14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has announced a new feature for Microsoft Edge browser that makes researching a project a much more straightforward experience.
Called Citations, the new tool, which is currently in preview, makes the process of generating citations for content saved in Collections all automatic, as the browser fills in the information without any input on the user side.
Currently available for Microsoft Edge Canary and Dev users running version 95 or newer, the new feature is available right in the Collections screen, where interested users can enable it manually.
“Students can try it out by opening Collections and selecting “Turn on citations” from the 3-dot menu. Once turned on, students can view citations by clicking on the quote mark icon on the articles within their collection. The quotation mark icon opens the citation pane where students can copy and/or edit the article’s citation in the format they previously selected. “Citations” in Microsoft Edge supports both in-text and full citations,” Microsoft explains.
Clever approach to reduce resource usage
Microsoft is using a very clever approach to reduce the impact on the performance of the browser. More specifically, the new feature is not enabled by default, so the necessary files to run it are now downloaded for all users.
On the other hand, once Citations are enabled in the browser, Microsoft Edge automatically retrieves the required data to run properly on each device.
“Since this feature will be used by a limited audience (primarily, students, teachers, and researchers), we have ensured that there is no impact on the Microsoft Edge package footprint, or impact on device memory, for users who do not use this feature. The files required for “Citations” will be downloaded only when it is first used; if “Citations” is not used, the files will not be downloaded and thereby not impact the Microsoft Edge footprint. Resources such as RAM and CPU will be used only when “Citations” is being used or when there is an update to it in the feature bundle,” Microsoft explains.