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Microsoft Edge nags users with a 3D banner to change Windows 11's default browser (www.windowslatest.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Would you use Edge as your default browser on Windows 11 if Microsoft nags you with a 3D banner? Microsoft thinks you would. In a new experiment, which appears to be rolling out to Edge stable on Windows 11, Microsoft has turned on a banner that uses 3D graphics to promote the browser.

First spotted by Windows Latest, Microsoft has been testing the new 3D banner for a while now, but it’s now rolling out to more people. If Edge is not your default browser and you open it directly or through files like PDFs, a new banner will remind you to change your default browser settings.

The banner explains that using Edge as your default browser can help protect you from phishing and malware attacks. It asks you to confirm this change by clicking “Set default,” and then you need to confirm again in the Windows settings app.

The pop-up screen will appear after you install the new Windows updates. If you skip the banner, you’ll get another reminder to use Edge when you open the browser.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

As a Mac user, for whom PDFs open in Preview - because they’re effectively an image format - I find it wild that, to this day, Windows defaults to opening them in a browser. Windows has an image viewer right there.

I don't see the difference here. Opening PDFs in an image viewer is wild too to me and I've used both Mac and Windows. For the shit that people give Edge, it's a pretty nice pdf viewer and of all the browsers, it's the most fully featured one that I know of.

And is it that strange that it opens a link in a browser? That is the default application for handling URLs after all.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It’s not that it opens the link in a browser, it’s that it opens the link in a browser that isn’t the default, and that I’d never used.

macOS has its problems, sure, but I can’t think of a single time when it’s ignored my preference for software.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

I'd like to add to this by saying that on my Windows 11 work laptop, I have Firefox set as the default. If I open a link from Outlook or Teams, it will open in Edge. So you're not wrong, and it's quite infuriating