4 ms·

I'm writing this on the Dev version right now, and it feels great so far! The reading list is not implemented in this build, but I hope they add it back...

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
I have a lot of doubts on... any Edge features actually surviving into this Chrome reskin. They've decided not to implement eBook support, which yes, meant they couldn't sell eBooks anymore, but also effectively removed native EPUB support from Windows entirely, which was a pretty nice feature to have.
- npo_ 8y ago
  That's disappointing... Previewing EPUB files is the only reason I ever use Edge. I would imagine a lot of other people do the same -- it was nice having native EPUB viewing support in Windows 10.
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    Yeah, one of the reasons I've long preferred PDF's for eBooks was the pretty much default support anywhere. EPUB was winning me over with Edge support. I'm irritated it's being removed.
- sieabahlpark 8y ago
  That was the only reason I used edge at all
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  Edge's EPUB and PDF tools were available as a separate app call "Reader" in Windows 8 (mostly just for choice of workflow it seemed, but also maybe because it wasn't certain that Edge was going to "own" them), which was discontinued in Windows 10 when Edge took full ownership. I very much hope that if the Edge team can't/doesn't re-embed the PDF and EPUB views into Chromium-based Edge, at the very least they could give us a new version of "Reader", because it is so handy to have an inbox EPUB and PDF application in Windows.
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    Did Reader do EPUBs? I thought it was just for PDFs, which I presume the new Edge will support (as Chrome does).
    - WorldMaker 8y ago
      I remember it supporting EPUBs, but memory may be faulty here. In my defense, Reader survived longer than I think most people realized because it stopped being a default installed app pretty quickly (I think 8.1 did that, IIRC), and it still ran in Windows 10 for quite some time (if you had previously installed it) before it was shutdown for good. It may have been during that weird period on Windows 10 before it was entirely shutdown. That said, the core point still remains that hopefully even if Edge doesn't continue to support EPUBs they might spin it out into an app.
      - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
        If they had any intention of doing that, they wouldn't have decided to refund everyone's eBooks they ever purchased since they started selling them. That's a move that only makes sense if they are completely removing the functionality.
        WorldMaker 8y ago
        Not necessarily? Groove shutdown all of its online services in March but Microsoft is planning to leave it as the inbox offline player for the time being (even if it is just a sad shell of what it once was and dedicates a bunch of real estate to remind you that everybody else moved on to Spotify). The Ebook Store used an online service for DRM, plus all the various Store services themselves. It's certainly plausible they might shutdown all the online services and still provide an "offline only" non-DRM reading app. Rebuilding Edge's Reading View is on the Focus Areas list for Edge-Chromium, so depending on how the EPUB system was built maybe that's just included in the Reading View rebuild. Certainly, if people provide it as feedback that it is something that people want, I expect they will consider what they can do. It even sounds like it may be the sort of thing that this Microsoft could also make an open source Chromium extension and let Chrome users have access to it as well.
- worble 8y ago
  Really? The epub support was the only good feature of Edge.
- forgot-my-pw 8y ago
  MS just recently announced closing of the ebooks store: https://globalnews.ca/news/5130521/microsoft-ebook-store-closing/ https://globalnews.ca/news/5130521/microsoft-ebook-store-clo...
sebazzz 8y ago
It is quite smooth! But it is … just Chromium with a different name and some Windows 10 style reskinning. Its like Microsoft requires a browser for their platform, so they took something, reskinned it and now are calling it their browser. I'm actually currently using Edge as my daily driver right now, but I will switch to Firefox once it will be replaced by "Windows 10-style Chromium". For web diversity. The user agent is currently: "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/74.0.3729.48 Safari/537.36 Edg/74.1.96.24" - yes "Edg". That is not a typo.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

I have a lot of doubts on... any Edge features actually surviving into this Chrome reskin. They've decided not to implement eBook support, which yes, meant they couldn't sell eBooks anymore, but also effectively removed native EPUB support from Windows entirely, which was a pretty nice feature to have.

npo_ 8y ago
That's disappointing... Previewing EPUB files is the only reason I ever use Edge. I would imagine a lot of other people do the same -- it was nice having native EPUB viewing support in Windows 10.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  Yeah, one of the reasons I've long preferred PDF's for eBooks was the pretty much default support anywhere. EPUB was winning me over with Edge support. I'm irritated it's being removed.
sieabahlpark 8y ago
That was the only reason I used edge at all
WorldMaker 8y ago
Edge's EPUB and PDF tools were available as a separate app call "Reader" in Windows 8 (mostly just for choice of workflow it seemed, but also maybe because it wasn't certain that Edge was going to "own" them), which was discontinued in Windows 10 when Edge took full ownership. I very much hope that if the Edge team can't/doesn't re-embed the PDF and EPUB views into Chromium-based Edge, at the very least they could give us a new version of "Reader", because it is so handy to have an inbox EPUB and PDF application in Windows.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  Did Reader do EPUBs? I thought it was just for PDFs, which I presume the new Edge will support (as Chrome does).
  - WorldMaker 8y ago
    I remember it supporting EPUBs, but memory may be faulty here. In my defense, Reader survived longer than I think most people realized because it stopped being a default installed app pretty quickly (I think 8.1 did that, IIRC), and it still ran in Windows 10 for quite some time (if you had previously installed it) before it was shutdown for good. It may have been during that weird period on Windows 10 before it was entirely shutdown. That said, the core point still remains that hopefully even if Edge doesn't continue to support EPUBs they might spin it out into an app.
    - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
      If they had any intention of doing that, they wouldn't have decided to refund everyone's eBooks they ever purchased since they started selling them. That's a move that only makes sense if they are completely removing the functionality.
      - WorldMaker 8y ago
        Not necessarily? Groove shutdown all of its online services in March but Microsoft is planning to leave it as the inbox offline player for the time being (even if it is just a sad shell of what it once was and dedicates a bunch of real estate to remind you that everybody else moved on to Spotify). The Ebook Store used an online service for DRM, plus all the various Store services themselves. It's certainly plausible they might shutdown all the online services and still provide an "offline only" non-DRM reading app. Rebuilding Edge's Reading View is on the Focus Areas list for Edge-Chromium, so depending on how the EPUB system was built maybe that's just included in the Reading View rebuild. Certainly, if people provide it as feedback that it is something that people want, I expect they will consider what they can do. It even sounds like it may be the sort of thing that this Microsoft could also make an open source Chromium extension and let Chrome users have access to it as well.
worble 8y ago
Really? The epub support was the only good feature of Edge.
forgot-my-pw 8y ago
MS just recently announced closing of the ebooks store: https://globalnews.ca/news/5130521/microsoft-ebook-store-closing/ https://globalnews.ca/news/5130521/microsoft-ebook-store-clo...

sebazzz 8y ago

It is quite smooth! But it is … just Chromium with a different name and some Windows 10 style reskinning. Its like Microsoft requires a browser for their platform, so they took something, reskinned it and now are calling it their browser. I'm actually currently using Edge as my daily driver right now, but I will switch to Firefox once it will be replaced by "Windows 10-style Chromium". For web diversity. The user agent is currently: "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/74.0.3729.48 Safari/537.36 Edg/74.1.96.24" - yes "Edg". That is not a typo.