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The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

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Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#191

Post by Dalewyn »

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…

>Why do they allow the Crap And Turds department to piss all over their work?

Because Windows is a free-in-practice product and it needs/wants a revenue stream.

Remember that Windows 11 can be activated with Windows 7, 8, 8.1, and 10 keys; as if that wasn't crazy enough you can straight up not activate it and you won't lose out on anything important.

As for install media? You can download those for free any time. No strings attached.

As for Edge, that really is a free-as-in-beer product. You literally can't buy it.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#192

Post by sphars »

pseudalopex wrote: post #186
sphars wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This worked for me when I used edge > 1 year ago, it may still work: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/new-tab-redirect/i... and set my new tabs to https://aboutblank.page Also it's open source: https://github.com/jimschubert/newtab-redirect The only way AFAIK to change the new tab is an extension

You can't set it to about:blank?

It's been a while since I've used the extension (I use FF now) and I can't recall if you can set it to about:blank.

Disclaimer, I created https://aboutblank.page because in some browsers, about:blank was a default white page, and ignored the OS dark mode setting. My site respects the prefers-color-scheme setting, or you can set it to whatever color you want via a query string (see https://github.com/sphars/about-blank/#usage)

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#193

Post by mananaysiempre »

gregw2 wrote: post #106
pavel_lishin wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t understand why MS doesn’t get some sort of internal revolt. From whom? They've got two customer bases: - corporate clients, who get this stuff removed, either as part of the purchase or by their various sysadmins who get paid to secure the purchased laptops - personal clients, who purchase desktops and laptops pre-loaded with Windows, and could no more opt out of using it than I could opt out of using elect…

re: "corporate clients, who get this stuff removed"... I am currently at a Fortune 100 company and only wish my IT department would keep up with / disable all the ways automated MS(N) news feeds keep cropping up via Edge and Windows default behaviors, sometimes seemingly as part of automated updates. Every time I think I have turned one off, there is yet another way Microsoft enables some kind of news feed in its sys…

Does Microsoft add these feeds to LTSC editions as well now, or does the F100 in question scrimp on buying those?

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#194

Post by password4321 »

Occasionally Edge works up the nerve to force logging into my Microsoft account to continue with a modal login dialog that cannot be avoided unless I terminate the process.

I'm not sure what triggers this or if there's a way to disable it, but it doesn't appear if I restart a new instance.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#195

Post by psychphysic »

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 didn't realise how much this bothered me until you brought it up.

On my low end laptop occasionally I can't even close it or click away and it takes a minute or two to decide to go.

Insane.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#196

Post by kzrdude »

throwbackhere wrote: post #135
justinclift wrote: post #21

Did you know that out-of-the-box, Edge will transmit the content of your text boxes on web pages to the Microsoft Editor service for the purpose of grammatical suggestions? I have no idea how this concept got past legal but hey, it’s on by default now. Holy shit. :( At what point are some of the major government legal departments actually going to step up and sort this shit out? It is so , so, so, so, so far past ove…

Your comment reminded me of the new grammar checking feature on my phone. It better not be what I think it is. EDIT 1: I just checked and, fucking hell, it's grammarly! Samsung sneaked in an update that was silently leaking everything I wrote to fucking grammarly. This can be disabled by pressing the gear button and accessing the hidden writing assistant menu. Good hardware is not worth risking my private information…

Thanks for the notice, so that I could turn it off. My kbd is Gboard though, so it should be unaffected, by that particular thing. I would recommend Gboard. I use it for better multilingual support.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#197

Post by playingalong »

xattt wrote: post #62
skrebbel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not going to pay MS even more just to get a version that has a “please disable this one specific bit of crap” toggle. This has got to be the worst upsell ever. It’s like you book a hotel room and the TV is on Fox News and you can’t turn the TV off. You ask around but everybody says that they can turn it off just fine, must be you. Turns out that they’re all in the executive suite and they also have Fox News on th…

It was either in 1984 or Fahrenheit 451 where each house was equipped with a radio that couldn’t be turned off but only made quieter. My Google-fu is failing me.

That's not fiction. Not sure what came first though

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#198

Post by kzrdude »

discreditable wrote: post #184
elboru wrote: post #54

Microsoft feels like two totally different companies. One company can produce amazing concepts and products. But then, the other company comes and adds nasty “features” on top to ruin everything.

Imo, so many of Microsoft's dark patterns are a direct result of them owning bing. Bing has bad market share, so MS takes every chance they get to show it to users. Start menu web search, Edge defaults, dark patterns abound just to get eyeballs on bing.

Bing's assistant (chatbot) is also a good example of the nest technical side. There are some people there trying to make new technology accessible to many.

Hampered by other things in the same pattern, right now requiring an Edge User agent.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#199

Post by password4321 »

flir wrote: post #64
mikub wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just three clicks to disable widgets, "Right click taskbar, select taskbar settings, click on slider to turn widgets off".

Do you happen to know how to disable the page of clickbait I get every time I open a new tab in Edge? I tried setting my "Home" to Google, but that doesn't seem to do it.

Is there a way to block all the Microsoft news/spam and telemetry at the router and still get just Windows Update?

I am willing to sacrifice Bing.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#200

Post by tremon »

aryaneja wrote: post #17
skrebbel wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen those screenshots too, I spent hours googling for this. But that setting is not available on my Windows. Maybe a pro vs home thing? I’m on the latest version. I don’t believe that this is by accident, I think MS decided that I’m in some customer segment that’s not allowed to not know that Jimmy Fallon might be depressed. And even then, I can’t get the widgets feature, a pretty decent idea, without the news.…

Might be a dumb question but are you the admin?

As if only admins should have the privilege of turning off obnoxious stuff on their desktop?
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