Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 introduced a set of new features (accelerators and web slices) that fall into the add-on category as well. The following article contains 8 sleeper Internet Explorer add-ons that can be useful for the majority of Internet Explorer 8 users.

We would also like to point out that this is already the second article about Internet Explorer 8 add-ons and that the first can be accessed at this link. (read: 10 Useful Internet Explorer Add-ons).

First a quick explanation about the different types of add-ons for Internet Explorer:

• Accelerators: Provide functionality directly on the website.
• Web Slices: Real time information that are displayed in Internet Explorer.
• Search Providers: These add-ons add new search engines to the web browser.

1. Job Search (Accelerator)

Will search for a selected job on thousands of websites including newspapers, job boards and company career pages.

2. Tweet Internet Explorer

Twitter add-on for Internet Explorer 8 that adds a button to the toolbar which, when pressed, opens a popup window that allows to post status updates to Twitter.

3. Xmarks Synchronization

Synchronize favorites and bookmarks across multiple computers.

4. Post To LiveJournal

Makes it possible to quickly post to LiveJournal using the selected text on another website.

5. New York Times Latest News

Quick access to the latest news (titles, videos and excerpts) that have been posted on the New York Times website.

6. Find on Last.fm

Will search for the selected text on the popular music community portal Last.fm

7. LastPass Password Manager

LastPass is an online password manager that provides access to interesting features like password generation. It is available for multiple web browsers.

8. Open It Online Lite

Open documents, spreadsheets and presentations online with this useful Internet Explorer add-on.

Do you know of any add-ons for the Internet Explorer web browser that are worth mentioning? Let us know in the comments.

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Internet Explorer 8 Accelerators help in the retrieval and manipulation of data on websites. It usually involves selected content on a website first and the accelerator to process the content afterwards. This can range from translation services to drawing a map of the location of the near restaurant you just discovered or checking the price of an item on a shopping site.

Whenever the user marks elements on a website that can be processed by installed Accelerators a blue icon appears next to the selected element. A click on that icon will provide access to all installed Accelerators that can be used to process the selected data.

If the user hovers his mouse over an accelerator a small overlay window will usually appear on the screen displaying the contents of the processed data, for example a map if an Internet Explorer 8 Accelerator has been selected that looks up addresses in maps. Some Internet Explorer 8 Accelerators on the other hand do not make use of the overlay.

1.Map on Live Maps – One of the default Internet Explorer 8 accelerators that comes preinstalled. It can be used to quickly lookup an address on Live Maps.

2. Find On eBay – Will look up the selected text on eBay displaying matching auctions.

3. Translhttp://www.ieaddons.com/en/details//ate With Live Search – Another default Internet Explorer 8 Accelerator that can quickly translate selected text in the web browser.

4. Weather.com – Look up weather information at weather.com.

5. Wikipedia Accelerator – Makes it possible to quickly look up information at the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

6. Look up in Google News – Will look up the selected text in Google News.

7. Sent with Windows Live Hotmail – send selected information with an Windows Live Hotmail account.

8. Login Using BugmeNot – BugMeNot is a service that operates a database of public login credentials that can be used log into websites without registration.

9. Blogger – The Blogger Accelerator makes it easier to write about interesting stories discovered on the Internet.

10. Share With delicious – Share information easier with Delicious.

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It seems that they have taken a good look around in the browser market and analyzed the crown jewels of the other browsers integrating them into the new Internet Explorer 8 Beta. This begins when starting Internet Explorer 8 for the first time. It asks you if you want to import bookmarks from either Firefox or Opera into the Microsoft browser. Something unthinkable in the past, at least at such a prominent position and location in the browser.

Bookmark import is fluent and Internet Explorer 8 does not seem to have a problem importing Firefox 3 bookmarks. That’s good. Internet Explorer 8 features an add-on browser similar to that of Firefox with the exception that you cannot search for add-ons in the menu itself. It does list all the installed toolbars, plugins and add-ons though which is great for getting a quick overview and disabling them.

Memory Footprint:

The memory footprint of Internet Explorer 8 is surprisingly low, using only half of the computer memory and virtual memory that Firefox 3 uses under similar circumstances.

Internet Explorer 8 Address Bar:

The new address bar which incorporates auto suggestions, the history, bookmarks and feeds looks clean and tidy which I personally like better than the display all mixed that Firefox 3 uses. The only negative aspect are the light colors that are used, it is hard to read for the eyes. Could be related to the Windows colors that I’m using on my system though.

Find On Page:

Another handy feature is the advanced find on page option that displays the number of occurrences of a term on a website. That’s handy if you are scrolling through a source code or large website and want to find a specific item. This enhanced feature is also highlighting all finds on the page at once which is great for a quick overview and orientation.

Tab Groups:

Internet Explorer will color tabs with a similar color if a user opens a link from an existing tab making it easy to distinguish websites and information.

Undo Close Tabs / Restore Sessions:

Internet Explorer comes with features to reopen tabs that have been closed by the user.

Enhanced Search:

The search box is now showing real time suggestions including images plus it includes the user’s favorites and browsing history.

Accelerators:

Accelerators are functions to use services of other websites on the current page. It reminds me a bit of Ubiquity with the difference that Accelerators are individual services that have to be activated. Accelerators are installed like add-ons and provide access to popular services like Stumbleupon, Facebook or Google Maps.

Web Slices:

Web Slices are items that can be placed in the Internet Explorer Favorites Bar who update themselves automatically. This can be news related, new items on eBay or Amazon, weather information or practically anything that is updated regularly.

Security:

Security has taken a major step in the right direction. Internet Explorer 8 comes with a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) filter, Domain highlighting, Per-site and Per-user ActiveX and Data execution prevention.

InPrivate Browsing was introduced which allows to surf the web without storing data about that session in the browser.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 shows lots of promise. The version is feature complete which means that there will be no additional features in the release candidates and final release version of Internet Explorer 8.

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