edge that use a different DRM technique - they announced so publicly as a reason to restrict Chrome and Firefox to non-HD video.
How does Microsoft tweaking the OS to make Edge use the battery more efficiently translate to industry-leading efficiency? A more reliable test would be to compare browsers on another Operating System.
It's really cool that they published details on their measurement methodology and even made their webdriver code open-source (https://microsoftedge.github.io/videotest/2016-09/WebdriverM...). Also cool that Chrome's energy use has been improving considerably in Chrome 53, and with this being a bit of a PR battle here's hoping that energy use of both Edge and Chrome continues to improve.
They must have carefully curated the "general browsing" to sites that do not cause it to crash, as it always seems to pull a vanishing act if the site isn't coded specifically to avoid known crash points.
The most reliable way I've found to crash it is to use MutationObservers in a website. Even though Edge has support for them, I still have to pave over it with a JS version that doesn't cause the browser to crash after a few minutes of use.
Something is wrong if emulating browser features in JS leads to a better experience than using the feature as built in. Having to do so probably eliminates any battery life gains they have made.
sometimes I do wonder why Microsoft fanbois creep around in comment sections, downvoting everyone who doesn't fall to the ground at the amazing (not) quality of work Microsoft does
103 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 183 ms ] threadChrome dev team has somekind of attitude ,"they don't give fuck about peoples feedback". And as person which English is not his mother tongue I know simple built-in universal look up is game changer. Apple is first. But since I am PC user , it is not an option for me.So I am going to definitely stick with Edge, because reading PDF in edge when you can simply lookup any word definition is absolutely a game changer for me.
Here's how to turn it off: http://www.windowscentral.com/how-turn-cortana-and-stop-pers...
In Chrome I use "google dictionary" and just double click any word in any language and it gives me translations, define and wikipedia stuff.
Cortana is a new name for an old process. It is SearchUI.exe. You can disable most of Cortana's functionality, it is currently "suspended" on my machine and using 38 MB of RAM, with 5 seconds of CPU time. Pretty low utilisation.
Here is a guide to disabling the anti-virus indefinitely:
http://www.ghacks.net/2015/10/25/how-to-disable-windows-defe...
- http://www.thewindowsclub.com/disable-turn-off-cortana-windo...
I don't know how I feel about this. On the one hand, the telemetry data is obviously very useful and will allow products to be improved greatly. On the other hand, how many of the "millions" of people know the data is being collected? Did every single one of them click a button that said "I know what data you want to collect and I accept your request to take it"? Definitely not. To pull stunts like this, they need absolute transparency on the telemetry collected, the encryption/sanitation methods, how they ensure anonymity, the security of the protocols used for collection, and ideally be an opt-in not an opt-out. I don't care if they collect battery usage of my new laptop playing games, and anything important is disabled, but there's absolutely no way I'm upgrading my development PC to Windows 10 or ever installing a Microsoft product on my Linux install.
I'm waiting for the inevitable day when Windows messes with other OSes that have been dual-booted. One day we'll log in and see a pop-up saying "We've detected you recently installed <Insert Linux Distro here> to <Insert Disk Drive here>! To provide the best service possible, we've installed a full Microsoft driver/software suite and changed the theme to something more Windows-like."
Edit: As a fun side-note, when copying the quote to my clipboard it automatically appended "Read more at <link to article here." The joke about Microsoft pushing their products into Linux distros was exactly that: A joke. But secretly adding data (even harmless links) into local memory that could be unknowingly stored/put anywhere because the user has no idea is unbelievable.
Also, if by any chance someone working on Edge is reading this thread, can you make it so I can resize the text box for adding comments to Hacker News? Chrome lets me do this, and I would probably increase my Edge usage significantly with just that fix.
I haven't used Windows in a decade. This really happens? UWP programs just spontaneously close on desktop computers? I really can't believe that.
* On desktop Windows in desktop mode, modern apps are suspended when they're minimized or the user switches away from the virtual desktop they're on. Background operations that need to meant to continue are supposed to use various officially supported background task APIs. This is intended to be transparent to the user.
* AIUI in situations where the OS detects an app is hung and would put up a ghost window with a "not responding" message if it were a classic app, the OS will just straight up kill a modern app. The theory is that this will force developers to make more responsive apps.
So AFAIK there are no situations where a "well-behaved" app is supposed to spontaneously close from the user's POV, but for modern apps the OS is stricter about trying to enforce "good behavior". TBH though I think what the GP was seeing was probably just Edge crashing on its own.
What aggravates me more is that apps also suspend when you switch to other windows. When watching something on Netflix, I usually like to switch over to doing something else when a show's opening credits are playing. I can't do that in Netflix's UWP app because it suspends as soon as I switch to another window.
An extra hour or more of battery is nothing to sneeze at.
So now I'm back on Chrome....
I'd encourage you to try stuff like pinboard.in, having that many tabs while fun, and I probably have more right now, really does a number on battery life. I try to keep it to one window with full tab titlebars.
Take a Macbook Pro / Surface Pro 4 with stock settings, put Edge / Safari under the same paces and see which one uses more energy.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
That is what I wanted: Mandated Telemetry in everything I do so the mothership knows everything I do everytime from a product I supposedly bought.
It is so great to know that today Microsoft and the US gobertment could use all this information to improve their products or directly control the people that use their computers.
I mean, some (that silent majority of?) users must be happy with everything he said.
Or else M$ and Google wouldn't be doing it. Right?
Want a dozen tabs? No problem, just don't expect to be able to switch to the ones on the right because the hit boxes for selecting the tabs are hidden behind the hit box for minimizing the window. Want to resize the window? No problem, just don't try to do it by clicking on the top edge of the window because the hit box for resizing the window is hidden behind the hit boxes for selecting tabs. Want to set the default search engine to google or anything else? No problem, just don't expect to search for anything with a dot in the name because the unbelievably poorly written regex for detecting URLs overrides the search engine behavior in the address bar, preventing your search from hitting the search engine.
The list of unbelievable simple, horribly frustrating usability issues is so long and so easy to encounter, I refuse to believe anyone on the Edge team actually uses this thing.
Oh and it crashes constantly. Did I mention that it crashes constantly? Which is a shame because In my opinion it has the nicest developer toolset of any of the major browsers.
You have to excuse the browsers now that the consept TLD has been watered down so much. How would you want them to do it? Whitelist of valid TLDs in the browser? What if a new TLD is released and the users browser for policy reason is not autoupdated? The domain name is not supposed to work? No, it basicly has to be like it is now.
Edit: It looks like only Chrome and Safari have figured out how to do this.
a) Visit system.web b) Search google for system.web
EDIT: Ok, I missed the part where you switched the search to google, now it fails completely, sad.
And Ctrl+L is then again the alternative to F6.
Oh, and AFAIK it only saves your tabs at powerdown, quitting the browser loses them all.
Also the amount of tab reloads is appalling. I really want to like using it and some of my friends are shocked that I use 'Internet Explorer'. But, sometimes they are right :(
Though now that it supports extensions, I'm still giving it a try for a few weeks to see if it can replace Firefox, which has been going downhill for me lately.
This was always a huge issue on Tablet PC, and probably the number one usability issue from Microsoft. (The rest of the Tablet PC sinking was due to shitty OEMs.)
It's touch-friendly.
I own a Surface Pro 3, and it's my go-to device when I'm laying on my couch. I obviously don't hook up the keyboard when doing this. No other browser on Windows is actually optimized for being used on a touchscreen. They all have tiny hit targets and are basically unusable without a keyboard and mouse. Edge also doesn't make the same mistake Chrome does and shrink the size of your tabs when you have a lot open; instead, it keeps all tabs at a fixed size and scrolls them when you have too many to fit on one screen, which is the more touch-friendly solution.
I wouldn't use Edge on a desktop, but my Surface needs it.
(as a side note, it's too bad Microsoft cancelled their Android runtime, because I'd love to be able to run Chrome for Android on my Surface)
> the hit boxes for selecting the tabs are hidden behind the hit box for minimizing the window
There's just the right amount of space to drag the window for me, it's the same when maximised. At no point do I minimise the window while trying to click a tab: http://i.imgur.com/DtnVhml.png
I also have my display at 125% scaling so it handles that correctly.
> the hit box for resizing the window is hidden behind the hit boxes for selecting tabs.
I can reproduce this, but I could see this being intentional. Although it wouldn't affect me as I use Win + Arrow most of the time.
> just don't expect to search for anything with a dot in the name
I set my search to Google UK and searching for all the phrases below works:
hackernews. hacker.news test hackernews. test .hackernews foo.bar.baz hackernews.xkcd news.hacker hacker.co.zz
hacker.news doesn't, but that's because I believe .news is an actual TLD.
> it crashes constantly.
I virtually never use it, but it has yet to crash for me.
> Want to click to select a tab using a pen tablet?
Either I have a good hand or it's not too difficult. And anyway, it's no worse than chrome.
---
If I didn't already use chrome with a bunch of extensions, I could honestly see me not bothering and just using edge. I just hope the little contest the two browsers are having continues.
Off-topic, it feels weird to argue for microsofts browser.
Slightly tangential but do you have your MS telemetry turned off? If you do, MS doesn't know you're having a problem.
Those who don't vote, don't get to complain about the problems caused by not voting.
Nice dichotomy there: privacy or quality. And people wonder why MS gets such a bad name.
What about their "walled garden" philosophy ? All tablets/laptops are one-size-fits all, only a handful of total models exist. All MS "updates" are shoved down the users' throats. There should be no need for telemetry to detect a bad user experience. The apps are all signed, binary blobs that run in their own private, signed environment. Unless MS has no QA department, they absolutely are aware of how crappy their browser runs.
I can't seem to find a source which confirms specifically that, but after Nadella took over in 2014, he cut a bunch of jobs, which were mostly jobs from the Nokia acquisition, but he also specifically mentioned in this context that he wanted to go more into the direction of agile software development, which means no dedicated QA and rather the developers are supposed to test it as they build it.
Source for that statement is in this article under "Cloud Methods", second paragraph: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-07-15/microsoft...
Slightly tangential, but those who don't read and/or listen to customers' feedback on online forums and sites don't deserve to achieve widespread use. Vocal users direct first impressions with a big influence, and saying that they should have telemetry on for the problems to be heard is practically useless.
If telemetry were to be absolutely important, then the release models and first time launch questions should be changed so more people can help provide technical information that may be useful. Add nightlies, alphas, betas, etc., and make telemetry prominently enabled in those. Have proper messages on the information shared, the risks on using pre-release software and a super easy way to turn telemetry off. Also have crash reporting built-in like how Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird have so users can choose whether to send it across and also see, for those who're technically inclined, what information is sent.
Which is becoming a larger and larger problem as apps are switching away from tiny efficient native runtimes to the Chromium driven Electron hogs :/
Why would this push them any more than Safari blowing them out the water on efficiency for years?
However, Microsoft is pretty big. Edge is the default browser on Windows, a platform that has a significant amount of users, and they're making quite some noise in the area. Others have taken notice and are at least ensuring they keep up. Which is good, we all benefit.
https://chrome.googleblog.com/2016/09/chrome-faster-and-more...
Pro Tip: You think Edge saves your battery? Sheeeeit....Try using the Movies & TV app vs VLC someday. M&TV is a certified power miser - I caught up on several TV shows plus The Martian on a flight from Montego Bay to Frankfurt a few months ago, using my Toshiba Encore 10" tablet that isn't exactly known for its battery life.
Why?
Because they've lied so many times that it's impossible for me to trust them. Remember the TCO of Linux versus Windows? They used different machines AND tacked on thousands per individual in training if they used Linux. It was comparing apples and oranges.
Who knows what they came up with to show off Edge here...
https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/BrowserEfficiencyTest/relea...
The most reliable way I've found to crash it is to use MutationObservers in a website. Even though Edge has support for them, I still have to pave over it with a JS version that doesn't cause the browser to crash after a few minutes of use.
Something is wrong if emulating browser features in JS leads to a better experience than using the feature as built in. Having to do so probably eliminates any battery life gains they have made.
Hope this new version is faster, but if it's optimizing for battery life then maybe it'll be worse...