Microsoft Edge to Introduce Sidebar Search, Pinterest Integration

At Build 2020, Microsoft is introducing new features for its new Microsoft Edge browser. During last year’s Build, Microsoft announced the Collections feature for Microsoft Edge.

At this year’s Build, Microsoft is announcing a major update for Collections in Edge. The company is adding a Pinterest integration into Collections, which is a perfect addition for the feature. With the new Pinterest integration, users will see suggestions from Pinterest under a collection. You can click on one of those suggestion to open Pins that are relevant to your collection and add them to your collection.

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The new integration enables users to export their collections to Pinterest as a new board on their account. Apart from the Pinterest integration, Collections is also getting the ability to export to OneNote.

Another consumer-focused feature coming to Microsoft Edge is Sidebar Search. The new feature allows users to quickly search the web for a word or phrase from a page they are visiting. You can highlight a word or phrase, right-click, and select “search in sidebar” to see search results on the sidebar. And when you are signed into Microsoft Edge with an Azure Active Directory account, it will show you company results. It’s not exactly clear if you will be able to configure the search engine used by the sidebar search.

For developers, Microsoft is introducing some new features for Edge. First things first, the Edge Add-ons site is getting a revamp with a new interface, new categories and new search capabilities sometime later this month. Microsoft is also adding new capabilities for Progressive Web Apps that allow users to manage PWAs from Windows 10 settings, use them to share content, and more. The feature can be enabled by toggling the “Web Apps Identity Proxy” flag in the latest Edge Canary preview build.

For its commercial customers, Microsoft is introducing new features such as Automatic Profile Switching which makes it seamless for users to switch between their work credentials and personal profile credentials based on the link they are trying to access. Additionally, Edge now supports Windows Information Protection, which adds an extra layer of protection for line-of-business apps, separates personal and corporate data, and provides audit reporting for compliance.