Microsoft Edge Is Getting Vertical Tabs, Smart Copy, More

Microsoft is today previewing some new features for its Edge browser at the Microsoft Event. Along with the launch of the new Microsoft 365 subscription for consumers, Microsoft is teasing some new features for its new Edge browser.

The new features include a new vertical tabs UI that takes a very interesting approach. The new vertical tabs UI will be an optional feature. Once enabled, your tabs will appear on the left side, in a scrollable list. The idea here is that the vertical tabs UI will make it easier for power users to browse the web when they have a bunch of tabs open at once.

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Microsoft is also introducing an interesting new feature called Smart Copy. The feature will allow users to copy content on the web while maintaining the formatting of whatever you copy. That means when you copy things like tables, it will persist the formatting of the copied content:

The company is also introducing a new Password Monitor to the Edge browser. The new Password Monitor will frequently scan the web to make sure the credentials of your accounts haven’t been stolen. The feature will notify you when one of your accounts gets compromised, and take you directly to the site’s page for changing passwords. It’s expected to ship in the Insider channels in the next few months.

Microsoft is bringing Edge’s Collections feature to the mobile version of Edge later this Spring, and it will sync across all your devices.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg5cUyPBHjI

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Conversation 26 comments

  • chriscarstens

    30 March, 2020 - 12:08 pm

    <p>My daily driver is a Surface Pro. The horizontal space is badly crowded even in Outlook.com . I'm wondering how much of my screen area this new vertical tab orientation will take up?</p>

    • lwetzel

      Premium Member
      30 March, 2020 - 2:17 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#535047">In reply to chriscarstens:</a></em></blockquote><p>From the images it looks like you can click and expose or hide the vertical tabs. Think that this might be a plus. </p>

      • chriscarstens

        30 March, 2020 - 4:07 pm

        <blockquote><a href="#535114"><em>In reply to lwetzel:</em></a><em>Point taken. I love my Surface, but real estate is an ongoing issue. Thanks. </em></blockquote><p><br></p>

      • Paul Thurrott

        Premium Member
        31 March, 2020 - 8:46 am

        they are collapsable, yes.

    • behindmyscreen

      30 March, 2020 - 8:40 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#535047">In reply to chriscarstens:</a></em></blockquote><p>turn your scaling down</p>

    • sandy

      31 March, 2020 - 2:30 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#535047">In reply to chriscarstens:</a></em></blockquote><p>To me it seems like the vertical tabs will be great on very-wide-screen displays (16:9 or even wider), rather than the square-ish Surface displays.</p>

  • cayo

    30 March, 2020 - 12:49 pm

    <p>Once upon a time, there was a web browser called Chrome…</p>

  • Omen_20

    30 March, 2020 - 1:16 pm

    <p>Looks good. Edgium has been my work browser for stuff like 365 and Azure since it launched in beta. I still prefer Vivaldi for all my personal browsing on the desktop. So far I still prefer Brave and Firefox Preview on Android.</p><p><br></p><p>Features like vertical tabs will make Edge more competitive with Vivaldi for me, but there's still a rather large gap.</p>

  • yoshi

    Premium Member
    30 March, 2020 - 1:22 pm

    <p>Kind of digging those vertical tabs. I'll definitely give it a try.</p>

  • Alex Taylor

    30 March, 2020 - 2:00 pm

    <p>Great to see the vertical tabs. </p><p>Will be even better if they can provide autohide as TreeStyleTabs for Firefox used to (and still can with some persuasion). </p><p>A good autohide implementation means you can adjust to lose a very small amount of horizontal space – of your own choice, say as wide as the site favicons, but on hover have that expand to read all titles. </p><p>It's so superior to horizontal tabs in my view that if MS make it easy to do it will greatly suit many people. </p>

    • Fuller1754

      02 April, 2020 - 10:29 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#535113"><em>In reply to agt4:</em></a><em> The promo video shows the vertical tabs collapsing down to just the favicons.</em></blockquote><p><br></p>

  • hrlngrv

    Premium Member
    30 March, 2020 - 4:36 pm

    <p>Gotta wonder whether <em>vertical tabs</em> are a tacit admission that wide monitors aren't as conducive to productivity as MSFT may have previously stated or implied. IOW, more usable vertical monitor space good, excess horizontal space to burn. If only the Office team were willing to do the same with the ribbon.</p><p>Disclaimer: my home office has 1600×1200 (4:3) and 1280×1024 (5:4) monitors. I dread either dying and needing a 16:9 replacement. If only there were a decent variety of 3:2 desktop monitors.</p>

    • SWCetacean

      Premium Member
      30 March, 2020 - 8:06 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#535151">In reply to hrlngrv:</a></em></blockquote><p>On the other hand, I've found that for productivity and multitasking, ultrawide monitors are superior to 16:9 or more squarish ratios. The amount of vertical space you have is a function of resolution, not aspect ratio. I'm usually short on horizontal space, and a 21:9 ultrawide allows me to fit more windows side-by-side while allowing each window to be wide enough for me. I generally like to have 1+ terminal window(s), one browser window, and one code editor window on the same screen, with the terminal being 120 characters wide (I reject the antiquated convention of 80-character widths), the code editor being around 150 characters wide, and the browser window around the same width. I have not yet tried the glorious 32:9 monitors, but I think those would need to be curved to work well.</p>

    • wright_is

      Premium Member
      31 March, 2020 - 5:43 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#535151">In reply to hrlngrv:</a></em></blockquote><p>I usually have the browser taking up half the width of the screen.</p>

    • hansolo

      31 March, 2020 - 8:31 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#535151">In reply to hrlngrv:</a></em></blockquote><p>"Gotta wonder whether&nbsp;<em>vertical tabs</em>&nbsp;are a tacit admission that wide monitors aren't as conducive to productivity as MSFT may have previously stated or implied" </p><p><br></p><p>when and how? Surface devices are 3:2</p>

      • Paul Thurrott

        Premium Member
        31 March, 2020 - 8:33 am

        More likely that this is just the beginning of a set of feature spam now that the browser is fundamentally done.

        • Fuller1754

          02 April, 2020 - 10:27 pm

          <blockquote><a href="#535332"><em>In reply to paul-thurrott:</em></a><em> Feature spam? Not sure what that means, but if you're saying that they will begin adding a bunch of features to Edge now that they're done with all the basics, then I'm all for it. Yes, there is always a balance to strike between bloat and valuable features. But browsers, especially Chrome, are so bare bones nowadays, one wonders how we got here. I'm excited about the vertical tabs option, and I love Collections. I'd like to see them toss in a screen capture tool too. And something like Opera's new "Workspaces" which I think is brilliant. Why not? PCs don't run on 256 megs of RAM anymore. "Features" are just the things a program can do.</em></blockquote><p><br></p>

          • Paul Thurrott

            Premium Member
            03 April, 2020 - 8:39 am

            Features also overload the interface and make the application more complex and, for Microsoft, harder to support.

            Plus web browsers already have a perfectly good extensibility model for adding new features. That way, if you want them, you can get them, and if you don’t, you can ignore them.

            More is not always better. It rarely is.

            • Fuller1754

              08 April, 2020 - 7:28 pm

              <blockquote><a href="#536298"><em>In reply to paul-thurrott:</em></a><em> Hmm, well why have tabs at all then? The fewer features, the better.</em></blockquote><p><br></p>

  • anderb

    Premium Member
    30 March, 2020 - 4:49 pm

    <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">It's also been "getting" proper autoplay blocking for the past 26 weeks now. Maybe they should concentrate on the increasingly long list of features they've previously announced and have not yet delivered.</span></p>

  • Daekar

    30 March, 2020 - 8:43 pm

    <p>Steve Gibson will be tickled to see the sidebar tabs… he's been clinging to those in FIrefox for years now.</p>

  • wright_is

    Premium Member
    31 March, 2020 - 2:59 am

    <p>The vertical tabs will please Steve Gibson, he has been moaning for years that he can't get on with Chrome or Edge, because they don't have vertical tabs and he therefore stays with Firefox.</p>

  • awright18

    31 March, 2020 - 9:07 am

    <p>I have been using Side Tabs in Visual Studio for a bit, and I like it there, I think I could see that as being nice in Edge. </p>

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