Unloved Microsoft Edge is much improved – but will anyone use it? Microsoft held its Edge Web Summit on 13 September, announcing that the web browser now has “330 million active devices”, just over two years since its launch with Windows 10 in July 2015. The stat was explained as devices where someone actively uses Edge during the course of a month. Edge Web Summit: Microsoft Edge Web …
There is something just terrible about the interface, it's difficult to pinpoint but it just feels uncomfortable...
It's almost as if it is too bare, or void of something... Personally, I prefer IE11/Chrome even though I know that Edge is more secure ( or at least that's what we're told)...
Flat is boring and it feels like it is being shoved down our throats....
Each to their own. I like the fact that there's so little "interface" around the content I'm trying to read. I actually wasn't aware of the F11/Full-screen trick, but I'll be using it more.
As for Chrome, I've pretty much resolved to never install it again now. It's habit of grabbing all my CPU cycles was bad enough, but a couple of days ago, I logged in to the gMail website on a new (Windows) system, and of course I got the standard "we've seen a new sign-in, was it you?" mail afterwards from Google, but now they've added a bit at the top saying "you were using Edge; why not use Chrome instead? Get Chrome here." No thanks; I don't react well to coercion.
Google has become the Old Microsoft: whatever you like or don't like about Edge, it is a standards-compliant browser, as is Safari, as is Firefox.. so why do so many Google services (Meet was this week's example...) tell me that I need to install Google Chrome to use them?
Isn't that behaviour exactly why Microsoft was sued by the U.S. Government ... and lost?
@kristian - "As for Chrome, I've pretty much resolved to never install it again now. It's habit of grabbing all my CPU cycles was bad enough"
Opera has somehow managed to use the chromium engine and make it into much less of a resource hog. These days if I have to use a chrome-based browser, I use Opera. Otherwise, Firefox beta or nightly seems to be the clear winner right now on both Windows and Linux in terms of speed/resources.
I'll second Andy Prough's comments. Opera first, and Firefox as well.
Because I operate both at full "shields up" paranoia settings and assorted paranoic add ons, I also have Chrome installed running at default. If something doesn't work due to my settings on the first two, Chrome almost always does a good job. The reason its not my default is simply because it'll be bleeding everything I do back to Google.
The sad thing for Microsoft is that I don't use any of their browsers. I'm sure that in my W10 system there's at least one if not two installed, but after everything Redmond have f***ed up with browsers for decades, it simply isn't going to happen that I willingly use a Microsoft browser. And no matter how good they make Edge, that still applies.
@Kristian Walsh I actually wasn't aware of the F11/Full-screen trick, but I'll be using it more.
I'm not sure why the article calls this out as a new and exciting feature - the F11 so-called "Kiosk mode" has been in IE and Firefox since as long as I can remember, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's in Chrome/Opera/Vivaldi as well. Can be useful when you want to maximize browsing acreage, or remove unnecessary window decorations (hence the name).
The biggest irritant with Edge is that if you use a Microsoft account, it's next to impossible to get it to not sign you in by default. You have to switch to private browsing mode after starting to avoid sharing everything you do with your browser with Microsoft. Contrast with Firefox where it's perfectly possible to not sign into Microsoft whilst having a Microsoft account on your computer.
This single fact has prevented Edge from being my default browser for some time.
I do like the developer tools built into it. If you've not used, you'd be surprised how good they are once familiar with them.
"You have to switch to private browsing mode after starting to avoid sharing everything you do with your browser with Microsoft."
Agreed - which is relatively easy to do if you care about such things. It would be nice if there was a single "I'm paranoid don't send anything to anyone" button option. It is possible to disable it altogether for normal browsing (although a bit of a PITA) - If you want to do that here you go:
* To stop Microsoft Edge general data forwarding, under Microsoft Edge Options, Select View advanced settings and Turn any of these off:
Use page prediction to speed up browsing, improve reading, and make my overall experience better
Show search and site suggestions as I type
Help protect me from malicious sites and downloads with Windows Defender SmartScreen
* To stop Microsoft Edge from collecting your browsing history:
Go to Start , then select Settings > Privacy > Feedback & diagnostics.
Under Diagnostic and usage data, select Basic.
*To stop Microsoft Edge from collecting your browsing history for Cortana personalization:
On your PC, select the search box on the taskbar to open Cortana home. On your mobile device, select the Search button.
Select Cortana’s menu > Notebook > Permissions.
Find Browsing history, and turn the switch to Off.
"The biggest irritant with Edge is that if you use a Microsoft account, it's next to impossible to get it to not sign you in by default. "
In Edge goto the Options menu (the 3 dots), then Settings, View Advanced Settings, Manage Passwords - and you can right click on and delete anything you don't want remembered. (At some point you must have clicked the please remember me on this PC option if it's doing it automatically). Then it will always prompt you.
The biggest irritant with Edge is that if you use a Microsoft account, it's next to impossible to get it to not sign you in by default. You have to switch to private browsing mode after starting
Set the opening (launch) page to "about:inprivate" and there's no need to switch.
"There is something just terrible about the interface, it's difficult to pinpoint but it just feels uncomfortable..."
Short learning curve to understand what the (not very intuitive) icons actually mean, but once you know that I find it preferable to Chrome or IE.
"even though I know that Edge is more secure ( or at least that's what we're told)..."
In terms of vulnerability counts it consistently beats Chrome. And it's faster.
"Flat is boring"
They can make the interface look like whatever the fashion of the day is. However I guess it was originally called Spartan for a reason....
Maybe if they had dropped the stupid built-in nature so you could get it for other Windows versions, and ideally along with other OS (Mac & Linux) they would have had a project many would be interested in trying.
Its a shame really, as Chrome's growing share and Google's dominance are not much better than MS abuse in the early years.
Yep, lots of companies are still on Windows 7 and have switched to Firefox ESR for "normal" browsing. If they ever do get round to migrating to Windows 10, and they've got another couple of years to think about it, moving to Edge would just provide disruption. Edge should either have been backported or at least IE should have got the improved support. As things stand I've just discovered IE 11 no longer works at all on my Windows 7 VM. No idea why as the install is kept vanilla for testing purposes.
And where's the mobile integration? Firefox, Chrome and Safari all offer sync services.
"Edge should either have been backported or at least IE should have got the improved support."
No, Edge should've been left in it's box 'til it was ready. Shipping it incomplete in Windows 10 gave everyone a chance to use it, find it was inferior to whatever they'd been using before, and promptly ignore it forever after. Which is a shame in some ways, since it's certainly leaps and bounds ahead of the decaying corpse of Internet Explorer; but really, if you're already on Chrome/Firefox/Opera/whatever, they're all so alike in functionality now that you only consider swapping if one of them introduces a particularly shit version (like Firefox were tending to do last year).
Look at you with your dandy tool. Engineers browse with curl.
Actually, I only suggested wget for comedic effect. In reality, I can simply look at a URL and my brain renders it pixel-perfect in my imagination.
Unfortunately, the URL in question is about:blank.
"No, Edge should've been left in it's box 'til it was ready. Shipping it incomplete in Windows 10 gave everyone a chance to use it, find it was inferior to whatever they'd been using before, and promptly ignore it forever after."
Agreed, but you could to a degree say that about Windows 10 in general. The RTM version was awful - they wanted to get it out the door before it was really ready. If you install a current version it's a lot more bearable.
Ditto Edge. Now that it has a selection of add-ons including Ublock Origin etc and because it's very fast it's the preferred option for me.
"And they made it the default reader for some files, including pdfs, which it still handles badly and fails to print, for example."
I find Edge more reliable for printing PDFs than anything else bar Adobe Craprobat Reader. It seems to handle complex / foreign files without issue that trip up other third party options.
As has been said they shit the bed early on with it.
Like many we had to roll out windows ten in a corporate environment fairly rap[idly. Edge was horrific. It crashed when asked to do anything like open PDFs (which it was set as the default viewer for). Even fairly basic websites often didn't display correctly, and with anything more complex, forget about it.
I'm sure they've fixed it. Brilliant. Not much use now though to those of us who have either been running a mixed win 7/8.1/10 or even completely win10 enterprise environments for a year or so or even longer.
Had it been fit for purpose on release, we wouldn't have had to send all machines out with chrome set as default for web and an alternative set as default for PDF etc. Are we going to go to the effort of undoing all that? changing GPOs re-testing stuff in edge that previously failed etc etc.
Nope. Too late, when you discover the bed has shit in it, you clean it up and move on, you don't leave it in case it's suddenly not shit 12 months later when you climb back in.
Browser security wasn't much of a concern, we don't allow the users to do enough damage, security is dealt with way before the browser. What was a concern was the browser actually functioning as a browser when asked to.
Not to mention Edge's God-awful habit of stealing program defaults whenever it has the chance... which means everyone and their dog has already built-in a reg hack or login script that automatically re-maps all those defaults back to their preferred option. My network is actually a far more hostile environment to Edge than to any other browser now, simply because it was so invasive.
when you discover the bed has shit in it, you clean it up and move on, you don't leave it in case it's suddenly not shit 12 months later when you climb back in
Well, Microsoft do, and have done for years (and not just browsers, look at Silverlight, or .NET, or the still unresolved UI challenges).
Which makes me ask: Has anybody dated a girl (or boy) from Redmond? It might be some quaint local custom, or a way of showing affection?
Maybe if they had dropped the stupid built-in nature so you could get it for other Windows versions, and ideally along with other OS (Mac & Linux) they would have had a project many would be interested in trying.
Well, considering that UWP (which runs things like Edge and the rest of the TIFKAM apps) is little more than a runtime, I've thought it should be possible to make a runtime for Linux and Mac as well. Would probably be way simpler to do than Wine. It's just that no one wants to bother. Would be a way to sneak in support for sites/providers/services that can't be arsed to support Linux properly or at all.
"The current version of Edge on Windows 10 Mobile works very well"
Agreed, but a) there are no add-ons as yet - and add blockers on mobile are really a must these days have with so many websites having popover adverts that obscure the entire screen, and b) to get mobile website to actually show modern content it seemingly pretends to be an Android browser meaning you are forever being offered useless apps from the Google Play Store...
I really liked Windows Mobile, but primarily because of App availability I got myself a Samsung S8+. I could spend a day writing abut how many things suck on Android / Samsung - for instance nearly every app sending lame notifications. Bixby not being able to be uninstalled, and even though I disabled it and denied all rights to every installed Bixby app I still get repeatedly prompted to update it! But if you need a wide selection of current Apps - it's either that or pay the Apple tax....
What doesn't make sense to me is Microsoft releasing zero handsets whilst still updating windows 10 Mobile....They need to release something very good very soon or concede total defeat In mobile.
@TheVogon As noted in previous topics. I've reluctantly dumped my once loved Winphone for a Plus One 5, because there just wasn't anything to buy.
Also,
" all you need to do is hit F12, click the "Emulation" tab " And how many real users ( i.e. not techies) would even come close to that route.
Was it her browser of choice? Or just default?
At least two Windows 10 updates have reset my default browser to Edge - and it's happend on a couple of our other PCs. We've only 5 staff and an IT department of, me, when I'm not doing my actual job. So we use consumer Win 10 as installed on whatever computer we happen to buy.
So like many people who ended up on Chrome (due to their spyware-like download with Flash/PDF trick), did she even pick her browser - or did it pick her?
I've no problem with Edge. However it doesn't have the option to have a menu bar across the top. I can't be arsed to have to click on a button on the right, to bring up a menu, that I then have to read through to find the bit I want, to then sometimes have to navigate my mouse sideways to the final nested menu I was after. I'd rather waste a few pixels at the top, so I can get to my chosen control in one click. IE and Firefox both do that, so I use IE for the one website that prefers it and Firefox for everything else.
I'm sure this is just habit, and I could get used to Chrome or Edge. But I can't be bothered to.
Yep, win10 contains lots of nasty tricks, resetting browser default, resetting privacy settings, forcing bing and edge on you from their search app, no idea how they get away with it, EU has gone soft and given them a free pass to pull whatever dirty tricks they want.
Sadly, when all the moaning about Microsoft is done and dusted, one things stays hanging. Instead of drawing customers in with attractive, easy to use, rewarding, functional, friendly, efficient software they fill their OS with trip wires and pot holes to try and trap the unwary users. It's compulsion and trickery instead of a desirable offer.
@ Blank Reg
I sort of like how FF has come along - I've switch to it full time. It handles auto-play videos better than the rest with a simple about:config toggle. The interface is simple without being too simple - I get all the colour I want - it keeps Google from running code on my system - I enjoy the thing.
I got included in the stats, as the horrendous win10 start menu search that can't find applications you have installed, but will happily prefer to open a random website using edge (my non default web browser ) containing the application name.
Don't think for a moment this wasn't a carefully constructed scam, back when win10 was in development, they engineered a way to trick users into using edge (and bing) to give them bullshite misleading stats like this....
Yep, Win 10 is full of Windows functions ignoring the user's preference and opening things up in bloody edge regardless. All these inadvertent clicks naturally get counted as part of the usage lies/statistics. Not forgetting periodically hijacking other document types and forcing users onto edge as well. Then we have the whining special case "you want to change your browser, please don't do this, use edge instead" type of nonsense when trying to change the user's default browser - do other applications have this level of crap around attempting to confuse a user into using edge? No.
The pinnacle though is that Edge is wholeheartedly aimed at end, home users and not business or enterprise users. It's barely compatible with SharePoint (although in truth, sanity is barely compatible with SharePoint, the least worst browser to use with it is IE). Edge is thoroughly uncontrollable using group policy, IE is largely controllable using group policy - subject to various levels of stupid of course.
"The pinnacle though is that Edge is wholeheartedly aimed at end, home users and not business or enterprise users. It's barely compatible with SharePoint"
You likely need to apply cumulative updates to your SharePoint server to support Edge!
" Edge is thoroughly uncontrollable using group policy"
See https://colinfordblog.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/gpos_1703_rtm_vs_1607_oct17_v2.xlsx
And remove the filter on column D to see all of them. What's missing that you need?
"I helped a customer out just yesterday and was flabbergasted that she was running Edge as her browser of choice."
Well "customer" implies a work environment - and lots of corporate stuff is still IE only - which can be directly launched from Edge.
Or maybe they are performance sensitive? https://microsoftedge.github.io/videotest/2017-04/BenchmarkMethodology.html
Or maybe they care about battery life? https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-battery-life-test-gives-edge-leg-over-chrome-and-firefox
The biggest current issue for me with all browsers is memory utilisation. I tried using Edge when I got my first Windows 10 PC, and bizarrely it managed to use even more memory than Chrome, which is depressing at best. Chrome routinely uses so much memory that other applications die with out of memory failures, and I have a monster PC with vast amounts of both memory and swap. Why the hell should a browser with a dozen tabs open consume over 10GB of memory? It makes no sense. Interestingly, I spoke last year with the product head at Microsoft for Windows 10 and pointed out that I couldn't use Edge because it was such a memory hog. He claimed it was fixed in the new update from late last year. Suffice it to say it wasn't.
My browser summary at present:
Chrome: Too much of a memory hog. Irritating things missing from interface (for example a home button). Terrified about what information it sends to Google.
Edge: Even more of a memory hog than Chrome (wow). Interface a little more irritating than Chrome. Terrified about what information it sends to Microsoft (although I trust MS a fraction more than Google).
Firefox: Gave up on it after the spree of crashing and losing all your settings it went on a few years ago. As far as I'm concerned lacks the quality necessary to be considered a real browser.
IE11: A viable option if the interface didn't suck so badly. Memory still an issue, but definitely better than Edge.
Safari, Opera, etc: Fails to work on too many websites to be a viable option.
Yes but tabs of what, on Windows base memory in Chrome is 50,000K for the simplest page. The only time it drops less is if you are viewing something like PDF which is a non HTML render.
Loading complex applications such as Outlook O365 gets you nearly .5 Gb usage just for one tab.
Open two or three for a calender and other views and your north of 1Gb easily before any other Web apps are even opened.
173mb of RAM in use by chrome, approx 30-50 tabs open? am I fuck counting them. Even includes such hogs as bloody facebook, I manage a page on it for a small business we run from home. New sites, blogs, work ticket system, 0365 admin centre etc etc all open.
I've never seen the resource hog thing. I use it almost exclusively day in, day out, as does every machine on the network.
Firefox broke my PC yesterday, well ground it to a halt anyway, by eating all the memory. But there the biggest process was only 1.2GB.
I've been thinking of moving for a while, as it's not reliable enough, and goes in cycles of improving a bit, then getting worse again. But I'm not touching Chrome with a shitty stick, because of Google. Plus I dislike the UI.
I actually like the old-fashioned UI of IE11, and still have my Firefox set up more-or-less how I had it 10 years ago. I want a menu bar across the top - and I want home back and forward buttons on the left of the address bar.
I'm almost tempted to go back to IE. Edge won't let me have have a menu bar, so it can sod off too.
"Each time El Reg has a browser thread the usual Chrome/Firefox/Opera alternatives come up. What have you guys got against Pale Moon?"
I like Pale Moon and I have it installed and configured, but in my case, I use Waterfox instead because PM doesn't (and probably will never) feature e10s (multiprocess). PM forked from FF before e10s was a part of it, I think, and for them to backport it now would be a herculean effort for what amounts to a single dev project.
PM is still a good second choice, and if Waterfox ever loses its ability to use XUL addons (it too is a single-dev project, and he may not be able to keep backporting all of the FF security/standards fixes back to WF as the code base differs more and more over time), then PM it is. I will take the power of XUL addons over speed and smoothness any day (and PM is quicker than non-e10s Firefox), but for the time being, I have both in WF.
There is something else going on for sure. I'm sitting here with Edge open using 64MB, and for comparison I opened up Chrome and Firefox which are using 101MB and 125MB respectively with the same page open.
Adding a half dozen more tabs, with the same websites open on each browser brings it up to
Edge 76MB
Chrome 130MB
Firefox 161MB
Edit: After closing the post submission and dropping back to the comments page, Edge dropped down to 44MB. It's not even a contest, Edge is far less of a memory hog in my experience, that's why I've been using it as my main browser since soon after my switch to Windows 10.
Edge is the LEAST efficient. You have all that memory and edge isn't using it to its advantage... The other browsers are preloading linked pages and other background tasks to make the next page load faster...
Stop thinking low memory use is good, it's not. High memory use and not giving it back to the pool when something else needs it is bad, but using what's available is good....
What are you on about. Chrome does not magically load linked pages, nor should it - that would be daft, it supports links that have the rel=preload option
As does Edge.
Its a fair point on memory, memory usage is being used as an indicator of tight and smart context sensitive coding (e..g not just brute force caching). This might be wrong i can save memory by caching to disk, low memory but it will be slow to use that content.
Having said that on the benchmarks Octane 2.0 and JetStream 1.1 benchmarks Edge is faster so your least efficient claim is clearly wrong.
"Firefox: Gave up on it after the spree of crashing and losing all your settings it went on a few years ago. As far as I'm concerned lacks the quality necessary to be considered a real browser."
I only ever saw that on the 32-bit version of FF for Windows. Once the 64 bit version finally was released (and before that, Waterfox, Cyberfox, and Pale Moon), it was completely stable and good.
I switched from Waterfox back to Firefox when the 64-bit Windows version arrived, but I am back with WF now, in anticipation of Mozilla's amputation of the XUL addons that are not optional to me. The version 55 release of WF is the best one in years... big improvements in speed and I'm told memory usage too (unless it bogs down, I don't even check the memory, and it hasn't). Those improvements, of course, are upstream fixes from Firefox... they really did a decent job with this one. If they'd just keep improving the XUL enabled version instead of removing it... ah, but they're not. We've been trying to get them off of this track since they announced it ages ago, but they're just too determined to become Chrome to listen.
I am the original poster of this thread, and I'm interested to see how many people are claiming that Chrome doesn't have huge memory usage.
Google themselves acknowledge the issue: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/6152583?hl=en
I have some ideas why it happens:
1) Chrome probably leaks memory. I tend to leave browser tabs open for long periods of time, memory usage creeps up. I've had bbc news pages consuming 500MB. People posting that they've just opened a bunch of tabs and don't have high memory consumption, should try leaving them open for a few days and seeing what happens.
2) I run very large resolution monitors. My main 2 machines have a 40" 4k monitor and side monitors. I have a bunch of TV computers all attached tho HD TVs. And my laptop is the Samsung ATIV9+ which has a very high resolution screen. Offline rendering likely ends up using extra memory due to the resolution.
3) Ads (especially video ads) are clearly a key part of the issue, installing adblocker helped a little, but not as much as I would have hoped. But then default adblocker doesn't block all the ads as we know (only the ones that don't kick-back to Google).
I run a variety of OSs. One of my big machines (16Gb RAM, 4k monitor + additional monitors) is Win7. One of the big machines is Win10. My TV computers and my laptop are all Win10. At the office I'm using Win7. I also use Linux at both home and work. All of them have the memory consumption issues. All of them are latest patch level. All of the Win10 ones I've tried Edge and tried going back to it after each major update.
People who say high memory utilisation is good are just plain wrong. It is only good if the app can free memory when needed by other apps, and clearly neither chrome nor edge can do so. The main way the memory utilisation winds me up is that despite having 16Gb of RAM, I relatively routinely get games crashing with OOM exceptions. When that happens, I basically close Chrome and everything is fine.
I'm running Edge 16 on build 16288, pretty close to the final Fall Creators release. In Task Manager, you can see each of the Edge threads and their resource consumption. Chrome's threads are not individually named. For a test I'm running a tweetdeck display of 10 columns, one being the default feed from 458 people/bots. Here's the memory consumption for Edge threads:
Microsoft Edge (10) 3.8% CPU 373MB ~0.1 MB/s network when updating <--- overall for 10 threads
Background tab pool 0% 4.1MB
Browser extensions 0% 26.3MB <--- only extensions installed are Office online, translator
Browser_Broker 0% 2.7MB
Chakra JIT compiler 0% 4.6MB <--- this obviously changes when you download any new scripts
Microsoft Edge Manager 0% 24.8MB
Runtime Broker 0% 3.2MB
Runtime Broker 0% 8.7MB
Tweetdeck 6.9% 306.2 MB
User Interface Service 0% 33.9MB
User Interface Service 0% 4.0MB
(Totals don't sum as I'm typing these numbers while the values change.)
By comparison, Chrome running the same workload:
Google Chrome(6) 9.2% 370.3
Google Chrome 0% 1.4MB
Google Chrome 0% 1.5MB
Google Chrome 0.4% 135.4MB
Google Chrome 0% 12.0MB
Google Chrome 5.1% 141.3MB
Google Chrome 0.7% 48.8MB
They're pretty similar, given how much the numbers change during updates to the Tweetdeck panels.
The mistake was releasing Edge when it wasn't finished. It was barely even beta level when they pushed it out as the default browser. Now its tarnished with a bad reputation. Its going to be hard to persuade users to try it again. Why would they when Chrome is fine as it is?
Microsoft are all over the place these days.
I got a new job and a new W10 laptop a year ago, so I used Edge and it seemed fine and workable to me. Until Windows updates silently discarded my list of freshly saved bookmarks (that I needed to get my job done and had saved for a reason). And it happened more than a couple of times in rapid succession.
So I switched the default browser back to IE, and use Chrome for other general websurfing. I'm not that interested in going back to Edge. Does it do something that the other ones can't?
...that it's tied to the Windows version, which is utterly stupid.
For example, a oldish home PC is still on an early Win10 version as it's still waiting to be updated to a newer one (forced update kills it). So I'm on the old crappy version on Edge, which means it won't get used, no matter how good it is now.
Similar situation with work.
As for compatibility, these days I find I have to flip between browsers as none of them behave properly.
For me the single biggest reason I don't use edge....I cannot right click anywhere on a page and select back.
Its something I constantly do with IE/chrome and it drives me absolutely crazy that I can't do it in edge...
but apparently I am the only one in the world that does that so I am SOL...
"For me the single biggest reason I don't use edge....I cannot right click anywhere on a page and select back."
In Edge, click on the menu options (3 dots on the far right), select Extensions, then Get Extensions From The Store, then install the "Mouse Gestures" extension. That should be everything you need.
I agree this should ideally be built in, but I think this is due to Microsoft's attempts to keep the attack surface and code base to an absolute minimum...
Well that's where they count my hit. 'Bout monthly I verify that the latest code still works on Edge/IE. But the visuals are dreadful.
Apparently one of the "bad olds" they dropped/deemphasized was SVG support. Oh, it's there, but everything is viewed as though through a 'veil', smeared so bad that parts of diagrams merely resemble the intended results.
... and naturally the first thing I needed to do was install Ad blocking. Oh.
I've got uBlock Origin installed now, but the window of opportunity to dissuade me bothering to install Chrome was lost. The biggest Google vulnerability is reliance on ads so the obvious opportunity would be to make Edge the most ad proof browser in existence. I guess MSFT still can't accept that Bing is going nowhere and therefore can't bring themselves to employ their greatest competitive advantage (relative independence from ad revenues).
> ... and naturally the first thing I needed to do was install Ad blocking
Yeah I'm going to talk out of my arse here since I am barely familiar with windows but from second-hand reports, it appears that the sorry thing does not take add-ons so no proper ad blocking, and without a reliable ad blocking solution no browser stands a chance.
Whilst the idea of Edge being gung ho on ad's may seem reasonable, it's quite terrible. Websites that rely on adverts to pay the bills (i.e. most of them) would simply block Edge with a "we don't support Edge, please use Chrome....". It would therefore be a massive step backwards.
Maybe a deal with Facebook with a "we notice you're using [browser], why not try Edge?" and pay FB a few million to keep it going. Facebook loves money after all.
I was thinking of something more along the lines of Brave, possibly with a switchable user agent from the menu to defeat the problem you allude to.
The fact that a browser doesn't block ads isn't going to stop people like me doing it anyway, using proxies/VPNs if necessary (I have AdGuard on my phone).
"Whilst the idea of Edge being gung ho on ad's may seem reasonable, it's quite terrible. Websites that rely on adverts to pay the bills (i.e. most of them) would simply block Edge with a "we don't support Edge, please use Chrome...."
Edge now has various Ad Block options including Ublock Origin. And if you ever do hit a website that denies access to Edge, all you need to do is hit F12, click the "Emulation" tab and you can be pretty much any browser you want to be...
In fact, Edge launched without support for any kind of plug-in, putting it at an immediate disadvantage to competitors such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox...
Not to worry, Mozilla has heard you and is working on Firefox as we speak.
Hopefully some solution will magically present itself before the Firefocalypse next year when Firefox ESR is bumped up to the borked version. Maybe Seamonkey will get up to speed. Palemoon and Waterfox don't really convince me.
How do Goodle still get away with this? Using dominance in one area to push dominance in another is how MS got stuffed over IE... having an effective monopoly is one thing but using it to exert influence on other areas isn't(?)
"How do Goodle still get away with this? "
They haven't in the EU.
Unfortunately in the colonies, money is king and they just pay lots of politicians lots of money and the problem magically goes away.... See https://www.ft.com/content/6b637b56-53da-11e4-80db-00144feab7de
>>They haven't in the EU.
They have. I'm in the UK and every time I visit YouTube with Edge I get a little blue bar at the top of the screen telling me to install Chrome. Not just once, but on every screen load. Doesn't do it with Firefox (not that this would make it okay).
*gasp!* No! None of us knew that when we made our comments.
They can't "do what they damn well like". Not legally. It's called anti-trust or abuse of market dominance. It's what MS were penalized for by the EU when they tried to push IE over Netscape by leveraging their dominance with Windows. There are laws against it.
It's El Reg. so I suppose a car analogy is required. Suppose one chain of petrol stations had 80% of the stations in the country. And then they decided to produce a line of cars (or more realistically buy an existing manufacturer). They then started selling petrol cheaper for customers with their cars and more expensive for their rivals. Suddenly the choice of car no longer becomes about which is best or most cost-effective. It is distorted by the company's dominance in a different market. And that's a bad thing.
And nobody with a clue can argue that YouTube doesn't have market dominance.
>>It's an advert. Only an advert. Or do you think TV companies, like UK Gold, shouldn't tell you about their sister companies? Or Classic FM (Global) not be allowed to mention what is happening on their local pop channels, if they should want to?
Selective reading there: UK Gold is not in a monopolistic position with TV. At least I hope not!
How do Goodle still get away with this?
What, advertising their own products, on their own web page, designed, hosted and paid for by them, that you're visiting, of your own choice, free of charge ? They'll be outraged in Tunbridge Wells, I'm certain.
There's plenty of stuff that Google do that they shouldn't get away with IMHO, but this strikes me as entirely reasonable. In the same way that they advertised Google+ for a couple of years, and 99% of the population chose to ignore it, with 1% choosing it for their own good reasons..
All the problems with Edge arn't technical. One, Windows 10 only. They've instantly limited adoption right there. No one is going to switch to Windows 10 *just* to use Edge.
The bigger reason, IMO, is that it's a Microsoft browser. Microsoft basically did everything they could to destroy the internet with Internet Explorer. They specifically sought out to bankrupt Netscape with it through all sorts of underhanded means.
Recent history has shown that Microsoft hasn't learned a damned thing, and so I refuse to give them the opportunity to try again.
"The bigger reason, IMO, is that it's a Microsoft browser. Microsoft basically did everything they could to destroy the internet with Internet Explorer."
I don't think that's a reason at all. I'm pulling statistics out of my ass here, but the browser user base has multiplied many times since late 90s when MS killed Netscape, and "newcomers" are not aware of the history, nor do people even care about decades old stuff. If users were looking for a browser from an ethical company Chrome certainly wouldn't lead the pack!
Chrome is a solid, working choice that renders web pages very well. That's not the reason it is the most used browser - the reason is the (already mentioned) fly-by downloads at Java and Adobe product download pages, which are opt-out, and when the browser is installed it imports the IE settings quite seamlessly, and the less adept users won't even notice except that the browser launch icon has changed.
Edge can't gain popularity unless Windows 10 gains popularity since Win7/8 will never get it.
Edge was rather unfriendly to use back in 2015 when I tried it for a few days, and it got better when it got support for adblocking last year, but the UI just isn't as nice as my Firefox.
Lack of adblocking probably didn't matter too much since I constantly see business and home users using browsers with no adblocking at all, and they're not ever aware of such things.
Javascript is only tolerable with an add-in like NoScript to disable it on all sites except a few that you trust - AdBlockPlus or equivalent is also a necessity.
Calibre is far better than Edge for handling EPUB files.
And who uses Bing as their first choice search engine?
My own opinion of Edge and IE 11 is so bad that I have used the Program Control feature of the Firewall built into Norton Security to block both of these products (and Cortana) from internet access.
RE: "And who uses Bing as their first choice search engine?"
I do. Why not? Because its Microsoft?
I feel more angst towards Google than I do towards Microsoft. I have never failed with Bing to find what I need. I never get to see Bing's fussy and fidgety front screen as I always do first search via Firefox's search box which goes straight to results. I haven't found a better alternative so far.
So...Why not? I'm not prepared to chop off my nose because...Micro$haft!
When I first moved to Win 10, tried Edge but unusable. Continued to use a mix of IE and Chrome.
However Google's recent efforts to make Chrome use memory and be generally harder to configure made me try Edge again. Now I prefer it and use it as my default, with Chrome for some sites.
IE still needed for some things though....
It could be that the usage statistics will take time to catch up as Edge creeps into wider use. A lot of big companies are only just getting round to Win 10 roll out so that may have an impact.
...are the things that make you like or hate a browser.
Some people above are devoted to their File, Edit, View... menu.
I personally use a combination of Firefox and Vivaldi at the moment. Vivaldi tends to win, because despite being a little clunky in areas (docking / undocking tabs being the main feature that comes to mind) having rapid right->left and left->right click on the mouse buttons triggering back and forwards is a brilliant piece of UI functionality, as my mouse is a simple one and does not have buttons for that built in like my last one.
On my mobile, it tends to be Chrome that wins out, because unlike the Firefox browser that I also have, it supports zooming to fit images on a double-tap, tap-swipe zoom for one-handed browsing, which firefox doesn't (yet - there is a ticket), and it is quicker to navigate through open tabs.
As a funtional browser, I actually prefer firefox though. Things like the ability to open web videos in the built in player on the phone instead of whatever html5 player is on the website, and by extension enable casting to my TV make it a much more useful browser, just not quite as tight on the UI.
If you're on Windows you might want to check out StrokesPlus (www.strokesplus.com) - a rather good free mouse-gestures tool. Simply holding down the RMB and swiping left/right does a back/forward page navigation, for starters, and it's infinitely customizable. I can't be without it on any system. Similar apps exist for OSX and Linux, too.
My complaints with Edge are twofold.
First, the user interface just feels wrong. It doesn't look like a proper browser with most important things hidden, such as scroll bars. I always hated how Chrome hides all the settings under one hamburger menu. There is a reason why the ribbon is a curse on my life, and it is because it does away with the easy-to-understand, easy-to-use, traditional "File Edit ..." menu structure, something Apple doesn't even get rid of in OS X. The UI is the primary reason why I prefer Firefox over Chrome. (A second reason is Firefox supports NoScript.)
Second, to get any add-ons you must use the Windows store. Hmm ... I wonder why that is. By having it in the Windows store -- just so you get used to using the Windows store and thus buy your "apps" from Microsoft instead of somewhere else -- they have once again made the browser part of the OS. A browser should be self-contained and require no reboot to update.
Really, it's fine. I use it as my default browser, on Windows 10, and keep Chrome for the things Chrome is good at (I use Google docs, for starters). However, I only see Edge taking off if Microsoft makes Windows 10 S work. Given the current state of the Microsoft App Store, I don't see that happening. Perhaps if they get the second (or is it third) coming or Windows on ARM to work out for them? Something like that (with cheap, decently performing tablets and notebooks), with a decent ecosystem, could work. Doesn't help Microsoft that the other two got there first. Now that's what I call disruption.
Too dumbed down not smart enough to know every hotkey.
Firefox is regressing. Adobe stuff breaks on it.
Chrome - just can't get use to it after Firefox with the menu bar. I miss google groups.
BTW when did the menu bar seem not necessary to developers?
So if Chrome and FF continue to regress I may go with Edge.
Firefox is regressing. Adobe stuff breaks on it.
Surely that's a good thing?
The sooner Adobe and their products disappear down the mineshaft filled with the remains of old tech companies the better. That'll be tough on photo-retouchers, but that's acceptable collateral damage in my book.
Businesses often have their own web portals, tools, and intranets, and these sites are based on made different platforms. The problem is if a site is not using straight HTML code, Edge just can't handle it. Popup windows don't generate, boxes don't appear, rendering is off. THIS is the main reason I'm seeing my clients use Chrome or Firefox (or even Internet Explorer).
When the maker of my Screen Reader Environment (SRE) still warns its users not to use Edge because it isn't accessible & the store apps cause the SRE to shit itself, the browser doesn't count as a viable product.
They tell you to use any other 3rd party non-Windows-store program for the browser, mail, & other built in/store app covered functionality. Why? Because the store apps cause the SRE to shit itself.
They're not accessible, they're not viable, & Windows 10 is a clusterfuck nightmare for anyone whom gives a damn about their privacy.
Even *Apple* at this point is a better option than MS. I've decided to upgrade from Win7... right the hell off the MS treadmill & to the freedom of Linux. It's got lots of potholes & pitfalls I'm learning to navigate, but that's still less of a pain in the ass than the shit Win10 would demand.
Fuck Microsoft. Go Linux!
Far far too much does not work - esp. Internal company intranet stuff - so why bother.
The world has moved on to Chrome and Firefox (through diminishhing in significance), and Safari on IOS mobile and Mac. For Internal Comany stuff - assuming it has not already broken Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 10 is becoming the new corporate desktop standard (after Windows 7 and IE10) for legacy stuff, and Chrone for Google G-Suite and the numerous othher companies plugged into this ecosystem.
As I support many Windows users, I took it upon myself to always use Edge for certain things such as the Microsoft 365 portal. Surely, if any site should work, it would be one of Microsoft's own, relatively up-to-date sites?
Must be a masochist. Endless pages that fail to display anything but the header, frequent occasions on which Edge freezes completely (all windows, including in private, totally locked solid). Huge memory usage - currently over 2 GB sometimes much more.
Use Firefox for almost everything else (switching to IE a few times a week for a specific page/site or to try out what people are having problems with).
Not when it keeps crashing on me before it's even done anything. I blamed the Creators Update, but applied the recommended fix*, which worked. For a day. But now it's broken again. Unbothered, only use it for compatibility testing.
* As advised by a web search I'd have been unable to carry out had I been using Windows S, essentially locked to using Edge!
As a result of reading this article, I fired-up my copy of Edge to give it a go. You know ... just to see if it was all true and the thing is actually now good.
Nope.
It was awful to use.
The scrolling was juddery.
Tabs came & went of their own accord.
Sometimes things worked on a single click, sometimes the same operation took two.
It's basically flaky as hell.
No, it is not worth another look.
Just the other day, after my forced Win10 update. I noticed that files recovered from a previous system would no longer display in thumbnail or indeed even open for me. The error message stated that i did not have the correct permissions required to open (my own) files? Funny i thought, i had better do a little research to see what all this is about.
Anyway it turns out that even if you are an administrator on Win10, you are'nt.
You have to fiddle in the settings to make your user account an actual 'true' admin, at which point the Edge browser and a few other things refuse to work as they are tied to the lesser 'user admin' account that you start off with.
Not that it bothered me too much. I am forced to use Edge in work and it is a nightmare, never before have i witnessed such a ropey, unstable bag of excrement. The ads are even cooked into the browser, requiring a reg hack to disable.
Terrible browser from an even worse company, why the hell would they tie the browser access to the user account??
This post has been deleted by its author
...I seem out of step most of the time. I use Edge all day everyday, I like it.
It can be a resource hog if I have too many tabs open, but less so than Chrome.
It was annoying when lots of things weren't available, and I had to switch browser for BlueJeans, FB Messenger etc, but AFAICS its all working now.
Or are you all using Edge on your trusty Win-7 system? Or perhaps XP?
I know! You've ported Edge to Linux, right?
Just 2 or 3 years ago, I remarked in various threads here that Win-10 was a great OS, and would only get better, WOW! I got a whole shitload (Hundreds?) of down-votes from all the users that said they would ABSOLUTELY NEVER use it!
"You'll have to PRY XP out of my cold dead hands!"
"Win-10 SUX! In two years time, we will have all upgraded to LINUX!"
Am I in some sort of alternate universe here?
- OK, before you leave this message, don't forget to click the Downvote button at the bottom.
For the work environment it's a straight 'no'. None of our work-related apps run on it, we already have heavy investment in Adobe so why would we want every bloody PDF to open in Edge and not the bespoke application available for free already installed on every machine as standard? It breaks most of the sites we use and is simply not compatible with IE-specific applications. Chrome works with nearly all of the sites and plugins we use (we only have one website that won't work with it for one small department) and I'm currently moving most of the business onto it to free us of IE as much as possible, but the deal-breaker for me is the fact that every time Windows does a major update it resets the damned default browser to Edge, and they've even started putting an 'open in Edge' tab right NEXT to the new tab option in IE so staff keep pressing it by mistake and then wondering why nothing works! It is so arrogant, annoying and downright time wasting in support calls for people who need their defaults constantly resetting it absolutely makes me anti-Edge, no matter how bloody good they make it.
Well, yes, I do have Edge set as default on my clunker laptop I use for running MSWin10 Tech Preview. Not that I do much *real* work on that machine, I just keep it for testing out new releases and preparing myself for what dumbass shit friends/family are going to have to deal with on the next MSW10 "update".
Same proprietary crap, same engine beneath the hood.
It's also a major rebranding exercise, because 'Internet Explorer' is 100% associated with the worst traits of Microsoft. So they needed a 'reset', a 'fresh start'.
The only use for Edge/IE is to download a better browser on a fresh install of Windows. That's all.
Seriously Microsoft, just open source the EdgeHTML engine already. Edge is the only major browser left that doesn't use an open source rendering engine, and the only major browser stuck on a single platform.
Nobody chooses an OS for the browsers that run on it, but they do sometimes choose browsers because of the OSes they don't run on.
You will very quickly see folks use it to create a browser for other OSes (even older Windows) and all sorts of other creative things you couldn't imagine, which would likely foster wider adoption, mind share and good-will.
Just saying...
I'm ok with the Edge interface. What I'm not OK with is the bugs. Try opening a link from Gmail, I just get a blank page. That might have been fixed in the last year, but I gave Edge a chance (when my Surface Pro 4 was new) and it fell short. Battery life used to be way better than Chrome, but that's changed. Stupid behaviour when I type in a new tab but don't search, (horribly clickbaity) advertising on the new tab page, and oh look, I just found another bug where icons aren't displayed properly (yes, really). Chrome isn't perfect, but at least it doesn't constantly annoy me. Opera's fine, Firefox is OK if you can get past some silly UI choices.
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