Accelerator

Accelerator

A map Accelerator using the IE8 Accelerators Smart tag
Developed by	Microsoft
Latest release	0.8
Extended from	XML
Open format?	Yes, As part of Microsoft Open Specification Promise
Website	OpenService Accelerators Developer Guide

Accelerators are a form of selection-based search which allow a user to invoke an online service from any other page using only the mouse introduced by Microsoft in Internet Explorer 8.^[1] Actions such as selecting the text or other objects will give users access to the usable Accelerator services (such as blogging with the selected text, or viewing a map of a selected geographical location), which can then be invoked with the selected object. According to Microsoft, Accelerators eliminate the need to copy and paste content between web pages.^[2] IE8 specifies an XML-based encoding which allows a web application or web service to be invoked as an Accelerator service. How the service will be invoked and for what categories of content it will show up are specified in the XML file.^[3] Similarities have been drawn between Accelerators and the controversial smart tags feature experimented with in the IE 6 Beta but withdrawn after criticism (though later included in MS Office).^[4]

History

The "activities" icon of IE8 Beta 1.

Microsoft introduced accelerators in Internet Explorer Beta 1 as "activities". It later renamed this to "accelerators".^{[citation needed]}

IE8

Accelerators are included in IE8 by default as a type of add-on.

Sample Accelerator

This is an example of how to describe a map Accelerator using the OpenService Format:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<openServiceDescription xmlns="http://www.microsoft.com/schemas/openservicedescription/1.0">
  <homepageUrl>http://www.example.com</homepageUrl>
  <display>
    <name>Map with Example.com</name>
    <icon>http://www.example.com/favicon.ico</icon>
  </display>
  <activity category="map">
    <activityAction context="selection">
      <preview action="http://www.example.com/geotager.html">
        <parameter name="b" value="{selection}"/>
        <parameter name="clean" value="true"/>
        <parameter name="w" value="320"/>
        <parameter name="h" value="240"/>
      </preview>
      <execute action="http://www.example.com/default.html">
        <parameter name="where1" value="{selection}" type="text"/>
      </execute>
    </activityAction>
  </activity>
</openServiceDescription>

See also

• Smart tag
• Web Slice
• Ubiquity (Firefox)
• click.to (browser independent)

References

External links

• Accelerators Video, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 Videos
• Add-ons Gallery: Accelerators, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8

Development

• OpenService Accelerators Developer Guide
• Accelerators, Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit

Wikimedia Accelerators

• Wikipedia Visual Search, IE8 Addons Gallery
• Define with Wikipedia, IE8 Addons Gallery
• Define with Wiktionary, IE8 Addons Gallery
• Veoh Video Compass, IE8 Addons Gallery