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Internet Explorer 8 Released

2009 Mar 20, 6:18

IE8, the software I've been working on for some time now, has finally been released at MIX09.

• Download IE8.
• Dean's MIX09 Keynote releasing IE8 is viewable here.
• Louis pointed me to this humorous IE8 advertising that doesn't make me cringe. On the contrary it has Ask a Ninja, Janeane Garofalo, and several comedians I recall collectively from either 'I Love the [decade]' or 'Best Week Ever'.
• It seems like only a year ago that IE8 Beta was released.
• IE Blog: IE8 Released.

As I mentioned previously, I worked on accelerators (previously named Activities) in IE8. Looking at the kinds of things I blog about on the IE Blog, you might also correctly guess that I work on the networking stack. Ask me about what else I worked on during IE8 development. The past few months were very busy for me and I'm happy this is finally out.technical internet explorer ie8

FormToAccelerator Internet Explorer Extension

2009 Mar 12, 2:17

I've made an extension for Internet Explorer 8, FormToAccelerator which turns HTML forms on a web page into either an accelerator or a search provider. In the design of the accelerators format we intentionally had HTML forms in mind so that it would be easy to create accelerators for existing web services. Consequently, creating an accelerator from an HTML form is a natural concept and an extension I've been meaning to finish for many months now.

This is similar in concept to the Opera feature that lets you add a form as a search provider. The user experience is very rough and requires some knowledge of accelerator variables. If I can come up with a better interaction model I may update this in the future, but at the moment all the designs I can come up with require way too much effort. Install IE8 RC1 and then try out FormToAccelerator.

activity html accelerator ie8 internet-explorer activities formtoaccelerator extension

Trip to Victoria, BC

2008 Jun 25, 12:26

The weekend before last was Sarah's birthday and as part of that, last weekend we took a trip to Victoria, BC. I've got a map of our trip locations and photos. Not all the photos are on the map but they're all in the trip photo set on Flickr. It turns out there's a lot of tourist intended activities right around our hotel which was in the inner harbor and downtown Victoria area. As such we didn't get a rental car and did a lot of walking.

On the first day we checked out the Royal British Columbia Museum which had some interesting exhibits in it and the Undersea Garden which was interesting in that its like a floating aquarium but was a bit grimy. There was a group of Japanese tourists next to us during the undersea show in which a diver behind the glass in the ocean would pick up and parade various animal life. The group all repeated the word starfish in unison after the show's narrator and one of the tourists was very excited to see the diver bring over the octopus. The diver made the octopus wave to us while it desperately tried to get away.

We flew in and out of the Victoria International Airport which is a smaller sized airport. Although we needed our passports we didn't need to take off our shoes -- what convenience! The US dollar was just a bit worse than the Canadian dollar which was also convenient. The weather was lovely while we were there and I only got slightly sun burned.

victoria canada vacation nontechnical

Gmail integration with Internet Explorer 8

2008 Apr 3, 9:00

With the new features of IE8 there's several easy ways to integrate Gmail, Google's web mail service, for mail composition, searching, and monitoring that I enjoy using.

Composition

I made a Send via Gmail activity that allows you to select some text, a document, or link and via the activity menu open a new tab to compose a new message with the selection. Go to my activity page and click "Send via Gmail" (source) to install it. I found info on the gmail composition URL in the comments of this gmail howto article and used that in the activity. I talked about activities previously.

Search

I've made a search provider that searches your gmail account. See my search provider page and select 'Gmail' (source) to install the Gmail search provider. Search providers aren't new to IE8 but this fits in with Gmail integration in IE. Again in the comments of another howto I found information on a Gmail search URL.

Monitor

New to IE8 is authenticated feed support and favorites bar monitoring which combined with the Gmail inbox feed means you can see when you get new mail in your favorites bar in IE. To do this, navigate to the feed https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom, click 'Subscribe to this feed', then click on the Add button in the upper left (the star with plus icon) and select 'Monitor on Favorites Bar' to add this as a monitored item in the favorites bar. Next, right click on the new item in your favorites bar, open the properties dialog, and enter your Gmail username and password into the new username and password fields. Now when you get new mail the Gmail feed item will shine and bold and you'll be able to get to new messages in the dropdown. I described monitored feed items previously.

activity gmail search howto google ie feed rss opensearch

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 Released with Activities

2008 Mar 5, 11:36

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 is available now. I can finally talk about some of the stuff I've been working on for the past year or so: activities. Activities let you select a document, some text on a document, or a link to a document and run that selection through a web service. For example, you could select a word on a webpage and look it up in Wikipedia, select an address and map it on Yahoo Maps, select a webpage and translate it into English with Windows Live Translator, or select a link and add it to Digg.

IE8 comes installed with some activities based on Microsoft web services but there's a page you can go to to install other activities. However, that page is missing some of my favorites that I use all the time, like del.icio.us. Accordingly, I've put together a page of the activities I use. MSDN has all the info on creating Activities.

Activities are very similar to other existing features in other browsers including the ability to add context menu items to IE. There's two important differences which make activities better. Activities have a preview window that pops out when you hover over an activity, which is useful to get in place information easily provided by developers. The other is that the interface is explicit and takes after HTML FORMs and OpenSearch descriptions. Because the interface is explicitly described in XML (unlike the context menu additions described above which run arbitrary script) we have the ability to use activities in places other than on a webpage in the future. And because activity definitions are similar to HTML FORMs, if your webservice has an HTML FORM describing it you can easily create an activity.

microsoft technical activity openservice ie8 ie activities msdn

Weekend Activities

2007 Dec 11, 12:31I wanted to give a brief update on what's been going on for me this weekend and the previous two.

Two weekends ago Sarah and I went down to Santa Cruz for a long weekend and a belated Thanksgiving. I have yet to sort through the photos but Sarah has already put up the photos from our California trip. There's some nice shots from the Monterey Bay Aquarium in there and the place where we stayed. It was a good trip and I'll write more about it at some point in the future.

This past weekend Sarah and I went bowling with Eric and Jane and other friends. And no bowling experience is complete without a DJ and black lights. Surprisingly my work shirt looked great in the blacklight.

This coming weekend Sarah and I will stay at the MGM in Las Vegas where I'll meet up with college friends I haven't seen in a while. Previously the only non-gambling thing I did in Vegas was buffets and the Star Trek Experience (I'm cool) but this time we'll see some more shows which should be fun.lasvegas personal bowling california weekend nontechnical

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