Website notifications have grown to be common these days, even though some are pretty useful, others only bombard you with prompts immediately after the website loads within the browser.

And Microsoft, who’s now fully dedicated to making Microsoft Edge among the best browsers around, says this is a significant problem, as notifications are an essential part of the browsing experience.

The software giant says it’s reached out straight to users to figure out how you can improve notifications in Microsoft Edge, and what it discovered was that abusive prompts have to be blocked in the get-go.

“These users were typically bothered when they couldn’t understand the worth of notifications from the given site, or if the prompt appeared immediately upon visiting the site. However, many of these same users want or perhaps rely on notifications from the site that’s vital that you them: for example, meeting alerts from a calendar web app or updates from their favorite media subscriptions,” Microsoft says.

For this reason the most recent version of Microsoft Edge (version 84 available since mid-July on all supported platforms) introduces a brand new concept called quiet notification requests.

Available too in other Chromium browsers, this feature essentially blocks the flyout prompt that shows up online offering notifications.

Instead, you’re now getting a small bell icon in the address bar that indicates a website is offering notifications, so you can just click that icon to activate them.

Microsoft has allowed this selection for everybody updating towards the latest version of the browser, the way it wants to put users in charge of notifications throughout their browsing experience.

“This treatment reduces the prominence of notification requests so the user can stay centered on their current task, but keeps the request at a noticeable location within the UI. If the user really wants to sign up for notifications, they can click the “Notifications blocked” bell icon and accept the request,” Microsoft says.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean that blocking all notification requests in the very beginning may be the proper way to visit, and Microsoft knows this perfectly. And it’s all because users still would like to get notifications from specific websites and blocking them could actually mean missing on some prompts.

This is why the software giant is already working on increasing the whole thing later on versions from the browser.

“As we found in our user research, however, there are several scenarios where notification requests are particularly welcome and may warrant the full prompt. We’re currently exploring turning on the full flyout prompt when data suggests users find a given site’s notification request valuable. Users would be able to keep the quiet notification requests experience for those sites when they prefer. Stay tuned for updates!” the company says.

Additionally, Microsoft is also providing a number of tips for developers in order to make the notification experience less intrusive, and one from the tips would be to just avoid displaying the prompt when the site loads. In such instances, users don’t know if enabling notifications is worth it or not, especially if this is the first time they’re going to the website.

All these changes are not exclusive to Windows 10 but they are a part of Microsoft Advantage on all platforms in which the browser is available. The migration to Chromium allowed Edge to become a cross-platform offering, so it’s now available on Windows 10 (where it’s even the new default browser after it replaced the legacy form of Edge), on Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and macOS. A Linux version of Edge can also be within the works, and it is going live as a preview after the entire year.

Microsoft has released a new Microsoft Edge Dev, and this time the first thing you should know is this fact may be the final build for major version 85.

In other words, this update ought to be promoted to the beta channel rather soon, then likely to make its way towards the stable branch with a lot more fixes.

As each and every update for the Dev channel, this new build comes with plenty of new goodies, and while you can check the entire changelog within the box following the jump, there are several items which count checking out.

First of all, Microsoft continues its work on making Microsoft Edge a sophisticated PDF reader, much like its predecessor, Microsoft Edge legacy.

So this update introduces a new button to the PDF toolbar that allows users to highlight text, something that comes in very handy to those who use documents on a regular basis.

Then, there’s a new option to undo certain actions in Collections, but additionally additional settings to reorder the extension icons on the toolbar using the Alt + Shift + arrows shortcut around the keyboard.

Microsoft says it’s also making it easier to report unsafe downloads from the download manager.

“Added an option to the ?- menu for every item that appears on the Downloads shelf to report it as being a secure or unsafe file (which option appears relies upon SmartScreen’s resolution of the file’s safety),” the company says.

Enterprises are becoming new policies, as it follows:

Added a management policy to Exempt Domain File Type Pairs From File Type Download Warnings. Note that Administrative Templates can come later.
Added support for the Chromium management policy to Auto Launch Protocols From Origins, that allows admins to define a list of protocols that may launch an external application from listed origins without a prompt.

Unsurprisingly, there’s also plenty of fixes, including for crashes occurred when opening a tab in IE mode, when singing in to the browser, or when closing the browser after creating a new profile.

You will find three major issues that you should be aware of.

First of all, playing some YouTube videos with ad blocking extensions isn’t being employed as expected, and Microsoft says that disabling these add-ons is the only way to go for now. Then, Kaspersky Internet Suite users might hit a bug causing specific websites, including Gmail, to fail to load. Microsoft recommends users to update the security product to the latest version, as the issue only occurs on devices running outdated software.

And last but not least, there’s an insect affecting videos running in full screen. Microsoft explains:

“Attempting to watch video in fullscreen will sometimes not work correctly. Instead of showing the video fullscreen, it will blow up or zoom the recording towards the size of the browser window. This problem affects all Chromium-based browsers.”

In other words, this is a problem that should also affect Google Chrome, not just Microsoft Edge.

You can check out the full changelog in the box following the jump. Keep in mind that all the new changes discussed here aren’t restricted to Windows 10, as the new Edge can be obtained on Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8,1 Windows 10, and macOS. The Dev build is provided to users on all these platforms.

The migration to Chromium also allows Microsoft to bring the brand new Edge browser to Linux, and according to the company, this type of version has already been in the works. The organization hasn’t provided an ETA regarding when it could get the go-ahead, but there’s a high probability a testing build goes live by no more the year.