Accelerator (Internet Explorer)
Encyclopedia
Accelerators are a form of selection-based search
Selection-based search
A selection-based search system is a search engine system in which the user invokes a search query using only the mouse. A selection-based search system allows the user to search the internet for more information about any keyword or phrase contained within a document or webpage in any software...

 which allow a user to invoke an online service from any other page using only the mouse introduced by Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 in Internet Explorer 8
Internet Explorer 8
Windows Internet Explorer 8 is a web browser developed by Microsoft in the Internet Explorer browser series. The browser was released on March 19, 2009 for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Windows 7. Both 32-bit and 64-bit builds are available...

. Actions such as selecting the text or other objects will give users access to the usable Accelerator services (such as blogging with the selected text, or viewing a map of a selected geographical location), which can then be invoked with the selected object. According to Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

, Accelerators eliminate the need to copy and paste content between web pages. IE8 specifies an XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

-based encoding which allows a web application
Web application
A web application is an application that is accessed over a network such as the Internet or an intranet. The term may also mean a computer software application that is coded in a browser-supported language and reliant on a common web browser to render the application executable.Web applications are...

 or web service
Web service
A Web service is a method of communication between two electronic devices over the web.The W3C defines a "Web service" as "a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network". It has an interface described in a machine-processable format...

 to be invoked as an Accelerator service. How the service will be invoked and for what categories of content it will show up are specified in the XML file. Similarities have been drawn between Accelerators and the controversial smart tags
Smart tag (Microsoft)
Smart tags are an early selection-based search feature found in later versions of Microsoft Word, and beta versions of the Internet Explorer 6 web browser by which the application recognizes certain words or types of data and converts it to a hyperlink. Selection-based search allows a user to...

 feature experimented with in the IE 6 Beta
Internet Explorer 6
Internet Explorer 6 is the sixth major revision of Internet Explorer, a web browser developed by Microsoft for Windows operating systems...

 but withdrawn after criticism (though later included in MS Office).

History

Microsoft introduced accelerators in Internet Explorer Beta 1 as "activities". It later renamed this to "accelerators".

Sample Accelerator

This is an example of how to describe a map Accelerator using the OpenService Format:




http://www.example.com

Map with Example.com
http://www.example.com/favicon.ico
















See also

  • Smart tag
    Smart tag (Microsoft)
    Smart tags are an early selection-based search feature found in later versions of Microsoft Word, and beta versions of the Internet Explorer 6 web browser by which the application recognizes certain words or types of data and converts it to a hyperlink. Selection-based search allows a user to...

  • Web Slice
    Web Slice
    Web Slice is a web feed technology introduced in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 that allows certain portions of a web page to be subscribed to. Internet Explorer allows users to preview the subscribed Web Slices in fly-out preview window...

  • Ubiquity (Firefox)
    Ubiquity (Firefox)
    Ubiquity, an add-on for Mozilla Firefox, is an abandonware collection of quick and easy natural-language-derived commands that act as mashups of web services, thus allowing users to get information and relate it to current and other webpages...

  • click.to (browser independent)

External links

  • Accelerators Video, Microsoft
    Microsoft
    Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

     Internet Explorer 8
    Internet Explorer 8
    Windows Internet Explorer 8 is a web browser developed by Microsoft in the Internet Explorer browser series. The browser was released on March 19, 2009 for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Windows 7. Both 32-bit and 64-bit builds are available...

     Videos
  • Add-ons Gallery: Accelerators, Microsoft
    Microsoft
    Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

     Internet Explorer 8
    Internet Explorer 8
    Windows Internet Explorer 8 is a web browser developed by Microsoft in the Internet Explorer browser series. The browser was released on March 19, 2009 for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Windows 7. Both 32-bit and 64-bit builds are available...


Development


Wikimedia Accelerators

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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