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Over the edge: The use of design tactics to undermine browser choice

research.mozilla.org

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Re: Over the edge: The use of design tactics to undermine browser choice

#201

Post by suddenexample »

shon wrote: post #196

I used to despise Microsoft for exactly this behavior. I’ve been more impressed with them lately for their investment in AI and willingness to take risks bringing new products to market. Unfortunately I’ve had the same problem with Edge after refusing to use any M$ browser for decades, I gave it a try to get early access to “Sydney” which was worth it all until they lobotomized it. Microsoft at its best, gave us the…

Transforming PR is different than transforming. I don't think Microsoft is any less scummy than it was in the past, it's just gotten better at recognizing that its audience includes both "normal users we can trick with dark patterns" and "gaming/dev enthusiasts who will lose it if we try to pull anything shady".

Re: Over the edge: The use of design tactics to undermine browser choice

#202

Post by sub7 »

They're actually doing some pretty nice things with Edge despite these evil anti-competitive UIs/ad injections. I'd add telemetry to the list too, but since Mozilla does a lot of that they probably won't write up a nice doc like this on it.

It is possible to get a clean Edge build running via containerization + disabling some Windows background services + blocking outbound/inbound requests to various Microsoft + partner IP addresses. Big hassle though.

Re: Over the edge: The use of design tactics to undermine browser choice

#203

Post by wintermutestwin »

pyrophane wrote: post #181
bmitc wrote: post #173

What's sad is that it's a good browser behind all of this. But it takes a fair amount of work getting all the settings right to turn it all off.

What makes Edge a good browser among the several other Chrome-based browsers out there?

Native Vertical tabs. Google Chrome doesn’t even have viable extensions for this (and yet brave and edge have it native).

(My oft spoken rant) Horizontal tabs are useless if you have more than 8 tabs open at once. Or if you are one of the very few that has a monitor with more vertical pixels than horizontal.

Also, Safari’s vertical tabs implementation is weak whereas Orion’s is workable.

Re: Over the edge: The use of design tactics to undermine browser choice

#204

Post by fho »

6c696e7578 wrote: post #98
epolanski wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WSL2, power toys and hands down the best window management of any OS, I hate working on my MBP just due to the difficulty of managing different windows and aligning them on the same desktop.

Probably seems weird to you, but I've never got on with the Windows UI. There's too many things that steal focus. I've been XFCE for too many years now, but it doesn't change significantly that I find I have to invest time learning what's changed. There used to be a 'tile windows' since windows 2.0 or something like that, but it did just that, splatted the windows to take up all the space. One thing I like about X11…

Yeah ... As an exclusive Linux user for almost 20 years being forced to work in Windows for the first time is super weird.

The two things that trip me up are that you able to move windows to a position that you can't move them away anymore.

And that apparently maximized windows sometimes leave a 10px gap at the top so that you click on the window behind :-/

Re: Over the edge: The use of design tactics to undermine browser choice

#205

Post by lofaszvanitt »

YPPH wrote: post #26

Windows just keeps getting weirder. There's this regrettable dichotomy between (1) a rock solid OS core with great features like Hyper-V, PowerShell and exceptional back-compat, and (2) a crap, sluggish, inconsistent UI slapped on top, laden with ads, "Rewards" Points and tracking.

It's getting more and more non human like. Like it was not made by humans. Interesting.

Re: Over the edge: The use of design tactics to undermine browser choice

#206

Post by RajT88 »

yakz wrote: post #193
RajT88 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. One of the most egregious things is the insistence on using the Bing start page. You have to install an extension to have your own start page (in fairness most browsers are like this these days). However, lately Edge just magically stopped letting new tab redirect work. At least it loads a blank page, but it is annoying. Microsoft seems hell bent on preventing user control all over their client ecosystem. The…

setting it to load about:blank seems to kinda work

Yeah, my problem is on my devices I set a custom start page to something hosted on my NAS device's internal web server. Nothing fancy, just a simple HTML page with some links and a little javascript.

It's surprising how much time such a little thing saves me, compared to trying to wrangle the default browser start pages into something usable.

Re: Over the edge: The use of design tactics to undermine browser choice

#207

Post by gertop »

pyrophane wrote: post #180

I've been trying Edge lately because I wanted to see if its "efficiency mode" would produce any noticeable difference in the battery life I experienced on my laptop. They've really made it almost impossible to use as a privacy-respecting browser that lets you pick your search engine. There are a very large number of "on by default" settings that I had to change to turn of things like "Microsoft Rewards" and "creator…

I went through the same process you did and tried to make edge work for me and failed. I don't want to be constantly fighting my browser to respect my choices. That being said, the following is incorrect:

> Even after you change that there is still an un-changeable page that comes up on new tabs that searches with Bing / Copilot, and other various ways to trigger a search that use Microsoft's search engine no matter what.

If you change the search engine to something other than Bing, a second setting appears that controls the new tab search.

This is obviously a dark pattern to trick users (why would you want the new tab search engine to not respect your choice by default?), but the option exists.

Re: Over the edge: The use of design tactics to undermine browser choice

#209

Post by gertop »

halfcat wrote: post #141
neogodless wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you install it? They advertise cloud storage, office software, and gaming in the setup process.

Maybe that’s it. I untick all of the boxes during install and use a local account instead of a Microsoft account.

You had to fight the install process to get that local account, though.

Re: Over the edge: The use of design tactics to undermine browser choice

#210

Post by magicalhippo »

narag wrote: post #157
6c696e7578 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably seems weird to you, but I've never got on with the Windows UI. There's too many things that steal focus. I've been XFCE for too many years now, but it doesn't change significantly that I find I have to invest time learning what's changed. There used to be a 'tile windows' since windows 2.0 or something like that, but it did just that, splatted the windows to take up all the space. One thing I like about X11…

you can't slide the top of the window off the screen You can use "move" in the system menu. Once activated, the arrow keys in the keyboard will move the window outside the desktop window, not sure if you can do it using the mouse somehow.

You can also use Win+Up arrow key to maximize the window, from there you can grab the title bar to drag it somewhere (preferably inside the desktop this time).
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