Browser Tips
42 25 May – 7 June 2022 • Issue 632
Chrome’s Picture-in-picture mode (PiP) lets you watch YouTube videos in a floating player window while you get on with other tasks.
Here’s an easy new way to use the feature1
Chrome’s built-in method for
activating Picture-in-picture mode is to
right-click a video on a compatible site
such as YouTube and choose ‘Picture-in-
picture’^1. However, you often need to
right-click several times in different spots
for the menu option to appear.3
Copy the text provided by the
extension^1 into Chrome’s address
bar and press Enter. Click the Edit icon
next to Picture-in-Picture Shortcut and
press the keys you want to use to activate
PiP mode^2. The add-on works on sites
includingYouTube, Vimeo and Twitter.2
To make things easier, install the new
extension Picture-in-Picture Shortcut
(www.snipca.com/41822). This lets you
press Ctrl+. (full stop) to switch the current
video to PiP^1. To change the shortcut,
right-click the add-on’s toolbar button and
choose Options^2CHROME
View search results
in a side panel
Exploring search results until you
find the page you’re looking for can
involve a lot of clicking back and forth,
unless you right-click links to open them
in new tabs. Chrome version 102, released
24 May, solves this problem by displaying
your search results in a side panel that
you can view alongside the pages they
open. This lets you navigate results
without clicking back and forth and
find relevant content more quickly.
The new feature is currently a hidden
‘flag’ that you need to activate manually.
Type chrome://flags into the address
bar and press Enter to load Chrome’s
Experiments page. Search for the entries
Side search and Side search DSE support,
select Enabled in their dropdown menus
and relaunch Chrome.
Type a search query into the browser’s
address bar, as you would normally, andclick a result to open it.
An option will now
appear in the address bar
that lets you ‘Open
search in side panel’ (this
has a ‘G’ icon like the
first letter of the Google
logo). Click it and a side
panel showing your
search results will open
on the right-hand side
of the browser (see
screenshot below left).
Select a result to display
the page in Chrome’s main window.
You can close the side panel by clicking
the ‘X’ in its top-right corner. It’s also
worth enabling the Side search clear
cache when closed flag to stop Chrome
storing your results. Note that the side
panel currently only works with Google
and not other default search engines. See
our Cover Feature on page 50 for our pick
of the best Google alternatives.EDGE
Browse PDFs in full-screen
and thumbnail view
Edge’s built-in PDF viewer is
superior to similar tools in
other browsers, and even some
standalone PDF readers, offering
options for highlighting and
annotating content, hearing PDFs
read aloud, viewing two pages
simultaneously, and much more.Version 101 of the browser, released in
April, adds yet more features to make it
easier to view and navigate PDF files.
These new options include a full-screen
or presentation mode, which removes all
menus, toolbars and navigation elements
from the PDF viewer, to show only the
document in full-screen view. To activate
this, click the ‘Enter PDF full screen’
double-arrow icon on the right-hand side
of the top toolbar (^1 in our screenshot
above). Press the Esc key on your
keyboard to switch back to standard view.
Equally useful is the new ‘Thumbnail
view’, which you can access by clicking
the Contents icon in the top-left corner
of the viewer^2. This lets you jump to
specific pages in long PDFs by clicking
their thumbnail images, rather than
scrolling up and down.
Finally, if you’ve added annotations to a
PDF but want a clear view of the content,WORKSHOP Activate Chrome’s Picture-in-picture mode
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