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The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

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Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#261

Post by [deleted] »

nicbou wrote: post #122
skrebbel wrote: post #3

I’m a longtime Windows fan, and initially I was quite enamored by Edge as well. Base UX is excellent, lots of settings and they’re easy to find. Vertical tab bar, profiles, and it all Just Works. I flat out love its “turn this website into a desktop app” feature. But by now they've shoved their core consumer products so chock full of crap that even I am starting to look for a way out. I got my son a new laptop recent…

It blows my mind how non-consensual the Windows experience has become. I wouldn't let someone with a similar understanding of consent anywhere near my drink. You are right about one thing: I refuse to purchase a Windows computer, and have been refusing for a decade.

[deleted]

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#262

Post by Frenchgeek »

I've never used Edge: I usually use my Windows machine solely for gaming so I've had no need for it. But one day, that browser started itself to tell me of all the new.. Well, whatever it was, I killed the process before it could end its spiel. So now, I'll never use Edge.

I don't know what their marketing department believe their core business is, but selling adware and spyware isn't a viable long term strategy.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#263

Post by canadaduane »

skrebbel wrote: post #3

I’m a longtime Windows fan, and initially I was quite enamored by Edge as well. Base UX is excellent, lots of settings and they’re easy to find. Vertical tab bar, profiles, and it all Just Works. I flat out love its “turn this website into a desktop app” feature. But by now they've shoved their core consumer products so chock full of crap that even I am starting to look for a way out. I got my son a new laptop recent…

I used to think Linux users were ideological, but now I just think they are long-term thinkers, preserving and contributing to both the culture and the code that will enable freedom of choice, and create software whose goals are well-aligned with its users.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#264

Post by permo-w »

jlarocco wrote: post #214
koromak wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft just can't stop doing this. All of their products suffer. I'm happy to fork over the absurd Apple tax just to feel comfortable at my computer, and to know I'm not going to wake up one morning to a forced OS update that has Cortana start screaming black friday deals from my desktop. I mean, ads in the task bar? I spend all of my time on my computer, I do not want all this shovelware pushed in my face at ever…

Having used OSX for ~10 years, I can say Apple isn't much better. Both systems treat the user like an idiot, just in different ways. You'll see what I mean when the OSX updates start undoing changes you've made to settings and things like that. For your own good, of course.

Windows does that too, on top of all the other crap

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#265

Post by joseda-hg »

bdw5204 wrote: post #58
Nextgrid wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I bet a lot of people like seeing the news right after starting the browser because that's exactly why the opened the browser in the first place. Does anyone, besides maybe the elderly (out of habit), use a desktop computer to read (clickbait, low-quality) news instead of their phone? As an anecdote, I know a non-technical Windows user who unlocks their machine by clicking the "like what you see?" prompt on the loc…

I wonder how many of the clicks on online ads in general are just accidental clicks. Especially clicks from phones where it is extremely easy to accidentally load the ads. This question will probably never be answered because it is a vital business interest of Google, Facebook, Microsoft and every company that makes phone apps that it not be answered.

My phone has recently started to randomly detect taps in a specific segment of the screen, the placement is just right to trigger ads if im not careful

My normal tolerance for ads is basically 0, so I expect a change on what gets shown to me until I replace my phone, which will be interesting, because ads I get shown are targeted to me pretty accurately

From the location and other problems, I'm guessing the battery has swollen, so it will have to be pretty soon

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#266

Post by permo-w »

gigel82 wrote: post #252
Kwpolska wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only way to get rid of it is a Powershell incantation that removes the entire Widgets feature. Better than terrible news, but still nuts. You don’t need PowerShell to get rid of Widgets. You can disable it with three clicks: right click on the Taskbar, go to Taskbar settings, and toggle the switch next to Widgets at the top of the window.

That hides the UI entry point, but widgets.exe continues running, along with 5-6 edgewebview2.exe processes, taking up valuable resources. If you try to kill widgets.exe, a system service restarts it :( Unfortunately, the powershell incantation is the only way to get rid of it...

will there not be some registry entry you can change?

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#267

Post by permo-w »

soundnote wrote: post #234
_fat_santa wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Base UX is excellent, lots of settings and they’re easy to find. Vertical tab bar, profiles, and it all Just Works. I flat out love its “turn this website into a desktop app” feature. IMO this is one of the great tragedies with MS Edge. The UX is so much better than standard chromium but because of all the other crap that MS puts into it, I just can't use it. If MS open sourced Edge and someone created an "UnMicros…

Brave has vertical tabs built in too, though they're behind a flag. But similar implementation as Edge and they work well.

last time I tried them they were extremely glitchy. have they been fixed?

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#268

Post by toast0 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #260
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I can't wrap my head around is how one of the biggest companies in the entire world is willing to annoy literally everyone who uses their products, and slow down their browsing, in order to make a penny or two a day off of each one. My company just rolled out new laptops, and all of this is on by default -- on a corporate install!? WTF is my IT department thinking? They bastardize the hell out of the install wit…

What I can't wrap my head around is how one of the biggest companies in the entire world is willing to annoy literally everyone who uses their products, and slow down their browsing, in order to make a penny or two a day off of each one. The only thing I can imagine is that they are making a lot more than a penny or two a day from each Windows user they sell down the river. Otherwise the marketshare graph that concin…

That marketshare graph is interesting, but what's missing is a graph of the size of the market.

Anecodtally, people aren't moving from Windows to Mac, people are moving from desktop platforms to phones. Maybe Microsoft is taking a ride it into the ground approach. Usage growth for desktop Windows is off the table, Windows Phone is dead, so revenue growth for Windows needs to come from throwing users under the bus?

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#269

Post by permo-w »

MikeSchurman wrote: post #220
skrebbel wrote: post #3

I’m a longtime Windows fan, and initially I was quite enamored by Edge as well. Base UX is excellent, lots of settings and they’re easy to find. Vertical tab bar, profiles, and it all Just Works. I flat out love its “turn this website into a desktop app” feature. But by now they've shoved their core consumer products so chock full of crap that even I am starting to look for a way out. I got my son a new laptop recent…

The news widget is terrible, and the sole reason I haven't switched to windows 11. I spent about 30m turning off news source after news source before giving up. Apparently there is an infinite supply of them. It's actually a problem for me at work because they keep drawing my eye and distracting me from getting work done. It's crazy. What are they thinking?

they were thinking that it would draw your eye

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#270

Post by 5- »

Someone1234 wrote: post #182
Nextgrid wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there an actual example of what these "enhanced" spell-checkers provide over basic ones that run locally? To me it seems like spell checking is a problem that Word from over a decade ago solved well enough (and ran fine on that era's hardware).

They use ngrams[0] and provide much more current dictionaries that won't flag non-dictionary words that are popular phases (think Urban Dictionary-like words/phases). The closest thing to something like Grammarly, Microsoft Editor, or Google's Enhanced spell check that you can run locally is Language Tool's local HTTP (java) server[1] combined with the Language Tool extension, and installing an ngram database[2]. But…

what about that newer dictionary cannot be provided by a download?

your browser probably updates itself every week or so.

there is absolutely nothing about these kinds of services that require running them on someone else's computer, save for conspiratorial reasons.

see also: machine translation (apple offline translate, firefox translations et al work just fine on your machine).

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