Like everyone who is far above others, Chrome has had a hard time recognizing reality and reacting to it, but it has. Google’s web browser has long since awakened from its lethargy, implementing numerous features of greater or lesser importance, including a Side panel which has become a standard in modern web browsers.
The standard is the side panel in the modern web browser, not the actual implementation of Chrome, which is in fact one of the weakest you can find. But it starts with something and if, first the old Opera, later the new one, then Vivaldi, Firefox and even Microsoft Edge have elevated the side panel to the category of an elementary feature of the web browser, Chrome could not be less.
So, it’s been a month since Chroem deployed its brand new side panel in the stable version of the browser for PC, in which bookmarks and the reading list can currently be consulted. But as users of other browsers know well and also know at Google, the side panel can give much more of itself. And they are at it, although as they say, palace things go slowly.
As reported in Neowin, for example, one of the new features that await the Chrome side panel is the ability to search for highlighted text in the side panel or, rather, to display highlighted text search results on panel. That is, you select text on a page, use the context menu option to search for it, but instead of opening a tab, the results are displayed in the side panel.
The function is really comfortable and, in fact, it is not born out of nowhere, but is about a trace already present in Microsoft Edge that, yes, it does not seem that it will be released tomorrow in the stable version of Chrome, given that it can only be tested in the Canary version, only after activating a hidden advanced option and only for some users: there are those who have Tried to try it with no luck.
However, the option in question is linked to others that are much more interesting for the practical future of Chrome’s side panel. Like the one called “Side panel web view» and is described as «Adds a side panel option to load arbitrary web content, with a URL bar». In other words, after the search, a much more attractive functionality should arrive: that of, as happens in other browsers, putting the web page we want in the Chrome side panel.
