Forum Discussion
mayusuf
Microsoft
MicrosoftIntroducing sidebar search in Microsoft Edge
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
hankhuangI like the idea that you can search selected text in the sidebar with ctrl+shift+e, while staying on the same page.
But why isn't there a shortcut to close this side bar? I've tried Esc doesn't work.Hey, mayusuf
To be honest, this sidebar search feature is very very very disappointing to me, I've tried to contact the Microsoft team, but they say that they are working on it. But, its been 10 updates, and its still not fixed, 2 Microsoft edge version(currently using microsoft edge 99), and I would really like this "feature" to be fixed, please, fix this.
Hi mayusuf:
In the InPrivate version of Microsoft Edge for Windows 10, when I try to search a Japanese item, it returns mostly Chinese results, and some Japanese Results.
mayusuf I have seen that you "added" the new sidebar search into Microsoft edge. But, for some reason, the sidebar search doesn't work for me. I already sent feedback to the team at Microsoft edge. I am currently using Microsoft edge 98 and this started when you first added the sidebar search feature.
mayusuf
I am having problems with the sidebar search - any ideas how to fix this, please? Needless to say, the problem goes away as soon as I open a new tab.
Thanks!- For example, the edge team went out of their way to confuse users who chose to change their search engine on the browser.
Very early on they figured out that people hated the Bing brand so much, and that Google search was so strong, that they would not be successful in pushing Bing search in edge because one of the first thing people would do is change their search engine.
And to be honest, really, the tactics being employed with regards to UI and choice manipulation is a big reason that support the notion that microsoft products in general, like the old hotmail.com (now outlook.com), bing, msn, office, windows, and now especially edge - microsoft products are so awful they actually generate disgust and frustration in users.EdgeEnemyDueToBing Well, I think Edge should allow user to choose any search engine they want for the sidebar. Since most search engines have mobile-optimized edition, Edge can set the sidebar to open the mobilized search result page by altering user-agent strings. Then it can let the links there to be opened in new tab with the default user-agent.
Also, after selecting texts, the "..." floating menu always show "use bing search" item. Edge should allow user to customize this shortcut menu.
lishuhang "Well, I think Edge should allow user to choose any search engine they want for the sidebar"
Microsoft Edge engineers poured a lot of effort into this one to make sure the option is as hostile to user choice and tampering as they could.
There's a very simple reason why they need the search engine to be hard to tamper: they have found out that user's will switch back to google search or some other service because user's really hate the bing and brand quality.
Culturally, bing, internet explorer, windows, edge, really, all microsoft products are always known for their lack of quality.
While temporarily some may claim that there are some good products within microsoft, in the end, simply because the microsoft culture is a culture of dishonesty and manipulation, the organization will eventually return to its roots. We're seeing it happen with very quickly with edge, with vscode, etc.
mayusuf I really hate this Bing option. I don't care if Bing is good. I don't care about the quality of Bing search engine. What I am specifically looking for is a way to disable this annoying crappy menu.
Instead of providing choice and honesty, the microsoft edge engineering team specifically chose to compromise ethics in order to push for a microsoft product - literally the opposite of why chromium was created in the first place.
The reason the menu exists is to intentionally confuse users and increase bing clicks.
The features was specifically designed to maximize annoyance and confusion.
This went so far as the microsoft team running focus groups studies to see how users would perceive the feature, and they crafted that context menu in a way that in all possible situations the "search bing in the sidebar" menu would be read and perceived first.
I think more effort was spent in creating this feature to be as annoying and disgusting as the effect that it causes on you.
I really feel like a hostage because of this psychological manipulation simply because I know how this feature was designed and the tactics used.
And what is worse, to silence all complaints, the Microsoft edge community managers instead of reporting comments, they create fake users giving positive comments in order to manipulate community members into submission.
Cool idea, nice feature (only learning about it now).
I accidentally clicked 'Search Bing in sidebar' instead of 'Search the web for' which I always use.
Like I said, I like the idea (quick search to the side without loosing flow + context from the page you're in).
But it's Bing, and it's useless with Bing. Who uses Bing??
Needs a search-engine selection, just like the other search-providers. Otherwise you can search but you'll never find anything.
- I've used Bing for years, as have a lot of people here. Bing is much better about privacy than Google. And with Bing, you get rewards -- who doesn't like rewards? 🙂
seancorfield Good for you, and others. But still, Microsoft need to stop forcing Bing on users: have it as the default, sure, but ultimately take no for an answer.
Edge: if the user changes from Bing to another search-provider, they still try to sneak it in via the "Search Bing in sidebar for ..." option, and the New Tab page, which the user cannot change to load anything other than the built-in offering without resorting to a third-party extension.
Android: if you have the Outlook app installed, then whenever you select text in an app you'll see a "Bing search" option. Google really should treat this as malware and block the pop-up menu addition.
Microsoft Office: some features, such as word definition look-ups, word translations and image search, use Bing
Default to Bing, sure, but stop trying to force it everywhere!
Suggestion: the shortcut key Ctrl+Shift+E is great but it'd be better if I could toggle sidebar search without needing to highlight any word. This is useful when I just want to quickly search something but don't want it in a new tab.
mayusufIn response to MissyQ on Reddit, Cortana in Classic Edge was able to find better deals when shopping online, find related articles when reading news articles online. Basically, everything Cortana did in Classic Edge was pretty useful. I understand if that's not the direction Cortana is going right now, but they were nice features and I would at least like to know whether the team has considered it.
