For any of you that like to keep up to date on windows software, Microsoft has released a beta version of Internet Explorer 8. It's currently in the beta 2 version. I have it installed on one of my PCs for testing. It has some new features that catch it up with Firefox and some other new features I haven't see anywhere else.
One of the new features is called accelerators. Accelerators allow you to highlight something in a web page. For instance, if you highlight an address in a web page, the accelerator option appears and allows you to click an option related to that address. The feature I like in this is it allows you see a map without changing pages or bringing a new page up. This is great for looking up phone numbers or addresses on a map.
Another new feature is called slices. A slice allows you to keep updated more easily on subjects such as weather or news. Facebook has a slice feature already. If you use IE 8 and a web site has a slice option a green slice icon appears in the IE menu across the top. I have seen that you must stay logged into Facebook for the slice feature to work though.
The beta version currently has this annoying thing to it where it keeps a Microsoft IE 8 page as the first homepage. This comes in to play each time you open IE.
IE 8 allows you to have multiple homepages. If you routinely visit 3 different web sites each morning, IE will open all 3 of them in separate tabs for you. Another incredibly useful feature is the ability to close IE with multiple tabs open and re-open IE with those same tabs open again.
The beta version has received updates pretty often. Even though it's in beta 2 I've had to update it more than twice. After one update the quick links at the top quit working. The next update fixed that. You can sort of see the work Microsoft is doing along the way.
I've noticed a few things not working. For example on Facebook when you enter a city, Facebook normally determines what city and state you are referring to and gives you the expected choice via a drop down menu. That drop down quit working after the last update.
Will your web site be ready for IE 8? I figure some of these features would be great for adding new listings features to our real estate web sites.
More info on IE 8 can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/beta/default.aspx
If you like WebSlices and Accelerators for IE8, then I would love to get your thoughts on Me.dium. I'm Jen, part of the team at Me.dium. A few days ago, we joined EBay, Amazon, Facebook, Digg and Yahoo as a featured partner for IE8's Beta
2 launch.
We are so thrilled to be part of IE8, as our goal is to make the internet a more social place. We've got a lot of exciting things going on like our What's Hot WebSlice, Me.dium Discovery Accelerator, and Visual Search, (you can check out our search homepage at
http://me.dium.com/search.)
For all the details of Me.dium+IE8 take a look at
http://blogme.dium.com/content/2008/08/medium-makes-hot-stuff-for-ie8/
Thanks, and feel free to email me with any questions or thoughts on
Me.dium: Jboyle@me.dium.com
Just a follow up--Check out this great video displaying all the Me.dium features for IE8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOimCz3feMc
Thanks!
Jenny
I tried the IE8 version, and it didn't disply my MLS program correctly. I had to uninstall it to get the program back right.