Josh Hendrickson
It’s probably happened enough times to make you want to scream. You’re trying to upload an image to a site like Facebook, and you miss the upload box. So, what happens? The file takes over your tab and wipes everything you wrote. You have to start over. Now, in an upcoming update for Google Chrome and Edge, that won’t happen anymore.
Microsoft switched Edge to a Chromium base and rolled that new browser out to all users recently. One side benefit to that choice for Chrome users is that changes and improvements the company makes to its browser can and do come over to Chrome. That fact is on display as the dreaded problem is getting a fix thanks to Microsoft.
Eric Lawrence, Microsoft Edge developer, explained the problem and the solution on his personal blog. As you likely know all too well, dragging a file onto Chome (or Edge now) will open it in the tab, erasing all the current content. That’s useful when you want to see a file in your browser, but annoying when you didn’t mean to open the file.
You might have just been trying to upload to WordPress, Facebook, or another site. And in the process, you may lose data you were working on, like a social post or the latest news piece. Now, starting in Chromium 85.0.4163.0, that behavior works differently.
Instead of opening in the current tab, dragging and dropping a file onto Chromium will open it in a new tab. That small change means your original tab still exists, and you won’t lose data. It’s a simple answer, but it balances everything we need for the situation. Anyone who does depend on the drag-and-drop feature can still view files, and the rest of us won’t tear our hair screaming when we lose our data. Everyone wins.
You can try the new behavior right now in Google Canary, and it will make its way to Edge soon.
Source: Eric Lawrence via 9to5Google
