5 ms·

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 e

by yodon 10y ago

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.

mcbits 10y ago
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.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  >hand of a surgeon 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.)
ocdtrekkie 10y ago
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.)
- yodon 10y ago
  Yep, I'm on Anniversary and still encountering Edge crashes pretty regularly
nso 10y ago
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.
- yodon 10y ago
  Chrome and Firefox both manage to search for system.web if I type that into the address bar. This is a solved problem, everywhere except for Edge. Edit: It looks like only Chrome and Safari have figured out how to do this.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    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?
  - gcp 10y ago
    If you type system.web into the address bar, Firefox gives you a list with 2 choices: a) Visit system.web b) Search google for system.web
  - vxNsr 10y ago
    --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.
  - Sylos 10y ago
    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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.web
chadgeidel 10y ago
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.
pjc50 10y ago
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.
- yodon 10y ago
  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.
  - srikz 10y ago
    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 :(
  - Bud 10y ago
    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.
TorKlingberg 10y ago
Want to open a local file? Nope, not happening.
- KirinDave 10y ago
  Opened one just now. Why is this hard?
NetStrikeForce 10y ago
Aaand it can't seem to keep a dozen tabs working snappily on my i7 + 16Gb RAM laptop :-(
amyjess 10y ago
> 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)
- mlvljr 10y ago
  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.
consto 10y ago
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 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.
- yodon 10y ago
  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)
levelist_com 10y ago
... 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-microsoft-edge-open-some-local-websites-but-not-others-where-the-doma https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32384571/why-does-micros...). Then it works.
- KirinDave 10y ago
  FWIW, this problem is fixed in all the insider ring builds I have access to. I use the hosts file for domains and have yet to see this behavior.
  - levelist_com 10y ago
    That's interesting to know, thank you. Just so I am clear, you have domains that end with .local?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
KnowNothings 10y ago
It was more stable in my testing of the Windows 10 beta. It went all down hill from there.
RandomOpinion 10y ago
>Oh and it crashes constantly. Did I mention that it crashes constantly? 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.
- digler999 10y ago
  > 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.
  - Sylos 10y ago
    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. Source for that statement is in this article under "Cloud Methods", second paragraph: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-07-15/microsoft-said-to-announce-job-cuts-as-soon-as-this-week https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-07-15/microsoft...
- newscracker 10y ago
  > 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.
Ezhik 10y ago
My biggest peeve so far is that I can't disable spell checking on my physical keyboard.

by yodon 10y ago

mcbits 10y ago

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.

MichaelGG 10y ago
>hand of a surgeon 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.)

ocdtrekkie 10y ago

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.)

yodon 10y ago
Yep, I'm on Anniversary and still encountering Edge crashes pretty regularly

nso 10y ago

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.

yodon 10y ago
Chrome and Firefox both manage to search for system.web if I type that into the address bar. This is a solved problem, everywhere except for Edge. Edit: It looks like only Chrome and Safari have figured out how to do this.
- pjc50 10y ago
  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?
- gcp 10y ago
  If you type system.web into the address bar, Firefox gives you a list with 2 choices: a) Visit system.web b) Search google for system.web
- vxNsr 10y ago
  --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.
- Sylos 10y ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.web

chadgeidel 10y ago

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.

pjc50 10y ago

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.

yodon 10y ago
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.
- srikz 10y ago
  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 :(
- Bud 10y ago
  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.

TorKlingberg 10y ago

Want to open a local file? Nope, not happening.

KirinDave 10y ago
Opened one just now. Why is this hard?

NetStrikeForce 10y ago

Aaand it can't seem to keep a dozen tabs working snappily on my i7 + 16Gb RAM laptop :-(

amyjess 10y ago

> 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)

mlvljr 10y ago
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.

consto 10y ago

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 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.

yodon 10y ago
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)

levelist_com 10y ago

... 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-microsoft-edge-open-some-local-websites-but-not-others-where-the-doma https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32384571/why-does-micros...). Then it works.

KirinDave 10y ago
FWIW, this problem is fixed in all the insider ring builds I have access to. I use the hosts file for domains and have yet to see this behavior.
- levelist_com 10y ago
  That's interesting to know, thank you. Just so I am clear, you have domains that end with .local?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

KnowNothings 10y ago

It was more stable in my testing of the Windows 10 beta. It went all down hill from there.

RandomOpinion 10y ago

>Oh and it crashes constantly. Did I mention that it crashes constantly? 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.

digler999 10y ago
> 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.
- Sylos 10y ago
  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. Source for that statement is in this article under "Cloud Methods", second paragraph: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-07-15/microsoft-said-to-announce-job-cuts-as-soon-as-this-week https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-07-15/microsoft...
newscracker 10y ago
> 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.

Ezhik 10y ago

My biggest peeve so far is that I can't disable spell checking on my physical keyboard.