Microsoft announced several news on the proprietary web browser, Microsoft Edge. The presentation was made at the developer conference Build 2020, exceptionally held in virtual mode due to the coronavirus pandemic.
In the browser we will have "Collections" functionality improvements, the general availability of WORK results page on Bing for Microsoft 365 users and the new one contextual search mode, enabled for all users (consumer, commercial and developer).
Microsoft Edge, the news announced at Build 2020
The Collections on Microsoft Edge will allow you to discover relevant content thanks to the collaboration with Pinterest. To date, Edge users use the function to collect their home improvement ideas, or recipes, in one place, or to schedule purchase sessions between different web pages. The new integration with Pinterest will help users find even more ideas or inspirations based on the contents of the Collections, in order to save the user time by making him more productive.
If enabled the function will show suggestions via Pinterest at the bottom of the Collection, and it will be possible to export Collections to a Pinterest account. In addition, the user will be able to send the Collections to OneNote, in a similar way as possible today to Excel and Word. Both improvements will soon be available on Insider channels in preview mode.
Microsoft also announced the general availability of WORK results page on Bing. A page labeled WORK will appear for all Microsoft 365 users, if enabled by the account admin, and will allow you to quickly find specific results for your work, including files, contacts and internal sites, as well as Power reports and dashboards BI (the latter feature will be available to all Microsoft 365 users by the end of June).
Between the relevant news on Microsoft Edge we will also have the search results through the sidebar. Selecting a word or phrase on the page and pressing the right button on them, the item "Search in the sidebar" will appear, in the typical contextual menu. The results will be shown on a panel on the right side of the browser, so that the home page will never be hidden. This feature will also be previewed in the coming weeks. Among the news on the browser, Microsoft has reported several contributions to the Chromium project in terms of accessibility, page writing, scrolling and translation improvements.
Webview 2.0 previews are also available for development on .NET and UWP as they arrive news for PWA (Progressive Web Apps) in preview, to make them even more similar to native apps, with a more natural experience regarding sharing and notifications.