IE 8 – Federated Search For Vista & More

… 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:

1. Hop over to the site you want to create the Search Connector for, say – deviantart.com
2. Now in DevArt, search for “TEST” (all caps)
3. Copy the URL to the clipboard & head over here.
4. Paste the URL in ‘Step 3’
5. Type DevArt in ‘Step 4’
6. 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!