Bing Desktop Update Brings Facebook Notifications And In-Line Search

Microsoft has been rolling out updates to Bing Desktop on a fairly regular basis, having added support for Windows XP and more languages back in December, and having integrated Facebook content in March, among other features. Now that has been taken a step further with the latest update, which tosses Facebook notifications into the mix, as well as in-line search and a few other changes.

First up in this latest update is the inclusion of inline search, which, as the name suggests, allows users to perform a Bing search from within a text document of some sort. The feature can be used with a regular Web page, a PDF file, or a Word document, and works by highlighting a word, then clicking the Bing icon on the application. This pulls up a search for whatever was highlighted.

Bing Desktop apps have also received an overhaul, which brings new designs and improvements to make them more functional and fast. The Facebook app, as we mentioned, now features notifications similar to the red flag you see on Facebook.com, alerting users to when they receive a new interaction of some sort on the social network. The news feature has also been overhauled.

The News app layout has been changed so that news is delivered in an easy-to-digest manner by categories, replete with text excerpts and images. And to make staying up-to-date on the big news of the day easier, users will now find after updating a "waterfall layout" for trending news pieces, which present an image and simple title in sections that resemble Windows 8 tiles.

And finally, there's also a new weather app, which provides real-time weather information that provides current data on the weather in the locale of your choosing. The weather app can be pulled up with a single click, which refreshes the data and shows you what is going on with the weather at the moment and what to expect. The update is available for download now.

SOURCE: Bing