406
Microsoft Edge nags users with a 3D banner to change Windows 11's default browser
(www.windowslatest.com)
Switching to Linux is better.
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2024
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Only [ Confirm ] and [ Set later ] in the dialog? No way to never set/change/cancel? Rapist mentality?
also, [use Linux instead]
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The only thing that could get me to switch back to windows would be an animatronic Clippy with LLM hallucinations dialed up to 11.
"Hey, I see that it looks like you're having fun and fun and relaxing in a few days so I don't have a chance to get the remainder of the time in the past"
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and you open it directly or through files like PDFs
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 have Win11 in a VM so I can make certain company documents play nice for the Windows users at work, and find it genuinely entertaining how fucky MS have made it. I found the other day that if you link to a document in Excel, but put the link in wrong, it’ll open Edge to warn you about it. Until that point I hadn’t opened Edge at all in that VM. I installed Firefox from an .exe I downloaded in macOS then immediately set it as default.
It’s always nice to shut that VM down and go back to using an OS that doesn’t nag me all the fucking time.
I think web browsers are inherently better than anything Windows has. And I hate how much bloated web browsers are.
I find it wild that, to this day, Windows defaults to opening them in a browser. Windows has an image viewer right there.
Can that image viewer extract text so that a user could easily copy/paste it? I think if whatever pdf I was opening didn't allow me to do that I would be really frustrated.
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Plus, pdf.js & co. have a couple XSS holes per month. Local pdf viewers don't have XSS holes.
Btw, why is pdfjs.enableScripting = true by default?
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.
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.
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I remember when someone posted a joke Slashdot with a fake screenshot of Windows advising a user to switch away from Firefox and back to IE.
Everyone lost their minds on what was an obvious joke. An unthinkable thing for Microsoft to do.
Yet here we are...
Was that long ago?
Yes, it was a while ago. Hence Slashdot and Internet Explorer.
I mean, he was still reading Slashdot, so I guess "yes"
Removed
Slashdot still exists, but it was mostly popular in the late 90s to mid 2000s.
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In our tests, Windows Latest spotted that Microsoft plans to use ChatGPT to generate website suggestions, which will appear below the search bar.
So needlessly wasting resources to provide something that already exists but you can market as AI?
if they use an LLM to make the suggestions then it’s possible it ends up suggesting websites that don’t even exist. or it could accidentally suggest a malware website, or make a typo, etc.
this could be dangerous if they aren’t very careful
Remember the people who created malicious libraries that ChatGPT made up and suggested, in the hopes someone would blindly install them? You can do this a lot easier here. Check what websites this tends to hallucinate when typing "google" "youtube" "facebook" etc. and if any of them don't exist yet, register that address and host a phishing version of the corresponding site there.
How many ai "improvements" do you think are based on ideas generated by ai at this point?
The answer is definitely not zero. Which is pretty fuckin weird, the more I think about it.
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"3D"...
I have a dream of that time when small MS's changes won't get media coverage because even ~tech~ journos will not use the latest Windows release anymore.
I get that Edge may not be the preferred browser of many, but calling this a "3D banner" seems a bit sensational at best. It's just clipart of an arrow.
Microsoft could care less about your PCs resources when you're idk, playing some 4k or even 8k video games. What a joke, but for real, if any of you use WIndows at home and don't want to jump straight to Linux. You can (temporally jump over to Chromebooks, which will mostly work out of the box, and has support for Linux apps.
Chromebook's I would argue are perfect for getting users use to Linux apps without having to worry about losing any familiarity they might have with Something like WIndows or Mac.
no. no. no. a ~~thousand~~ million times, NO!!
One one hand, this can be pretty annoying.
On the other, when thinking about the lowest common denominator general user that’s been tricked into running some awful PUP-ware browser, I can understand MS’s point.
This banner is the same tactic used by malware. It targets the average Joe that just accepts anything thrown in their face. It's the same with the cookie popup we see in the EU. People just click accept to get it out their way so they can view the content they came to see.
"Hey you, yes exactly you. Do you wanna accept all cookies or just part of them?"
Fucking bullshit what if I don't want any of them. I'm glad extensions partially fix this
But again it's only the minority using extensions or actually taking the time to deny cookies.
You can not seriously believe that's their primary concern, do you?
Ever since windows 11, edge, and MS’s approach to resetting defaults, I’ve stopped getting support calls from relatives. Yes it’s riddled with annoyances but it’s a net improvement over previous gen software. I see regular people struggle with tech and can tell things have improved dramatically for them.
Obligatory people getting mad at you for people suggesting you stop using software that is openly hostile toward you response.
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What is 3D about the banner? The mouse cursor graphic?
When did desktop operating systems become a place for live A/B tests of ads?
This is something I expect from a malicious website like Facebook, not the fucking operating system.
Capitalism be like.
As somebody recently reminded me... Think googled android but with more legs!
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It’s probably the browser, not the OS, that’s doing this. The teams are separate although someone in upper management oversees them both.
We got click-baited into reading about Microsoft doing shady shit with their browser default settings (again, no less!), but that part wasn’t even mentioned in the article.
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