First look at Microsoft Edge's Search in Sidebar feature

Martin Brinkmann
Jun 24, 2020
Internet, Microsoft Edge
|
17

Classic Edge had a feature that allowed you to run searches in a sidebar in the web browser; Microsoft has now added an improved version called Search in Sidebar to the most recent Edge Canary version.

The Chromium-based Microsoft Edge web browser does not replicate the functionality of the classic Edge browser completely. Some features won't be supported by Microsoft's new browser at all, others are not yet implemented but promises. One of the latter is Search in Sidebar, a feature designed to make context-based searches more comfortable in the new Microsoft Edge browser.

The feature is available in the most recent Microsoft Edge Canary version at the time of writing. Microsoft plans to introduce it in Edge Beta and Stable eventually as well.

There is one caveat that users need to be aware of: Search in Sidebar works only if Bing is the search engine in Microsoft Edge. You can verify that this is the case by opening the Search management page in the Microsoft Edge browser: edge://settings/search. You need to make sure that Bing is the selected search engine under "search engine used in the address bar". Note that you need to restart the Microsoft Edge browser when you have changed the search engine back to Bing.

microsoft edge search in- idebar

You will notice a new option in the right-click context menu of text selections in the browser. Select "Search in Sidebar for" from the context menu to use the new search feature.

A sidebar is opened automatically when you make the selection; it displays the search results for the selection in the sidebar. The default list displays the full search results but you may switch to Image or Video results only using the interface.

search in sidebar

A search field is displayed as well to modify the search term to run different searches in the sidebar.

Closing Words

The main benefit of Edge's new Search in Sidebar feature is that users can keep a website open in the browser and display search results at the same time in the same tab. Something similarly can be achieved with different means as well, e.g. by displaying two browser windows side by side, using Vivaldi's tab tiling functionality, or add-ons like Search in Sidebar for Firefox.

Downside to Microsoft's native integration of the feature is that it is restricted to the company's own Bing search engine.

Now You: How useful is a sidebar search option in your opinion? (via Techdows)

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First look at Microsoft Edge's Search in Sidebar feature
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First look at Microsoft Edge's Search in Sidebar feature
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Classic Edge had a feature that allowed you to run searches in a sidebar in the web browser; Microsoft has now added an improved version called Search in Sidebar to the most recent Edge Canary version.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
    Reply

    Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on August 4, 2012 at 7:57 pm
      Reply

      Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.

    2. Leonidas Burton said on September 4, 2023 at 4:51 am
      Reply

      I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
      http://www.google.com/saved

  2. VioletMoon said on August 16, 2023 at 5:26 pm
    Reply

    @Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!

  3. Karl said on August 17, 2023 at 10:36 pm
    Reply

    @Martin

    The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
    https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/

    Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.

  4. Anonymous said on August 25, 2023 at 11:44 am
    Reply

    Omg a badge!!!
    Some tangible reward lmao.

    It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.

  5. Scroogled said on August 25, 2023 at 10:57 pm
    Reply

    With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.

    1. lollmaoeven said on August 27, 2023 at 6:24 am
      Reply

      This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)

  6. El Duderino said on August 25, 2023 at 11:14 pm
    Reply

    Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.

    And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.

  7. John G. said on August 26, 2023 at 1:29 am
    Reply

    First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm

    For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[

  8. Kalmly said on August 26, 2023 at 4:42 pm
    Reply

    Yes. Please. Fix the comments.

  9. Kim Schmidt said on September 3, 2023 at 3:42 pm
    Reply

    With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.

    Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.

    The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.

    If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.

    And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.

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