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martinnn
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Joined 5 years ago
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I figured out why Edge still uses Material Design: it's a strategy, not laziness.
New Edge uses a blend of Google's Material Design and Microsoft's Fluent Design. (Clarification on where Material Design can still be seen is at the bottom of this post). But I now think this is a strategy, instead of laziness (as I initially thought). The more that Edge looks like Chrome, the more people think "it's just Chrome, but uses less RAM." As evidenced by this thread (and basically anywhere Edge is mentioned), that's what consumers think about Edge. So although I've seen plenty of people try to convince the Edge dev team to switch the browser to Fluent Design (and as much as I would like it), I don't think it's ever going to happen--not because they're lazy, but because it helps the reputation of the browser (even if it doesn't have any unique identity). Where Material Design can be seen: Menus (like right click menus and the "..." menu) fade into view instead of slide in. Tooltips don't have any animation (like they do in Fluent Design), so they still look like Chrome. Some of the loading wheels have been changed from Chromium (like in the tab when a page is loading), but others (like in the Update page of Settings, and even in Collections (which is weird since it's a feature that's unique to Edge)) retain the loading wheel found in all of Google's products. This means that all of these menus resemble Material design menus instead of Fluent design ones. The scrollbars look like Chrome's instead of any Fluent Design app. When hovering the mouse over items in the toolbar, there is a delay on the items being highlighted. This is from Chromium and doesn't match any other default Windows app, where they either have the "reveal" effect or they just are highlighted immediately. This delay also has the added detriment of making the browser feel a little more sluggish.A list of design problems with Edge
Controls don't match equivalents of the modern parts of the Windows system and default apps Tooltips (no transparency or fade-in) Right-click/context menus (no transparency or animations) Dropdown menus (no transparency or animations) Hover effects (no reveal effects) And they're also delayed, which makes the browser feel more sluggish Loading wheels for HTML video and in the Updates section of Settings The new icons in Canary This puts mobile icons in a desktop space, which makes it feel inconsistent with desktop apps (this would be fine as long as the rest of Windows and Outlook on the Web are also getting icon refreshes to match mobile icons, but we haven't heard anything about this) Apart from the font and the current iconography, Edge keeps Material Design from Chromium. Anything I'm forgetting? EDIT: looking more closely at their wording on the iconography and here, it looks like the new icons are going to be the same across all of Microsoft.The new icons in Canary make Edge's design feel even more disconnected from Windows.
The new icons in Canary don't match those of the rest of the Windows operating system. In any Windows app, the settings icon has 8 spokes on the gear--you can see this in the Start menu and in the settings icon in apps like Microsoft News, Photos, and Camera. The normal Home icon can be seen in the Windows Settings app and in Backstage View in the Microsoft Office apps. The new Canary channel icons don't match those anymore. It makes Edge's design even more inconsistent with Windows's design than it already is. It's bad enough that Edge retains Material Design from Chromium, but it's worse that Edge is going to replace the only parts of the design that feel consistent with Windows. To my knowledge, Fluent design has separate mobile and desktop icons to feel natural on every device. Mobile icons should not be used on Windows. EDIT: looking more closely at their wording on the iconography and here, it looks like the new icons are going to be the same across all of Microsoft.Are there plans to enable touch screen compatibility in the Windows version of Chromium Edge?
Are there plans to enable touch screen compatibility in the Windows version of Chromium Edge? Specifically: Fix press-and-hold right-click bugs Pressing and holding in page content doesn't currently trigger the square to indicate when a right-click has been activated Pressing and holding in the toolbar triggers the square to indicate a right-click, but it doesn't go away Ability to reorder toolbar items (favorites and extensions) with touch Ability to drag text (into a new tab, into text boxes, or into Collections) with touch Modify controls that appear only on hover (e.g. selection tool in Collections and delete button on autofill items) so that they appear all the time so they can be selected with touch (a workaround for the Collections issue to make a "select" button to show the select buttons) Fix text selection behavior to match that of the Windows system and other Windows apps (where tapping a word only once will select it, instead of the current behavior where you have to press and hold and it also shows the right-click menu) for consistency and improved user experience Classic Edge was great for touch screens, and it's a shame to see that there has been no improvement whatsoever in this area for Chromium Edge.Sidebar for Favorites is a step in the right direction!
I'm glad Edge Team finally made a sidebar for Favorites! Please make this available for History and Downloads and Edge will FINALLY be on the direction to become a good browser! Sidebars are great for keeping you in your workflow instead of being as obtrusive as fullscreen menus. And please let us pin the Downloads and History buttons to the toolbar too! As of now, you can only do so with Favorites, but there's not much of a point since the Favorites bar exists. Looking forward to the possibility of Edge maybe even being as good as Firefox sometime within the next five years!New Windows dev channel update includes acrylic. Edge team is ridiculous for saying it's outdated.
A recent Windows Dev Channel update made the emoji panel "more aligned with our Fluent Design principles, including a new acrylic background." But the Edge team wants to make barely any effort into changing the design of Chromium Edge from Material design and says that transparency no longer aligns with Fluent design. I don't think I'll ever fully understand the Edge team's thought process regarding anything.Bring support for non-"precision" trackpads! (Add back/forward gesture and fix scrolling)
I'veheard that Edge Chromium supports the back/forward trackpad gesture that was present in Classic Edge. But I can't do that on my laptop. Why is this only possible on some laptops (excluding mine) when Classic Edge showed that it was entirely possible to support this feature on any device with a trackpad (including mine)? Also, I don't know if this is related to "precision" (whatever that even means--what makes those trackpads more precise than mine?) vs non-"precision" trackpads, but trackpad scrolling is way too fast. And horizontal scrolling is nearly impossible. And I really do mean that. When scrolling horizontally, it snaps to only a few different positions. As an example, in the following images, there are only four possible places I can scroll horizontally: all the way to the left, all the way to the right, and two places in between. It is literally impossible to scroll any other amount. I know that there's a low chance the Edge team cares, since they don't listen to feedback, but the ability to do any sort of scrolling is such a simple feature. Please let me be able to scroll!Has the Edge team forgotten that touch screens exist?
Chromium Edge is completely lacking in touchscreen support and I have seen no mentions of them planning to add any in. Legacy Edge was much better for touch screens. I find it odd, to say the least, that Edge now lacks touch support considering that Microsoft sells tablets. Among the issues: Touching and holding doesn't show the square that indicates a right-click. How long is long enough to trigger a right click? You'll just have to guess and hope. Touching and holding a button on the toolbar has the exact opposite problem. The square appears, but it doesn't disappear after you stop touching the screen. Inability to reorder favorites bar items with touch Inability to reorder extensions on the menu bar with touch You can't select text (with touch) without triggering a right click. It's also different from the rest of Windows, where a single tap selects text. Autofill items have a delete button, but only on hover. You can't easily use a touchscreen to press that button without knowing the location of that button beforehand. Collections lacks touch support (otherwise a great feature) Inability to drag text or images into collections Collections and collection items have a selection box, but only on hover. You can't easily use a touchscreen to press that box without knowing the location of that box beforehand. This is a much less important thing, but there's no rubber-banding effect when scrolling in Collections.Suggestion: add horizontal scrolling of tabs for those who don't want vertical tabs/small screens
Though I haven't tried vertical tabs yet, there may be many who prefer the horizontal tab layout to the vertical one, especially those using screen without a 16:9 ratio, such as users of tablets. So, in order to provide something that adds the touchscreen support that New Edge desperately needs. Furthermore, tab scrolling was a great feature from Legacy Edge. Since New Edge will eventually replace it, wouldn't it be best to avoid taking away useful features, since most people who will use the new Edge will probably be users of the old one?