Microsoft is Slowly Turning Edge Into Another Copilot App (windowscentral.com) 38
Microsoft has started testing a "significant" visual overhaul for Edge in its Canary and Dev Channel preview builds, and the redesigned interface borrows heavily from the design language that first appeared in the company's standalone Copilot app rather than the Fluent Design system used across Windows 11, Xbox, and Office.
The updated look touches context menus, the new tab page and settings areas, introducing rounder corners and the same color palette and typography found in Copilot. The new interface appears regardless of whether users have Copilot Mode enabled, though the new tab page reverts to MSN news articles and Bing search when Copilot Mode is turned off.
Edge is not alone in this shift, Windows Central writes. Microsoft is also applying the Copilot design language to Copilot Discover, an AI-powered version of MSN.com that may be internally codenamed "Ruby." Windows and Xbox have not yet received similar treatment. The rollout remains uneven -- the refreshed UI is not appearing on all test machines -- and production releases are likely weeks away. If Microsoft continues down this path, Copilot, MSN and Edge will share a visual identity that looks noticeably different from the rest of the company's software lineup, the publication adds.
The updated look touches context menus, the new tab page and settings areas, introducing rounder corners and the same color palette and typography found in Copilot. The new interface appears regardless of whether users have Copilot Mode enabled, though the new tab page reverts to MSN news articles and Bing search when Copilot Mode is turned off.
Edge is not alone in this shift, Windows Central writes. Microsoft is also applying the Copilot design language to Copilot Discover, an AI-powered version of MSN.com that may be internally codenamed "Ruby." Windows and Xbox have not yet received similar treatment. The rollout remains uneven -- the refreshed UI is not appearing on all test machines -- and production releases are likely weeks away. If Microsoft continues down this path, Copilot, MSN and Edge will share a visual identity that looks noticeably different from the rest of the company's software lineup, the publication adds.
MSFT loading up on bloat (Score:2)
Just in time for the spike in desktop and laptop prices due to significant upticks in memory and storage prices. I think I'll pass.
You want AI (Score:5, Insightful)
And even if you didn't want AI, you're getting it anyways.
The consolidation of corporations has placed almost the entire tech industry under a tiny number of people, a tech oligarchy. They decide what consumers must accept, rather than the market working it out through demand.
I Simply Don't Understand It (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps I'm just a curmudgeon, longing for a bygone era and overdue to take up my retirement hobbies of tiling at windmills, yelling at clouds, and telling kids to get off my lawn...
But why is it...Why. Is. It. that web browsers seem to be built with the express and sole purpose of being as annoying as possible?
Why are scrollbars - when they're visible on the screen at all - so razor thin as to be difficult to grab? What websites are improved by an extra dozen pixels of width on widescreen monitors?!
Somewhat more controversially, I don't mind the "Awesome Bar" paradigm, where the address bar shows suggestions based on browser history and bookmarks. I don't find this problematic, but I *do* find it annoying that autocompletes don't even have the *option* to do tab-complete. I hate that browsers default to navigating me to https://192.168.1.1008006/ [168.1.1008006] because that's where I went last time, even if my goal is to get to https://192.168.1.1./ [168.1.1]
Greenbar Certificates were excellent. They took effort and expense to acquire, and made it very easy to help users verify that they were going to bankofamerica.com, rather than all the typosquatting and unicode replacements that required eagle-eyed users to ensure were the right place...but no, EVERY browser got rid of that for some reason. What experience did their removal improve?
Title bars shouldn't be persona-non-grata; it's infuriating to have to close tabs to move the window around on the screen.
And I don't want to hear another word about 'muh security' in browsers when it is physically possible to replace the firmware on a connected smartphone Through. The. Browser. Internet Explorer 6 was atrocious for a hundred reasons, but don't tell me that the functional-equivalent of ActiveX and Java are okay when Google does it in Chrome.
Firefox, in case there was some possibility that a major browser could exist that *didn't* require a post-install script to fix, shows more nags and notification/tutorial spam than half the actual-spammers...and I don't know why there's this obsession with a sidebar, where I can pin things that...send me nags. Microsoft doing it makes sense, because they're microsoft...and Chrome doesn't have to do it because they do all of *their* nags in Gmail...but Firefox? Why is the left side of the screen okay to use for a useless sidebar that takes multiple attempts to permanently-hide, but scroll bars can't live on the right side?
Which brings us all the way to Edge, morphing into Copilot. Nobody wanted Clippy or Cortana, but somehow, if they force Copilot down our throats hard enough, it'll be good? Please, it can't get 'vibe coded Excel formulas' right, one of the areas it *should* be able to do consistently and reliably...but a rack full of GPUs can't reliably sum or average properly; God help whoever uses it to guess their way to VLOOKUPs... ...but Edge needs it, apparently. On what basis? Edge already auto-syncs data into one's microsoft account, even if one only uses one to activate MS Office and explicitly stated "this app only"...so all that data is getting sucked in and profiled. It automatically reinstalls itself, even if a user removes it from a computer. It gives 'shopping tips' and stores passwords and payment methods and opens Office files in browser-based office, and Microsoft is strong-arming Win10 users to use MS accounts to slurp up data in exchange for security updates... ...So...why?! Edge is already data slurping and ad-laden to the greatest possible extent a browser could be, and users don't want it...so how does morphing Edge into Copilot help *anyone* at all? ...I have no concept of how *nobody* at *any* browser creation firm can come up with a browser that has an address bar, a bookmarks list, a plug-in facility for users to add more functionality if they want...and then shut the hell up and display websites. It really shouldn't be such a huge ask for the bro
Re:I Simply Don't Understand It (Score:5, Insightful)
It's capitalism and greed enabled by idiot masses, simple as.
They keep making changes because people are stupid and "new" equates with "good".
Most people are too stupid and/or ignorant (mostly both) to understand that AI makes slop.
Even Mozilla hired a CEO it didn't need, to help it do more business? Which didn't happen, instead it turned out to turn off users and lead to a war about the ramifications of giving him money when we found out what he does with the way too much money he was handed. So then they got another one who is equally worthless and wants to AI all the things and also gets paid way too much.
Firefox was really, really good in its early days, when the mission was about being light and fast. But they started ignoring users and also long-standing bugs very early on and the enshittification has proceeded ever since.
Those skinny scroll bars piss me off at least as much as they do you, BTW. You can barely even fucking see them in Edge. In Firefox you can see them OK, but actually using them is a nightmare. The easy fix only works on Windows, too, you have to manually edit config files on Linux. It's hard to not see that as an attack on Linux.
Re: (Score:2)
I have rarely read a post by someone that so exactly touches every single point I would have wanted to make.
Sincerely,
~an old curmudgeonly lady who also yells at clouds (quite literally these days) to get off my browser and by computer and my everything.
Because people want the internet (Score:5, Insightful)
So yeah capitalism does fuck things up here. Also capitalism isn't allowed to function anymore. There is no competition to speak of because there's no antitrust law enforcement.
But in addition to that a modern web browser is basically an operating system in itself. There is literally no application you couldn't write for a web browser as a platform.
So they suck for the same reason that operating systems suck. It's a complex system with shitloads of features and a diverse user base.
If we had proper competition that was regulated by a proper government than there would be a lot less shit because well, capitalism would be able to do its job and deliver an improved product. But that ship sailed 25 years ago when we elected George Bush Jr and he shut down the Microsoft antitrust investigation...
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People also want Trump
Only people in favor of treason and child rape.
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Nothing is truly "free". It ends up being a tool to sell you shit, track you to sell you shit later, and display as many ads as possible.
I get where you are coming from regarding screwy and ever-shifting browser UI's. I'd like to see a browser library that allows one to use the common programming languages to implement the general UI environment. The dev can program all the browser buttons, me
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I keep thinking someone will lick visual programming but it never happens. I've got no suggestions on how to do it better so I'm not faulting anyone, except insofar as that I'm real sure that the interface to Squeak isn't the way to do it even if the rest is good. There is now actually such a thing in common use in the form of BPMN, but I haven't enjoyed that either.
Can't you already embed a browser relatively easily? How does Steam do it?
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The problem is that the DOM is too imprecise to consistently align stuff. For example, a textual phrase in one browser may cross 100 pixels but 96 in another (or be inconsistent with proportion across OS DPI settings). The standard is too fuzzy. We need a new state-ful GUI-over-HTTPS standard to compete with HTML/DOM where it sucks the most. Some say "use Canvas or SVG instead", but they lack needed features that regular HTML has. Some "standards boy" in ivory towers factored poorly. (Or "standards gal".)
A
Re:I Simply Don't Understand It (Score:5, Informative)
To make scrollbars wider on FF, goto about:config in a new tab, change the widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.style entry to 4 (or 3 or 5 depending on what you want). I think that will be immediate, if not restart FF.
Re: (Score:2)
I mean some of these are obvious.
- Scrollbars are hard to grab because grabbing them is not what people do anymore. Scrolling is done via mouse wheel, touchscreen, gesture, or keyboard control. I honestly can't tell you how hard the scroll wheel is to grab, because I think the last time I did that Obama was still president.
- Extended Validation Certificates turned out to not be worth the money. The validation system was fundamentally broken so you don't really have a proper trust chain anyway. People did ce
Everything is a Copilot (Score:5, Interesting)
From the people who brought you Everything is an Xbox, here's Everything is a Copilot!
Yes, ladies and gents. Microsoft has renamed Office to Copilot [office.com].
Nadella and co. are going to love how many people are now using Copilot! But I guess on the positive side, now if you're required to use AI tools for work you can just tell them you're using Copilot (as Office) and it will satisfy the managers.
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Frankly, Wine on a more broadly supported kernel is likely closer to a viable alternative than ReactOS.
Biggest thing ReactOS could bring is Windows driver support, but the ReactOS kernel doesn't even support the current driver models, so it turns out that Linux hardware support is actually stronger than ReactOS hardware support.
I think they are doing something interesting, but frankly I see it as more a potential preservation effort for Windows XP like experience rather than a viable possibility for modern
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I think this is really the key, they have a lot of self-imposed mandate to *make* copilot succeed as proof that their copilot strategy is correct, and since organic growth did not come now they are forcing it through renames and shuffling people into chat prompts by befault.
Just like IBM went through a phase when they named *everything* Watson trying to capitalize on the Jeopardy publicity stunt, despite many of the things having zero commonality with each other.
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"Edge is not alone in this shift" (Score:4, Insightful)
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"Slop" is the in way to say it.
Then do something about it (Score:2)
Stop using Microsoft in your personal life. You may not be able to avoid it at work but you can send a message that your personal life is yours, not theirs. CoPilot is malware.Try something else. Stop listening to those that say it is too hard. I did that for far too long and guess what, very little of it was hard, most of it just worked. The first thing you should ask someone when you hear them bitching about Microsoft is, "what alternative(s) have you tried?"
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I hope (Score:2)
MS is becoming a Copilot company (Score:2)
that happens to attach OS's, browsers, and biz-ware to it. Reminds me of the old joke: "Emacs is a decent OS, but lacks a good editor."
Just one prompt ever (Score:2)
"Hi CoPilot -- please download and install Chrome/Firefox/Brave, and make it my default browser"
My condolences... (Score:2)
... to everyone who has no choice but to use Windows. I hope major companies soon start rejecting that steaming pile of feces en masse.
It is not about AI (Score:2)
It is about UI.
That Microsoft tries to push AI everywhere is only tangential to the change. It just happens that their latest app is the Copilot app, and they experimented their new UI on that app, since it is new, there is less resistance to change, and they can experiment a bit more. Now that they found it to their liking, they are migrating their other apps, starting with Edge, and it will probably be the basis of Windows 12.
To be honest, I think it is a good approach. If executed well, that is. Consider
On the Edge (Score:2)
Great, then we can ban it with the workers council in the company. Because in Germany we need to consent to such software.
It is time to purge Microsoft from our computers and AI infection is from a operational security standpoint a perfect argument against it.
Whoever figures out how to uninstall Edge... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
It’s allegedly possible:
https://youtu.be/JUTdRZNqODY [youtu.be]
Re: (Score:2)
It’s allegedly possible:
https://youtu.be/JUTdRZNqODY [youtu.be]
Yeah, I've seen the various videos and instructions, but the trouble is that it makes certain other applications fail such as the Microsoft Store, the search bar in the start menu... so if you can live without those, you'll be fine. On the plus side, it removes Bing searches.
Time to install Chromium (Score:2)
I started using Edge once it became a Chrome clone, but I guess I'll just go to the source now.
simiple answer (Score:2)
There is a simple answer to all microsoft products. If you can live with current performance, never upgrade. The same is true of all free Android apps, since the only changes they ever make relate to improving feeding of ads.