Updated Edge and it now seems to put a frame with rounded corners around every website

FireWire400@lemmy.world to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 753 points –

Edit: Looks like you can opt-out of that "new look and feel" pretty easily under the appearance settings but still, whats with putting rounded corners everywhere?

Edit 2: "Explore the web with a softer, more friendly aesthetic featuring rounded corners [..] Designed to complement your operating system, whether on Windows 11, MacOS, or Linux." The fuck does that mean? Windows 11 fair enough but most Linux distros don't look like that at all.

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Sure they can add rounded corners but can they fix this mess?

It's like they somehow overcentered a div. I didn't even know it was possible. They used

display: 'crunch'

in their CSS.

Maybe their devs did their work in Firefox rofl

I gotta say I love that Microsoft has the self confidence to think that there are people who use edge on Linux.

I do. It's more secure than any other alternative. Not private, but really, really secure.

How is Edge secure in any way? It isn’t even open source & and both Google (Chromium) and Microsoft add their code to it, so even if Chromium were more secure than Firefox, you could just normal Chromium, couldn’t you?

Not being open source ≠ not safe.

Microsoft ships hardened Chromium basically, with sandboxing turned up to eleven.

They also run their SmartScreen filtering on top of that.

Also, Firefox is more private, not secure. Either you run LibreFox or it's less secure than Edge by default.

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Softer...like they just wanted to take the edge off.

I'll see myself out now.

One of my son's steam buddies is nicknamed Microsoft edging. I think it's pretty funny, not sure my son gets it... (He's 15 though, so it won't be long)

As it's Microsoft, you can be pretty sure the option to turn off the new look and feel will be removed in 6 months

Or half finished and left in there for decades

It could even be both, if you really think about it

Smartphones: Rounded everything, nobody actually likes it. Edge:

Just because a few people on Reddit and Lemmy don't like a thing, doesn't mean that "nobody" likes it.

I was being hyperbolic. In the billions of people who inhabit this earth, I bet there's like two or three who genuinely like it. But they are crazy, and their opinions are wrong.

Me! I am crazy and my opinion is that I like the round corners. Well, on Win11 where everything is rounded, anyway.

You are still discrediting anyone who doesn't share your opinion. First you hyperbolically alleged they don't exist, now you downplay their numbers and dismiss them as crazy.

Are you still being hyperbolic, or is this just how you genuinely think?

Do YOU like it then? It's fucking awful.

Some phones have too large of a border radius, but I generally like it.

Am I crazy and wrong now?

I... Kind of like it?

So you'd say you're not ... ( •_•)>⌐■-■

... edgy (⌐■_■)

I’m almost afraid to admit, but I dig it.

Like I'm not going to use Edge, but it's nice. 😛

If you're lucky, it'll follow along with Chrome and start sharing your browser history to advertisers, too!

Actually, since it’s based off Chromium, I’m pretty sure(don’t quote me on this) that those changes will go downstream into most Chrome-based browsers automatically, unless they take the time to remove it manually.

You're probably right. IMO Chromium should be dropped wherever possible.

In the ideal world these Chromium-based browsers would rebase into Ungoogled or something of the sort. But ofc that’s never happening, so I’d suggest getting ahead and setting things up on Firefox.

ATM I run Vivaldi and Firefox. Vivaldi is currently my main, but I also use FF quite often and will probably start try to switch away from Chromium in the future.

Brave at least claims to be an actual fork of chromium, they cherry pick upstream apparently. It's still full of crypto bs, so choose your poison.

I've noticed that there's a shift in UI design currently back to the 2000s style of round UI design, which eventually moved out of the way for nice straight crisp corners when we shifted from CRTs to LCDs which could render pixel perfect images at last.

We never limited the viewport on a browser of course, that's madness. But just look at XP's bubbly design and interfaces of the time vs Win8/10's very angular, clean crisp interface.

I do hope we're not descending back into an age of curves, I'm not a fan. But styles come and go every few decades, and maybe younger people today are ready to experience their "age of curves" for the first time?

I wish cars stopped being curvy and went back to rectangle lights and straight lines

It might just be down to nostalgia, especially when it comes to the early 2000s Windows XP style aesthetic. Just think about all the Vaporwave stuff (although that seems to be mostly late-90s-ish).

I'm more of a Windows Aero fan, myself. Frutiger Aero in general has a very dystopian vibe for me but I'm a sucker for transparency.

I sort of understand rounding outside edges for aesthetics since there's nothing lost and it might be easier as a target for resizing, but inside corners are just stupid. You're arbitrarily cutting corners out of content for no good reason.

Also looks a lot better in a multi-window environment, i.e., not your phone.

Guess they're going for the CRT look? Next up, all pages default to 4:3?

"This website looks best on Microsoft Edge at a resolution of 800x600"

You're joking, but that's how I unintentionally use the web with Arc Browser. It has rounded corners and an adjustable sidebar of tabs on the right left*. The resulting viewport is tightly approximately* 4:3. Iirc, Edge can also have tabs on the side.

When you close a tab everything shrinks to a tiny square and then blinks out of existence.

If you hold a magnet too close to edge it goes all weird.

Probably to match windows 11 borders

Remember: less viewport and more whitespace = somehow more ergonomic

I mean you can like or dislike it of course but are you really complaining about a viewport 20 square pixels smaller than normal

Yes, that's what redditor/lemmy users do. None of these people know anything about UX design or the tens of millions of dollars companies pour into user research.

Any minimally decent website already has margin along the viewport edge, at worst you're shaving off a few pixels from an image that the user probably hasn't finished scrolling to anyway. There's no real loss in content with this change.

apart from that it ruins any website's unique design by forcefully shoving it's rounded corners into it, or making anything in the corner look odd

How does it ruin unique designs? Nothing important should be so far in the corner that it gets cut off

i've designed a few websites recently which really favour sharp corners, and when one of my sharp objects randomly has a rounded corner, when none of the others do, just because it happens to be in the top left corner, in my opinion that's a bad thing?

Are you able to show us an example of what you're talking about? I genuinely cannot picture a situation where this would be remotely as bad as some of y'all are making it out to be, how do you design a website in such a way that very slightly chamfered edges completely ruins the look?

if i get some spare time i'll throw some rounded corners on some of my recent web designs that i'm allowed to show, though i've thought about it more and i don't think that's my main issue with it. i feel it makes it feel like websites are more so just that, little pages in an app, when they can be, and often times are, so much more. i like when they can take their whole screen of space, without any borders, cut edges, anything like that, which is why i personally use a theme which even hides the tab bar behind a hover. i like to treat websites as apps in their own right, and putting them into a little box just doesn't sit right with me. if it didnt have those borders, and were just rounded based on the normal windows border radius, i'd likely be fine, but i feel this puts too much connection between the browser and the site

Y'know, that's a fair point. I don't necessarily agree, I'm not that in tune with most websites' designs, but for someone who actively works on them I can see how you might look at things a little differently.

That was my takeaway.

THeSe mOroNs dOnT knOw What ThEYre dOIng! WHo thOUgHT thIs wAs a GooD IDeA?!

Probably the hundreds of focus groups that were behind the decision shrug

Yeah no joke. My company is much smaller than MS but they still do tons of user research and surveys. They've also been adopting rounded corners for everything. It is easier on the eyes for sure. I like it. The dev types who dominate lemmy always think they know better than ux, but most of them are comically bad at design.

Gosh I love scrolling through 7 pages just to read two paragraphs!

Counter opinion: I think the rounded corners look nice. And do a good job matching up with the windows 11 aesthetic

That's perfectly fine. If you like it then more power to you. Everyone is acting like I cursed Microsoft for doing this and that my (internet) life in now meaningless because of this lol.

The design change itself is ok, I guess. What I don't like is forcing design changes upon users (and just removing the opt-out later on).

I actually like rounded corners but I wouldn't ever touch Edge.

Edge was fine until they Chromium’d it. I mean, there were always better browsers, but it wasn’t IE-level garbage.

I won't go so far as to call it "fine," but I agree that not being Chromium was the single greatest thing it had going for it.

I would rather use Googles search engine than put up with majore dissatvantages in terms of speed and performance to be able to use Microsofts, never forget how they treated the internet before!

I would rather use Googles search engine than put up with majore dissatvantages in terms of speed and performance to be able to use Microsofts, never forget how they treated the internet before!

Edge isn’t the search engine, that’s Bing.

I’m also in no way saying you should’ve used Edge. Lord knows I didn’t/don’t. Just that it wasn’t/isn’t the worst browser out there.

Sorry, I mean browser engine. True, it certainly wanst the worse and a huge step up from IE and now it's just another blink shell but I wouldn't touch a Microsoft engine even if Google had 100% marketshare!

I get we're all old blokes and don't like change, but these rounded corners and UI changes are arguably better. Nothing wrong with a new modern look

How is it better? Your screen in square. Pages are rectangular

The real mildlyinfuriating part is that they probably got inspired by Arc, a relatively new browser. They already copied how their window splitting works.

Pretty crappy for MS not to have good designers themselves and then copy (often poorly) what one of the small players is doing.

Have you ever looked at MS’s business plan over their lifetime? This is nothing new.

Rounded edges have been a trend in UX design for a while now. It's not really a concept that they need to have stolen from anyone else.

I blame Apple for that trend.

It's like 20 years on and the rest of the world is still trying to ape it.

Edge is copying a lot of stuff from the yet-to-be-released-on-Windows arc browser. This is one of them. They seem to have not added the other stuff that interfaces with it like the one window split screen.

Nice security feature, you don't know how many people get hurt by those angular corners.

Rounded is the new thing? Aren't YouTube videos also rounded now

It's not really a new thing but it's something that there's seemingly no real reason for other than it looked good to whoever came up with it?

Rounded corners make sense for phones (cause they provide better protection against falls), but I'll never understand why they would do this to a desktop browser.

better protection against falls

Do they really? I don't know about other phones but on my Pixel 6 Pro the entire front is pretty much covered with glass so it doesn't really matter if the OLED has a rounded bezel in front of it or not.

It might protect the actual OLED in case of a drop, though.

Structurally speaking, yes rounded corners are 2 magnitudes better against direct impacts. That's just physics.

other than it looked good to whoever came up with it?

That's just objectively wrong. Biologically speaking.

We have pretty much since we are Sapiens preferred rounded everything. Boba and Kiki are a thing.

The oddity (biologically speaking) is finding sharp edges more appealing whee they offer no considerable advantage...

When browsing even the least reactive webpage EVER; you won't be needing those 32.5 missing pixels.

When browsing even the least reactive webpage EVER; you won't be needing those 32.5 missing pixels.

You think this is acceptable, until an ad put it's close button up there and Chrome has already prevented AdBlock.

You think this is acceptable

Yes.

until an ad put it's close button up there and Chrome has already prevented AdBlock.

No.

Big companies don't make highly visible design decisions like this on a whim... at least most of the time. They probably have research showing that rounded edges are preferred by end users. Maybe less anxiety inducing or something.

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I remember a version of Chrome in the early days where I feel like they finally got the UI perfect. Of course, it's been changed a hundred times since then. Can't developers just leave well enough alone?

Edit: Within a day of posting this, I started getting pop-ups in Chrome saying something to the effect of "You can change the appearance of Chrome". I changed it alright. I'm using Firefox now.

Here’s is something I don’t see a lot of people mention. Around the release of Pixel 3XL, Google kinda updated lot of their designs to make that hideous notch look intentional. Chrome Tab Headers were changed too. They got bigger with a lot more padding and rounded to look like the “notch”. They got rid of the notch in their phones, but the chrome tab header design somehow stuck

Oh god, this is going to be the next must-have design for everything, isn't it? Argh.

It has been for a very long time. It really ramped up when border-radius came to CSS, maybe around 15 years ago now. Every site started using rounded corners as it was much easier than the old approach of using images for it. Then apps started copying it, and now everything has rounded corners.

Yep, the latest and greatest from...Mac OS System 6. From 35 years ago. Windows has had roundrect windows from 95 or earlier up until Windows 8.

That said, I can't think of anything more stupid than rounded corners on monitors/smartphone screens, except for curved edges.

to help you protect your data

Somehow that bothers me...

Please update edge to protect your data.

Protect my data from what?

From what we're gonna do to it if you dont update edge.

Opera did it, and since opera's always the first to bring any useful featurse, other browsers usually just follow troop.

Opera did it well - if this is edge's attempt and you use that as main browser, I feel sad for ya!

Maybe read other comments before posting one? I mainly use Firefox, Edge is only for testing purposes. I can't (easily) uninstall it anyways so I might as well use it for something.

Might be that this is just part of the Chrome/ium Redesign 2023 that just startet to get published.

yep, Chrome just redesigned everything to have no square edges anywhere, so I assume this is related.

Doesn't appear to have been rolled out for all markets (yet), or perhaps they excluded/disabled it for Win10 users. I still have my edged corners with the latest update.

Bro I don't understand why would anyone use chromium? Its fucking shit!

Mozilla can't listen to it's users and Apple only makes Safari available on Apple devices

Microsoft is really known for listening to it's users 🤣🤣🤣

I will write an unpopular statement:

I use Microsoft edge even on Linux because it's the only browser that has an option to save temporary downloads in /tmp instead of littering /downloads with unwanted trash. I open 100s of PDFs every day and the behavior of every browser to save in downloads without my consent is infuriating. Firefox allowed this but then they really had to copy the behavior of Google chrome. Reverting to the old behavior requires too many hacks, it's easier to uninstall and use Edge

But you can just change the default download location to /tmp on firefox. Or you can choose ask me every time and set /tmp as your favorites, then you can reach it with a single click.

I don't know if this fits your use case

But it's still a workaround, I have to save it and waiting for the save dialog to appear

It's much easier to just have two buttons, "open" (save in tmp and open) and "save"

On windows, temp doesn't get cleaned automatically at boot, but edge takes care of that and deletes the file when you close it

The ability to pick a temp folder to store your downloads is a feature, not a workaround, and every browser has it since forever™.

There's absolutely no way in Elon Musk's xHell or Linus Torvalds kmodHeaven that you choose Edge just because it saves you 2.7s every time you download pepelore compilations in 4k HDR AV1.

My use case is this: opening invoices from the ERM. The web app sends it as a download. I open one every 2 minutes. On edge I have an "open" button that does what it says. On chrome/Firefox/opera/Vivaldi it just downloads and at the end of the month I have the download folder littered with thousands of useless files. Or I need to set it for opening to a dialog for a path that might be preset to a temporary directory (that on windows still must be manually cleaned). The time saving in my use case is a lot and this setting is synced to all my machines, where the temp directory workaround is not and I have to set to each single machine

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I was explaining to someone in another thread that the only browser that works with the site I have to use for work is Chrome. I can't help it if the Indian contractors made it Chrome-only somehow. I can't use any other browser. Sometimes you're stuck with the shitty option.

Contractually they can't fire you for refusing to give up your human rights. Yes, privacy is a human right.

Yeah, okay, you get me a lawyer that will do that case pro-bono. I'm sure going to need it to be pro-bono since I won't have a job.

So if I do, then what? What's your next argument?

How about you do that first and we'll cross the next bridge when we come to it. Good luck. I'm counting on you.

lol yes they can. Your employer can make you use whatever software they want, and can and do monitor everything you do on their network.

There is no expectation of privacy when you’re using their hardware or network.

make you

That's a very bold and not entirely true statement. But alright, have at it.

If your employer gives you a laptop for work, they can lock it down to whatever the hell they want. Standard practice is to give regular users no elevated privileges at all, so you couldn’t install anything that isn’t already installed. Most companies don’t even let users edit the internet options so you can’t even change your default search engine.

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God you poor thing! Are you okay? You'll get through this, don't worry.

So your take is no one can have an opinion on anything. Got it

What's infuriating about fucking rounded corners on a webpage? Mildly or otherwise.

Y'all need to learn some coping skills. Jesus.

What's infuriating is the decision to do it, or that it even crossed someone's mind, or that people like you just defend whatever bullshit gets fed to you

Yeah dude let's BURN THIS SHIT DOWN

NO MORE ROUNDED CORNERS IN EDGE GOD DAMNIT THINK OF THE CHILDREN

Later chump