- Working with Web Slices
- Working with Suggested Sites
- Working with Accelerators
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Working with Accelerators
Also new to IE8 is the concept of accelerators. An accelerator is a means to send text you select on a web page to another page or application, thus speeding up your web-based activities.
For example, you can select a piece of text on a web page and then use an accelerator to send that text to another user via email, or post that text to your blog. Or you could select an address on a web page and use another accelerator to map the address. Or you could select a word and use the accelerator to initiate a Google search for that word.
To use an accelerator, follow these steps:
- Start by using your mouse to select a word or block of text on a web page (see Figure 5). IE8 now displays an Accelerator button next to the selected text.
- Click this button, and you see a pop-up menu of available accelerators. (Some accelerators display a preview of results when you over the button; some don't.)
- Click the accelerator you want to use, and Internet Explorer performs the appropriate action.
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Figure 5 Select a block of text to display the Accelerator button.
IE8 comes with a short list of accelerators pre-installed. You can delete accelerators from this list, or add new ones as you like. Just click the Page button in the IE8 Command bar and select All Accelerators, Manage Accelerators. When the Manage Add-Ons window appears, make sure that Accelerators is selected in the Add-On Types pane (see Figure 6).
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Figure 6 Managing your IE8 accelerators.
To remove an accelerator from the list, select it and click the Remove button. To add a new accelerator, click the Find More Accelerators link. This launches Internet Explorer and displays the Add-Ons Gallery: Accelerators page. Find the accelerator you want, then click the Add to Internet Explorer button.
The Add-Ons Gallery includes all manner of useful or just interesting accelerators. You can find accelerators for creating maps with Bing, Google, and Yahoo!; sharing selected text via Facebook, StumbleUpon, and other social networks; looking up words and phrases via Wikipedia and various online dictionaries; and even looking up items for auction on eBay. It's a useful way to do related tasks with just a click of your mouse.