Windows 10 Edge browser bugs and Windows 10

[Albert Wiersch]

Unfortunately it seems the new Microsoft Edge browser in Windows 10 retains a serious word-wrapping bug from Internet Explorer. I've had to workaround this bug by detecting Internet Explorer and adding <br> elements to force word-wrapping and sadly it looks like I have to do this for the new Edge browser as well. I suppose it's not surprising because it's likely that the Edge browser still uses a lot of code from Internet Explorer. No other non-Microsoft browser has this problem.

In the attached screenshot, you can see the blue box that says "• HTML / HTML5 / XHTML Validator • CSS / CSS3 Validator..." does not word wrap properly when the workaround is not implemented. There should be a lot more text in the blue box but because it doesn't word-wrap it seems to run off to the right off the box and thus becomes invisible.



Here is a page to reproduce the word wrapping bug in IE and in Edge:
https://www.htmlvalidator.com/edge-bug.php

If anyone else has any thoughts or comments on Windows 10 and the new Microsoft Edge browser then please post them here.

So far my initial impression is to wait for Microsoft to get more bugs and kinks out before upgrading to Windows 10, unless there is a good reason to upgrade right away.

And on a side note, I was disappointed with Cortana. At first I kept getting a general and useless error message and Cortana wouldn't do anything. When I did finally get Cortana to work I asked it/her to set a simple timer and it/she couldn't even do that... but I do really like the idea of having Cortana in Windows 10. You can hit Windows+C to go into voice recognition mode and ask Cortana something.

[MikeGale]

That's interesting.

My previous few and simple tests with Edge haven't shown that (yet).

I had a brief look at the page you had trouble with. My derivative was in XHTML, I stripped it down to basics and only viewed in Edge. If I replaced br inside p with a sequence of p's, the content showed.

My impression of Windows 10 is pretty good. I object to all the "Cortana phone home" aspects so my installations are not out of the box. (Telemetry switched off in the ways that make sense to me. Defence in depth.)

I can't comment on Cortana, but the rest looks good. The performance benefits of 8.1 with the addition of a saner "apps" implementation.

On Windows 8.1 I essentially used it in "desktop only" mode. Once I had dispensed with the "apps" I was impressed with the behaviour and performance of the underlying OS, which has come a long way since 7. It also taught me that I can in many ways leave the world of GUI app launchers (start menu) behind, for a more enjoyable experience. I use PowerShell as a command line interface, and write code to give me shortcuts to things that I use fairly often. No more hunting through layers of menu hell. It's like getting back some of the benefits of DOS while still having GUI programs. It's quick, relaxing, bliss.

It's early days yet, but I converted a second machine ahead of time based on experience with the first.

I have another Edge question, I'll post that separately.

[Albert Wiersch]

Thanks for your thoughts Mike.

Here is a page to reproduce the word wrapping bug in IE and in Edge:
https://www.htmlvalidator.com/edge-bug.php

Hold a sec while I pull it up on my Windows 10 machine... yep... bug still there. Works great in any other modern web browser.

I think Windows 10 has a lot of potential but I also like Windows 8.1 (especially now that it seems to have "matured" and become very stable) and am concerned about the ever-increasing privacy/phone-home issues which Windows 10 brings to the forefront. I haven't used Cortana all that much yet but may as I end up installing WIndows 10 on more machines.

That's pretty neat that you are using PowerShell to launch programs... though I haven't found the program searching bad at all... as long as you know what to search for. I've also pinned a lot of my most frequently used programs to the taskbar and can easily launch them from there.

[MikeGale]

Yep I got the bug on the page you linked. I also got the equivalent on my simplified test page until I altered the p/br nesting.

I thought of enrolling in the feedback from within Windows 10. Unfortunately it's a direct carry over from the Beta program. Thus it requires me to enlist in pervasive telemetry of everything I do. No dice.

If that hadn't been the case, I could report this through a mechanism that might not be overly hostile.

The privacy issues are big for me. (They're reputedly back porting some of them to Win 7 and 8.) If you want details of ways to stop them I can send some. At the end of the day a lot of this is about paying for the work. Via advertising versus paying for the product. I'm in favour of paying for the product, there should be an ongoing option for that. (I would still run my own checks on OS setup though, even if it claimed to not be spying.)

Cortana relies on a fair amount of feedback (to remote) to "get to know you". That's a pity as I'd like to see how she works. Given the telemetry, I've shut her off and may never get to know her.

I guess that others must be doing the PowerShell thing, certainly SysAdmins do it. It saves time and I feel back in control in ways that I didn't realise "excessive GUIness" had stolen from me. Anybody who has become comfortable with command line OS's (like DOS, etc..) may immediately grok how cool that is.

[Albert Wiersch]

Hi Mike,

Using "p" and "br" in that block would not make it optimal in my opinion, but that's what I have PHP do as a workaround (insert "br" elements) if it detects a broken browser like IE or Edge.

I too have read that Windows 7 and 8.1 have been getting a lot of the "spying features" that Windows 10 has..... so those OS's are not "safe" either. Maybe people should go back to Vista.

I'd like to "play" with Cortana more eventually. I have an Amazon Echo as well so you could probably say I've chosen to give up more privacy (if it even exists nowadays anyway) for the convenience of having technology like the Amazon Echo / Cortana / Siri / Google Now / etc. I do really like the Echo and I'm using it right now to listen to a radio station.

[Albert Wiersch]

Well it's now March 11th, 2016 and Microsoft still hasn't fixed this bug.

[RSteinwand]

I'm not a fan of Edge. Nice try tho MS. My biggest complaint for IE was the hangs and instability. I've seen that in Edge too. Although IE is still my default at work, I use Chrome for nearly everything. I guess I need to do more cross-browser testing with Edge tho.

[Albert Wiersch]

I am still using Chrome as my main browser as well and have been for quite awhile now. I had Edge opened for awhile with very few tabs opened and saw that it was consuming hundreds of megabytes so it seems to have some memory usage issues/leaks, but I suppose that could also have been caused by a bloated and buggy web page that was left open (though I'd lean more toward it being, at least partially, an Edge issue).

I agree it was a "nice try" though and since they are constantly upgrading it then it should get better.

Let's see if they've fixed the bug I have mentioned in this thread.... nope, still there. That page works in every other browser I've tried (except IE). I won't use Edge for any serious web browsing until they at least fix that bug.

[RSteinwand]

Some people will complain about privacy, but I have nothing to hide:

I like the fact I can find a page on Chrome at work that i have open in a tab on my laptop at home. I like how my passwords to forums are remembered at both places and how I can check out the location of a firm on their website and Google Maps will offer to navigate me on my Android phone.

[RSteinwand]

Albert, I'd recommend simplifying your code to the simplest version that still exhibits the behavior. That would be a truer test and easier to bug with MS.

I've run into bugs before that I couldn't figure out until I started deleting big blocks of css and found it was in a completely different area, like my reset css.

I had to view your css before I realized you're really not doing anything special, except letting the bullet spans flow to fill the container and wrap where they need to. The problem is Edge doesn't know it needs to wrap anything.

[Albert Wiersch]

Hi Rick,

Yep, it's pretty simple/basic HTML & CSS. Microsoft Edge is simply not word wrapping properly for some reason (nor is IE which probably uses the same code).

I've messed around with it before, trying to find a workaround or fix. I ended up implementing a workaround by using PHP to insert <br> tags to force line breaks when IE or Edge is detected. If I get an urge to play with this some more then I might try your suggestion and simplify it down but right now I have a lot of things I'd like to get done that have higher priority.

Oh, even with the workaround it still has issues. Edge indents all of the bullets except the first one (visit our home page with Edge to see). It actually surprises me that Edge manages to render most sites OK (at least as far as I can tell from my limited use of it) even though it has issues with this basic stuff.

Interesting browser usage stats here:
https://www.netmarketshare.com/browser- ... pcustomd=0

Looks like Edge has very low usage but IE 11 has much more.

Also interesting (Edge use declining):
http://www.computerworld.com/article/30 ... ws-10.html

I wonder if it's still declining... but I can understand why people would want to use a better browser!

[MikeGale]

Like you I have shelved Edge for the moment. It gets extensibility in two releases. I'll then get back into it. (I know what I want a browser to do so, with the coming common programming model for browsers, I'll be able to have more useful browsers. I wouldn't be surprised if extensions tip the "Edge Balance" for a lot of other users.)

I'm still using Chrome very little for real browsing. I find the thought of "surveillance capitalists" watching my every move disturbing. It's interesting to hear your reasons for using Chrome. (Much of that is easy to fix, except some that is part of a browser. Even surveillance in the OS can be largely fixed.)

On the broader front, there seems to be an increasing proportion of web sites which fail in some browsers. Pretty annoying!

I recently (in last week) started using a browser called Pale-Moon. It's a fork of the Mozilla code base, with non Windows (redundant) code stripped out. To my surprise I really like it and am using it quite a lot.

Given the huge load of utter rubbish that accompanies many web pages, the need for a "sensible and actually useful" subset of the Internet, will, I assume, become obvious to more people. There are opportunities there for a web that extends human potential instead of reducing it as the present one does!

I like that analysis of changes in Edge usage. Thanks.

[MikeGale]

You could submit that as a bug to Microsoft.

[Albert Wiersch]

You could submit that as a bug to Microsoft.

Hi Mike,

I would, if there were a quick and easy way to do it... but I don't know of one. Do you happen to know of one?

I'm betting it's not as simple as sending an email with a link to this thread and the "test" link that reproduces the bug.

[RSteinwand]

This would be a good place to start: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/m ... rm/issues/