While writing the Cannes article, I noticed that there was a Research bar on the right side of Google Docs. Right now, you can search the web, images, and quotes and filter the results by usage rights. The listings are neatly formatted according to the width of the sidebar.

That’s actually pretty handy. I started using it immediately. I was looking up the cast for Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom.” The four leads were listed in one of the results, so I just copy-and-pasted it into my document. When you click on one of the results on the sidebar, it opens into a new window.

Little things like this saves you lots of time when you’re writing. You don’t have to change between different windows or tabs when you have to do research for your article.

It seems like the Research sidebar was launched just yesterday. I was using something similar before with the All-in-One Sidebar add-on on Firefox. I just open up the mobile version of google on the left sidebar. The results list is clunky when used that way. The display on Google’s Research sidebar is much cleaner and neatly formatted.

The only feature I would request is the ability to adjust the width of the sidebar. That would make better usage of the space on the screen for higher resolution displays.