Due to its simplicity, it can also potentially reach out to a larger number of eyeballs than a conventional RSS feed. Web slices are a fantastic way to increase the return rate of the visitors to your web site.
You basically add a web slice to your Favorites bar, and you are notified when there is an update to your web slice and you are able to view the content directly on the toolbar without having to leave the page you are on. IE allows users to preview the subscribed Web Slices in a fly-out preview window. "I think if you add up the whole product across the board, it absolutely stands by itself in making the web easier and safer to use.Web Slice is a web feed technology available in Internet Explorer 8 and Internet Explorer 9. "If you look at the way the features work, like visual search and Web Slices, nobody else does them in the same way, and many don't do them at all," he says. Though some functions appear similar, he says, they have been implemented in more user-friendly ways. However, Microsoft UK's Ian Moulster counters that IE8 was designed by studying what people need and want. The "smart address bar" works much like the so-called "Awesome bar" in Mozilla's latest release of its Firefox browser, and Firefox has long had the ability to reopen closed tabs. IE8's inPrivate mode performs the same job as the Private Browsing mode available in Apple's Safari Browser, and the Web Slices function echoes Safari's Web Clips. While IE8's tab Groups and the way it sorts results in the smart address bar are novel, many have argued that the release is simply catching up to other, existing browsers.
Users will also be relieved to find that if they inadvertently close a tab, IE8 offers an option to reopen it.Īs with the earlier Beta release, the new version sports inPrivate Browsing mode, which leaves no trace of sites visited on the computer.īehind the scenes, developers have made the browser more compliant with software standards, so that pages in IE8 will look the same as in any other browser. Right-clicking tabs allows actions on the entire group, such as closing. Tabs can also be moved around to different groups, with the tab taking on a new group's colour. Web Slices keep track of changing content Tabs opened from the same page are colour-coded, making it easier to keep track of different tab groups. The new release also showcases Groups, which makes tabbed browsing easier. Results are shown from user-defined search engines and websites, with rich visual content.įor websites with changing content, such as items on eBay or status pages on Facebook, IE8's Web Slices allows users to keep up with the content without going to the webpage directly, accessible through the Favourites bar. That means a search in the address bar for words and phrases will find previously visited sites, as well as bookmarks.Īnother new set of features makes web searching easier search terms entered in the search bar at the top of the browser now instantly display potential results in real time as the search term is typed. To address that, the new release archives visited sites based on their titles as well as their addresses. Microsoft senior product manager James Pratt pointed out at that 80% of the time, internet users were visiting sites they had been to before. One feature new to the release is the "smart address bar". However, many in the blogosphere have noted that several of the improvements in IE8 have been available on other browsers for some time. The release debuts two functions that were not available in the March release. New features will include improved privacy and search functions, and ways to keep track of portions of web pages.
IE8 offers a few surprises compared to the initial beta version released in March. It remains unclear when a final version of the program will be shipped, with the test version currently available for download.
Microsoft has released the second "beta" or test version of its latest browser Internet Explorer 8 (IE8). The 'smart address bar' makes finding previously visited sites easier