Hello Insiders! We have heard your feedback and are excited to announce sidebar search - the first step in our evolution of contextual search in the new Microsoft Edge. Sidebar search builds off the foundation we began with "Ask Cortana" in the previous version of Microsoft Edge and addresses feedback we received when "Ask Cortana" didn't meet your needs. With sidebar search, you can highlight a word or phrase, right click, and select “Search in sidebar” from the context menu. Search results show up in a pane on the right side of the page showing you web results like definitions, web links, images, videos and many more Bing services which are related to the query. We have added some new features to improve relevance and to provide user requested functionality that was absent in "Ask Cortana". In addition to the web results, you now see image and video verticals which show results related to the highlighted word or phrase. If you are signed into your azure active directory account at work, you can now see company results. Sidebar search is a persistent pane in the tab in which it was opened, which gives you the option to close the pane or look up additional information related to other words using the search box. There’s more – if you want a full view of web results, you can now click on the “Open in new tab” button which opens the web results in a new tab. You can expect to see sidebar begin to roll out in Microsoft Edge Dev and Canary channels very soon! Thanks - Microsoft Edge Search team

Hi matt_bits , yes, I agree re: overcrowded contextual menu. I can't remember a time when I didn't have the attached in the menu, but I have no idea what they are. I assume they are for developers? It would great to be able to toggle certain elements to choose whether or not they appear in the menu.

mayusuf That is great news. I would like to see it in Beta soon too. Did you think about customization? For example user can decide if search will be opened in new tab or sidebar? It can be redundant or confusing for some users to have two different options for the same think with different only displayed location. Feature called "Ask Cortana" was almost the same, but the name was nicer for the users. Especially in countries where "Cortana" is badly supported this feature was working like this new "search in sidebar", example county is Poland or Czech Republic. Meantime, I am worry about size of context menu. It is yet another position added. I hope we will not repeat mistake from Internet Explorer where context menu was extremally fast growing. I loved in Edge that browser started with very compact context menu and there are only essential options. Some users I seen with 10-20 items in context menu in IE and older versions of IE. Where most of them never used like print or print preview under right click. Example attached.

TheShaunSaw Thanks, but that's what I'm using already.The problem with the Find Popup is that it closes anytime you go to a new page, so searching within a site with multiple pages (1, 2, 3 etc.) is a mess, as you always have to reopen the Find Popup again.It would be a big improvement if the find input-field stayed open (like in Edge Legacy) or even better if it would be part of the side bar, so you can easily switch between the different occurrences of your finds on this page (the up/down arrows are not very helpful if you have let's say 25 or more hits).I think of a solution like the find sidebar in MS Word where all finds are listed. Imagine a large webpage (e.g. a whitepaper) where you have to find certain keywords or phrases and constantly need to switch between them to get a job done.

mayusuf Thank you for sharing. There is one of the feature I missed from Internet Explorer which is Accelerator and I added Accelerator for the following: Bing Map Bing Translator Send Email I believe sidebar search could be smart in integrate with Bing and let say , if my default language for Microsoft Edge is English and I select text in Spanish, automatically show its translation (it should be general detection based on any language with Microsoft Edge and check default one and the select text one) For the map, from the type of text it should be o detect the location and this could be integrate smart into the Bing. Such a thing could be expand and become smart integration with Bing and let say it has Currency convertor, math , etc. when user select a text and do a search. More research should be done on this and you could get help from insiders like us. As for send mail feature, it was like you select text and then you select send with Windows Live, it would open Windows Live Mail (today it is Outlook.com) and compose new email and add text into it. This is different story and there is need for different discussion about emails and Microsoft Edge. However, my point is , it shouldn't be just a search instead it should be smart search to show result based on what has been searched and not just list of websites.

mayusuf I really like the sidebar so far! I've run into a few problems though.1. I have to scroll left and right sometimes because the page doesn't fit in the sidebar. An easy fix would be to render code in the sidebar in mobile mode.2. I can't close the sidebar. The only way to get out of it is to do Ctrl+K and close the tab with the sidebar in it.3. There is way to go back to the previous page, for example if I hit the wrong link, I have to open the sidebar and do everything again.

Introducing sidebar search in Microsoft Edge

124 Replies

Geschnallt
Copper Contributor
Jun 29, 2020
mayusuf

I don't think the context menu is too overcrowded. This was the main reason why I did not use the previous edge. To be honest it felt like a downgrade compared to Internet Explorer.

But a feature to customize the context menu would be great, for those who think its too much.
martmcd
Brass Contributor
Jun 29, 2020
mayusuf it is nice, would be better if it used the users choice of default search engine.
WRustenberg
Copper Contributor
Jun 27, 2020
The sidebar is cool.
The only problem is that its size (As well as the collections menu) is constant and has priority over content on the main page.
On smaller screens (like the Surface Pro in portrait mode for example) the sidebars take half of the screen. Also you can not scroll away from it as it will always remain in your window no matter how small the window is.
So perhaps some tweaks can be made for smaller window sizes like page to bar ratio is 3/1 (currently it is wide enough to squeeze 2 images in the bing images tab, it could be 1 image. And text is adaptive to almost any width.
Cheers.
lishuhang
Copper Contributor
Jun 26, 2020
Please consider place the Close "X" button outside the iframe, just like ie6-era sidebars that those close buttons are built-in in the software itself rather than written in the webpage. Right now when connection is unstable and the search sidebar is unable to load, you can't close the bar at all. Also, please make the sidebar's width adjustable. Thanks!
- mayusuf
  Microsoft
  Jun 27, 2020
  lishuhang Thank you for using sidebar search and for your feedback! We also have a right click context menu in sidebar search which includes close and back options. We are working on improvements to make the close button more accessible.
F-Lambda
Brass Contributor
Jun 25, 2020
mayusuf

On mobile, we have the option to set Bing to dark mode. When can we see the option to set it (and this new sidebar) to dark mode on desktop?
- mayusuf
  Microsoft
  Jul 15, 2020
  F-Lambda Thank you for the feedback! We are working in enabling dark mode for sidebar search. You will see that feature in the coming weeks.
- cjc2112
  Bronze Contributor
  Jun 28, 2020
  F-Lambda I changed mine to dark mode a while back but I can't find out how to do it now.
- mayusuf
  Microsoft
  Jun 27, 2020
  F-Lambda Thank you for your feedback! We're glad you're giving Sidebar Search a try. We are working on enabling dark mode for sidebar search.
rjpaulsen
Brass Contributor
Jun 25, 2020
mayusuf Is this where we leave feedback?

I really missed this functionality. Back when it said "Ask Cortana" I was hoping we'd see it as system-wide feature.

FEEDBACK I don't see is having an easier way to open it. At one time MS Word let you CTRL+Double-click (?) a word to open "Smart Lookup". Something similar would be nice here.

Bing lets you click a magnifying glass when you highlight a word. Do something similar would help discoverability of the feature.
- rjpaulsen
  Brass Contributor
  Jun 27, 2020
  In Edge on Android, long pressing a word or phrase will open a context menu with Share and Search as options. This works well and is easily discovered. Something as intuitive (and constant) would be nice on the desktop.
  
  Bonus points if doing so on an address opens a map.
  
  With the sidebar search pane open (controlled by the current hot keys) I wouldn't mind seeing the search sidebar update automatically when selecting a other word or phrase.
  
  Unlike at least one other review, I like how the page with shrinks to make room for this feature.
  
  Yes, there needs to be a better close button.
  
  Visually it would be nice to be separated from the web page itself. An obvious solution would be for the results to display in something like dark mode, but I can see people not liking that. A good challenge for good designer, and I know there are some over there.
- mayusuf
  Microsoft
  Jun 27, 2020
  rjpaulsen Thank you for using sidebar search and for your feedback! We have recently added a shortcut for sidebar search - Ctrl+Shift+E on Windows and Cmd+Shift+E on Mac.
  
  We are looking into ways to make sidebar search invocation faster. You can leave feedback here or via the Edge feedback tool.
  - martmcd
    Brass Contributor
    Jan 03, 2021
    mayusuf
    Ctrl+Shift+E still not working on either the released version 87.0.664.66 or edge dev version 89.0.731.0
    sidebar search works fine from the context menu
IMAX99
Copper Contributor
Jun 25, 2020
mayusuf
Really great feature. I can see me using this a lot. One thought for improvement... when viewing the sidebar results would it be possible to freeze the menu bar for the sidebar? Scrolling down the results in the sidebar is great but, unless there's another way, if a user wishes to close the sidebar they need to scroll back to the top of the sidebar to close it or to filter on image etc.
- mayusuf
  Microsoft
  Jun 27, 2020
  IMAX99 We are glad that you are using our new sidebar search feature and thank you for the feedback! Sidebar search also includes a right click context menu in with a close option. We are working on future iterations of the sidebar search feature that will make the close button even more accessible.
SOI_7
Iron Contributor
Jun 25, 2020
mayusuf
While I love this feature finally being available, I think the current implementation is jarring and I hope it's just a foundation for a better update in the future. There are in particular three issues that bother me:

1) First of all, I expected the Sidebar to be a flyout menu that stays above the current web page, instead it's the same container used for Collections, that pushes the webpage to the left, which is a very poor solution since it makes me loose focus on what I was reading

2) Once you summon the Sidebar, there's no visual feeback to close it, there's no close button and pressing shortcuts like ESC don't do anything. The only way to close it is to right click on the sidebar and press the Close button from the submenu

3) Using Google as the default search engine produces nasty results in the sidebar: I see the whole Google search page and I have to scroll it horizontally to see the search results. It should instead fit the sidebar width:
- mayusuf
  Microsoft
  Jun 27, 2020
  SOI_7
  
  Thank you for using sidebar search and providing feedback!
  
  Future iterations of the sidebar search UX will take of the the first and second issue that you flagged.
  
  Regarding your 3rd issue, All non-Bing pages should open in a new tab. Could you please send feedback via tool in Edge with some details on how you got to this experience?
  - SOI_7
    Iron Contributor
    Jun 29, 2020
    mayusuf yeah, I imagined it was just a webpage container for non- Bing searches. You may want to consider using the mobile version of the website for non-Bing search engines. I've already reported my feedback through the Feedback button
NamishB
Iron Contributor
Jun 25, 2020
Hi.
Sidebar search was rolled out to the Dev channel today. However it does not work on right clicking text in PDF files.
The context menu certainly does show the option to search in sidebar but it does not work on being clicked.
- mayusuf
  Microsoft
  Jun 27, 2020
  NamishB
  
  Thank you for your feedback! We're glad you're giving Sidebar Search a try.
  
  We are currently working on fixing this issue.
  - NamishB
    Iron Contributor
    Jun 29, 2020
    Thanks for your reply and I like it that the Edge team is so active in looking into problems fixing issues.
    I also have a suggestion. Like the Legacy Edge, it would be good if the new Edge could offer showing related news articles to the page currently being viewed.
    In Edge Legacy, if I am reading an article on a trending topic, then a Cortana Icon pops up in the URL bar and suggests similar articles and other info.
    I would love it if this gets implemented here too.
Deolindo
Copper Contributor
Jun 25, 2020
First: Why Kill "Ask to Cortana"?
Second: I live on Brazil, here bing never works right, so if i can choose Google over Bing on search sidebar, or better yet, make bing better on Brazil. mayusuf

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Introducing sidebar search in Microsoft Edge

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