… well sort of.
(cr)Apple recently released Safari 4 Beta & all it has is recently visited pages thumbnailed in fancy setup. This isn’t a post to bash an inferior product which only scores in some chemical litmus test, something that people like you & me give a rat’s rear about. IE 8 is certainly the best Internet Explorer version out there. Full credit to the team for rising to the challenge. Here are a couple of add-ons & a trick that will make using IE 8 worth it.
Bookmarks Management:
One of the reasons that was hampering my move to IE 8 was lack of Foxmarks for IE 8. Sure IE allows you to import your bookmarks from Firefox but how cool would it be if your bookmarks were in the cloud & you could access them even when you didn’t have your PC or how easy it will make restoring your bookmarks.
Foxmarks is a life & time saver, with it’s release for IE it made using IE more fun. Though still in Alpha it works fine.
If you’re a Firefox user you get it from here.
Accelerators:
If you’re a Twitter or FriendFeed user then you should certainly be using these add-ons:
Twitter Accelerator (click to install, via)
FriendFeed Accelerator (click to install, via)
Search:
Now for using IE as an alternative to Federated Search Connectors:
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Hop over to the site you want to create the Search Connector for, say – deviantart.com
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Now in DevArt, search for “TEST” (all caps)
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Copy the URL to the clipboard & head over here.
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Paste the URL in ‘Step 3’
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Type DevArt in ‘Step 4’
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Install
You should now have DevArt in your IE search box on the top right. Screen shot:
Go to any site & search for “TEST” (without quotes) & paste the URL in ‘Step 3’. So essentially, now you can easily search for any site via IE without having to go to the site, pretty much like Federated Search. :P Also, these Search Connectors are Accelerators, select the text & launch accelerators to get this:
~Enjoy!