A look at Internet Explorer’s (v8) addons-equivalents

There was a nice and convincing story doing the rounds a few days back titled “Breaking: Internet Explorer 8.1 Eagle Eyes Leaked” which claimed that the new version of Internet Explorer (version 8.1) will include support for Firefox Extensions. The sad part was the story was dated 1st of April 2009.

They say “If something is too good to be true, maybe it is”. While I’ll express my frustration for development of Internet Explorer addons later in this article I wish to mention what Internet Explorer offers as equivalents of addons or extensions.

• Accelerators:

  These utilities aid you in playing with the text/html on a web page. Windows users must be familiar with the age old “Send To” menu in the explorer context menu which enables you to send the selected item to the Desktop, Mail Recipient, Compressed Folder. Accelerators offer similar functionality allowing you to make use of the selected text on a web page. Here is an example in the screenshot. Depending on what acclerators you have installed there are various actions you can take on the selected text.

• WebSlices:

  This is like the Live Bookmarks in Firefox which allow you to add a feed to your bookmarks where you can check them as often as you like without having to visit the site or leaving the current web page you are viewing. This differs however in the functionality it offers. First this is not dependent of the RSS or Atom or similar protocols but is a simple HTML page which displays in a simple box (quite like the way an iFrame works). Second, depending on the HTML/PHP code the provider can show dynamic information and thus offers what any web page can.

• Search Providers:

  Internet Explorer introduced a search bar along with the address bar in version 7. The search providers could always be managed/added/deleted. However the Search Providers now show you suggested results when you type a query. The results depend on the sites you visit and based on you interest trends which Microsoft monitors by collecting the usage data from your browser. Hmm… I don’t like the data-collection part.

Now such a collections of features is overwhelming seeing it coming from Microsoft. They have sure taken some inspiration and where from is everything but anybody’s guess. Now the question is when is IE planning to give developer’s the flexibility of changing the browser behaviour? Something that perhaps can change the way the tabs work. If BHOs are the answer I’m sorry but few are willing to learn.