Among the new features coming to Microsoft Edge on desktop this month is vertical tabs, which seems ideal for the 16:9 displays that most of us are still stuck with.
“To make tab management and organization easier, vertical tabs is now generally available this month,” Microsoft corporate vice president Liat Ben-Zur writes in the announcement post. “Now everyone can view and manage their tabs from a pane on the side with a single click. This allows you to clearly see the tab titles and controls, making it easier to find and switch between the tabs you need, regardless of how many you have open.”
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You can toggle between traditional and vertical tabs by clicking the new “Turn on vertical tabs” control at the far left of the tab row in Edge. By default, vertical tabs appear as icons, but you can pin the pane to the left side of the browser window to see each tab’s page title.
In addition to vertical tabs, Edge now features a controversial new History experience that appears in a drop-down instead of a pane as before. But you can pin that drop-down to the right side of the browser window as a pane if you miss the old style.
Finally, Edge is also picking up a new Startup Boost feature that significantly reduces the time it takes to open the browser after your PC reboots or you reopen the browser. Microsoft claims this improves startup times by 29 to 41 percent.
The first two features should be available now, though you’ll want to make sure you have the latest version of Edge installed. Startup boost will be automatically enabled later this month, Microsoft says.
dftf
<p>Nice… but not everyone would want to use vertical-tabs. For those who prefer horizontal tabs, sadly they just get smaller-and-smaller until they become unusable, especially for touchscreen users who can't hover-over a tab to see the title of it.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Windows XP </em>solved this problem for the taskbar by introducing "Group similar taskbar buttons", so all your Microsoft Word documents would fold-up into one button. So… why has this same-approach never been done in web-browsers.</p><p><br></p><p>For example, here all "BBC News" sites have been collapsed into a single tab — seems fine to me:</p><p><br></p><p>i.imgur.com/AQjkTbN.png (you might need to add https:// at the start — Paul's site wouldn't let me add it embedded, sorry)</p>
dftf
<blockquote><em><a href="#616576">In reply to samp:</a></em></blockquote><p>Being able to keep the tabs at a decent width, and then scroll the mouse-wheel to make the tabs slide left-and-right sounds useful, yes.</p><p><br></p><p>It's certainly a better-approach than <em>Vivaldi </em>currently, which simply overflow tabs after a certain point onto a second row below the first set. I'd rather not have multiple bars of tabs constantly appearing!</p><p><br></p><p>As you scroll left-or-right does it stop dead at either-end, or does it scroll infinitely like a ring?</p>
dftf
<p>@Paul (or any site-admin): is there any-reason a link or embedded image can't be added in a comment. I just get "something went wrong". If it's only available to <em>Premium </em>members, maybe at-least revise the error to say "Links and embedded images are restricted to Premium members", or maybe just don't show either button on the toolbar for the <em>Standard Comments </em>tab?</p><p><br></p><p>(The same thing happens in the Forums: if you're the OP, you can add an image when you start a post, at the top, but not in any of the replies to it later…)</p>
dftf
<blockquote><em><a href="#616540">In reply to agt4:</a></em></blockquote><p>The "Vertical Tabs" feature isn't available in the stable-branch yet.</p><p><br></p><p>If you want to test it, you must install either the "Beta" (version 89) or "Dev" (version 90) installs of Edge. You can do this by going to microsoft.com/en-us/edge/business/download and then choose which one you want in the "Channel/Version" dropdown.</p><p><br></p><p>Once you've installed Beta or Dev, go to "…" menu > Settings > Apperance and make sure the "Show vertical tabs button" is on. Then click the icon to the left of your leftmost tab to make the vertical tab-bar appear.</p>
dftf
<blockquote><em><a href="#616569">In reply to remc86007:</a></em></blockquote><p>"…" menu > "Help and feedback" > "Send feedback"</p>
dftf
<blockquote><em><a href="#616612">In reply to ianhead:</a></em></blockquote><p>In Edge: "…" menu > "Help and feedback" > "Send feedback"</p>
dftf
<blockquote><em><a href="#616621">In reply to agt4:</a></em></blockquote><p>If you have feedback, go to the "…" menu > "Help and feedback" > "Send feedback".</p><p><br></p><p>The Edge team really do listen to it</p>