Windows Central Performance on Edge - your feedback!

[James Falconer]

Hey all - would really appreciate it if you could share any specific details/issues you're having with our site and forums here at Windows Central while using the Edge browser. I've been doing a lot of testing recently, and want to relay as much information as possible to our tech team.

Please reply with as many details as you can. Any feedback you can give is appreciated, as we want to make our experience here (in edge!) as good as we can.

Thank you in advance!!

 

[faisalbaba]

Bad not good(mobile )

Sent from mTalk

 

[Ryujingt3]

Does this include Edge on mobile too?

On mobile, it can be slow to load and sometimes replying to comments or liking comments does not work, at least for me. For desktop, I find navigating the forums much harder and more limited than on desktop. Would there be any chance of using something like Disqus on this site for article comments and such?

 

[gwinegarden]

Renders badly on my quad-core 3.4 GHz machine with 12 GB of memory.

 

[Kot Prada]

Loads CPU incredibly (on my i5 6600K ! ). Had to turn off adds... helped a bit, but still laggy.

 

[meattray]

Loads fairly fast but ads take up too big of a chunk of the forums. It makes it so it's fairly tough to see and have about 1/3 of my screen is taken up with the side ads as well as ads mixed in at the top and bottom. I understand the need for ads and whatnot but it shouldn't impact my ability to load or read pages or it becomes cumbersome and I'm less likely to stick around.

 

[littlebib]

Actually, at this point, Edge cannot load windowscentral nor imore. I get a prompt to download an htm file from each

 

[cndspec]

Cannot access the website on edge mobile or desktop at all. Both are doing one of 2 things: 1) showing a pop-up asking to download an html file or 2) just bouncing back to whatever page was loaded before trying to navigate to windowscentral.

 

[Rick Thewlis]

Doesn't load all replies at first (will if you scroll up and down enough times)

but full of Chinese characters ...?

 

[Awhispersecho]

For a few days I could not access it at all, I was getting the promt to download an htm file. Then I was able to access the site but it was very slow. I thought it had to do with an extension (Microsoft shopping assistant) that kept turning itself on so I uninstalled that completely which leaves me with only 1 extension, Ublock Origin. I was able to access the site with Ublock the last few days but it was still very slow. Today, I got the prompt to install an htm file again. So I disabled Ublock and can now access the site. The problem is that now without Ublock, the site is even slower.

So in summary. the experience is really bad. What really sucks is that it's not even consistent, sometimes you can access it, sometimes you get an htm prompt. Sometimes you can use an extention, sometimes they all need to be disabled. The only consistent thing is that no matter what, it is slow. Sometimes it is just slow with some lag and sometimes it is literally dial-up slow. Either way, it's a miserable experience and has me looking for other sites to rely on more.

 

[anon(9603734)]

On my Surface Pro 4 (Core M model) the site and forums work fine, load fast, etc - but only when I use an ad-blocker.

Without an ad-blocker installed, I'd be quicker going to each article author's house and would still get back home before the article has loaded. This site (and any Mobile Nations site) is absolutely diabolical and unusable without an ad-blocker. Not only on Edge, but any browser.

I fully appreciate that the site needs ads to generate revenue. I even don't mind ads to a degree. However, the site can keep prompting me each time I visit to disable the ad-blocker all it wants, but until Mobile Nations resolves the site loading speed issue, the ad-blocker stays and the site does not get put on my whitelist.

 

[Awhispersecho]

I seem to have the opposite where it is unbelievably slow on my SP4 but somewhat better on my PC. Still have the issue of sometimes I have to disable my ad-blocker and go without extensions and sometimes I have to have it on. And still have the issue of being prompted to download an htm file, mostly on SP4

 

[Awhispersecho]

Just to add that today I am unable to load it at all on my SP4. With or without an ad-blocker running, if I try to load the site it prompts me to save an htm file. Cannot access it at all. So now I am on IE and it's not an enjoyable experience here without an ablock. For what it's worth. My SP4 is a Core M model as well. (Maybe that means something) Until a week or 2 ago, Windowscentral worked flawlessly on here.

 

[anon(9603734)]

Just to add that today I am unable to load it at all on my SP4. With or without an ad-blocker running, if I try to load the site it prompts me to save an htm file. Cannot access it at all. So now I am on IE and it's not an enjoyable experience here without an ablock. For what it's worth. My SP4 is a Core M model as well. (Maybe that means something) Until a week or 2 ago, Windowscentral worked flawlessly on here.

I noticed the release notes for the last Insider PC build mentioned:
"We fixed an issue that could result in Microsoft Edge unexpectedly attempting to download certain webpages rather than navigating to them when the uBlock Origin extension was enabled."

I'm on production builds on my SP4 and had been having problems with being able to access the Windows Central site due to it prompting me to save htm files. For 3 days I'd suddenly been unable to access the site at all. I had uBlock installed. After reading that release note I figured the issue must be a problem with uBlock and, not being on an Insider build where the issue was fixed, I uninstalled the extension, installed another ad-block instead and have accessed the site fine ever since. I think the access problem may be an issue with having uBlock actually installed (and not just relating to whether it's enabled or disabled).

Sent from mTalk

 

[Awhispersecho]

I wish it was that simple, however I have Ublock installed on my PC and it was working fine earlier today. Installed and enabled. However on my SP4 today, it won't work iether way.

 

[editguy]

My problem on Edge is that it won't allow me to post comments on WC articles. I have to open another browser to do that, which is annoying. It does allow me to post comments in the forum.

 

[tudor-v]

Browsing Windows Central without an ad blocker is a horrible experience when using Edge.

Every time I click on a link to jump to another page on this site, or the back button, Edge gives me the "windowscentral is not responding - Recover web page" error. Eventually after 20 seconds or more it loads the page but this is very annoying.

I don't normally use ad blockers but installing Ad Blocker fixed this problem.

 

[neo158]

I've said this before but I think that Neowin performs far better on Edge than any Mobile Nations site and Neowin has ads as well. The difference is that even if you have a free account on there then the most you see are banner ads at the top and bottom of the page.

 

[James Falconer]

All good feedback in this thread folks, please keep it coming. We take this to heart - always trying to improve site performance, especially for you guys!!