A new tool, which contains search options for title case and accent matching, just made a splash on the Edge Canary branch.
Pressing CTRL+F to find something on a webpage is a quick and easy way to jump to where you want to go. However, sometimes a browser’s search tool is not enough. Microsoft aims to change that with a new search tool for Edge that will make searching easier.
As spotted by Neowin, Microsoft has added a brand new search tool to the Edge Canary branch. This new tool now adds four quick toggles to the search bar when you press CTRL+F on a webpage.
If you want to search for something on a web page, but want your search to be case sensitive, the “match case” option can do that. And if you’re looking for a word that also appears inside other words, you can turn on “match whole word” to ensure you get only the results you want.
The “include related matches” toggle will allow Edge to show results that it thinks are related to what you are looking for. And “match diacritics” takes into account all the accents on the letters you used in your search.
Currently, this search tool is only available on the Edge Canary branch. That means you won’t find it if you’ve started the version of Edge that came with your Windows PC. However, you can use the Microsoft Edge Insider channel to subscribe to the canary build, which Microsoft uses to test browser functionality.
Is Microsoft trying to remove the need for extensions?
This may seem like a small change at first, but it shows that Microsoft may be working to “integrate” features that people often turn to extensions for. This would make Edge a practical alternative to its rival browsers.
For example, the most used browser on the market, Chrome, does not have advanced web page search options by default. If you want to perform, say, a case-sensitive search, you need an extension to do the job for you.
By adding these desired features into the browser itself, Microsoft is probably trying to make Edge a complete out-of-the-box package without the need for extensions. This is great for people who won’t install extensions, either because they don’t know how, don’t want to, or can’t because they’re on a Public PC.
As such, Microsoft is likely to add more of these much-desired quality of life features to Edge. And if the company is successful, it may succeed in preventing people from downloading competing browsers and sticking with what Windows gives them by default.
The search is over for a better web page search tool
Once this new search tool hits the main branch of Microsoft Edge, it’s sure to make it easier to find things on a webpage. And if Microsoft is lucky, it may still give users another reason to stick with their browser instead of the competition.
