Internet Explorer 8 introduces accelerators and Web slices
The first release candidate of Internet Explorer 8 is now available for download from Microsoft as of late yesterday. This latest version of Internet Explorer includes new features called accelerators and Web slices as well as InPrivate browsing.
Accelerators are designed to make services such as maps and online sharing available via the right-click menu. Services include live maps, mail, writer, search and translate. There are also third party accelerators available such as the Twitter accelerator.
The accelerator concept is not unlike the browser bookmarklets that are available today to submit Web pages to popular social media sites. Microsoft has taken the concept one step further by allowing users to highlight particular text instead of just the link.
Another concept introduced in IE 8 is called Web slices. Web slices can keep a user logged into a Web service even while you’re surfing another site.
Web slices can notify you of new email and could be used to monitor social networking sites for updates. There are already Web slices available for Digg, StumbleUpon and a number of Microsoft services such as Live Maps and MSN Headlines.
It’s positive to see Microsoft considering new ways for users to share items across the Web with other services. These services can also help supplement an IE plugin by adding even quicker access to information on the page.
IE 8 also includes a private browsing feature known as InPrivate that turns off logging of browsing history and cookies from sites. This idea was first released in Firefox 3 and is beginning to gain popularity among users.
Microsoft has released a flurry of new features in IE 8 in an effort to regain lost market share. Once the dominant browser, IE has been losing market share in recent years to Mozilla Firefox and, more recently, Google Chrome.
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