Sunday, August 23, 2015

More Crap From Microsoft?

Sigh ...

It just keeps getting worse.

First, let me preface this with the disclosure that I have been developing on Windows (Desktop and Web) exclusively since 1994. For the most part, I think Microsoft's Developer Tools are the best available. While I will be commenting about Visual Studio Code in a subsequent post, this is about something else. I also happen to like the Windows Desktop interface (have to clarify that now since there is a "tablet" interface as well). I find it highly intuitive, and better than the Apple desktop interface. I even prefer to use IE over the other browsers. I do use the other browsers, I've just like IE better than the others.

Recently, I upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Along with the new OS came the latest instantiation of IE, Microsoft Edge. I do like the cleaner interface.

But I detest the fact that I cannot set my New Tab options to open with my home page. I use bing.com as my homepage. I like the daily pictures, I've signed up for Bing rewards, and I find the Bing search engine to be just as useful as the Google search engine. But with Edge, I can no longer set my new tab properties to open with the same address as my home page. I can't tell you in words (or Word) how much that pisses me off.

I'm assuming it's because they want to force you to look at their "top sites" for marketing, advertising, whatever, dumb-ass revenue gathering reason.

It's counter productive.

I hated the recent versions of Firefox and Google and refuse to use Opera for the same reason - on my computer, I don't like being forced to do things the way someone else thinks I should.

It's a PERSONAL computer. It's MY computer. I'll use your software if you let me use MY computer the way I want to use my computer.

At this point, Microsoft has given me no reason to prefer Edge over Firefox or Chrome. Great marketing move, Microsoft - make sure there's no real UX experience between yourself and the other guys. You don't keep or gain marketing share if you aren't any different from the other guys. And speedier rendering on the order of microseconds is not a sufficient discriminator - everyone always makes their browser a little bit faster with every round.

It's back to IE 11 for me...