Thread: Internet Explorer 8

Each of the new betas also offers unique ways of displaying content from Web pages, while keeping within public stan¬dards. Internet Explorer 8 beta 1, for example, offers "Web slices," typically a small region of a Web page that the browser automatically updates in the same way it automatically updates lists ofRSS feeds. A Web slice might be a box displaying weather in Seattle or traffic delays in Manhattan, and a user ofIE8 can see the slice by clicking on a link to it in the IE Favorites bar. A Web developer can create a Web slice simply by adding some standard Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) markup to an existing page, using an identifying tag in the markup that IE will recognize but other browsers will ig¬nore-until support gets built into other browsers in the next version.



IE also touts its new Activities feature, which lets Web developers create items that a user can install in IE's right-click pop-up menu. You could, for example, select a street address on a Web page, right-click on the selection, and open a window to a standard mapping service that displays the address on a map. Simi¬lar but less powerful capabilities already in exist through add-ons, especially for Firefox, but IE's Activities provide a sim¬ple mechanism that will make this kind of feature more widespread.

What I want (but definitely won't get) from Internet Explorer 8 is less of a sense that, when I open a menu, I'm visiting a Microsoft booth at a computer trade
show. The right-click Activities menu offers me a chance to blog on Windows Live Spaces, translate with Windows Live, send with Windows Live Hotmail, map with Live Maps, and define with Microsoft's online encyclopedia Encarta. The choices from Google and other services that I prefer will presumably be available as alternatives before too long, but I wish Microsoft didn't insist on making its own services act like the last guest who drives you crazy because he won't go home when the party has ended.