Speeding Up Internet Explorer 8 with Accelerators

Internet Explorer 8 on Windows 7 is the newest release of Microsoft’s infamous web browser. In this newest release and running natively in Windows 7 there are a host of new features and options that users can leverage to get more out of their experience on the web and to make it safer than before.

[NOTES FROM THE FIELD] You can leverage some of the new features of Internet Explorer 8 on your Windows XP system as well as Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 by leveraging the Microsoft download site.

Windows Internet Explorer 8 for Windows XP is available for Windows XP Service Pack 2; Windows XP Service Pack 3 and it is available for Windows Internet Explorer 8 for Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 (all service pack levels).

Most of the features and functionality have been back ported to the legacy operating systems but in order to get all of the features and functionality you need to be running it under Windows 7

Overview of Internet Explorer 8 Accelerators

One of the new features of Internet Explorer 8 are Accelerators. In order to use them you simply highlight any section of text from the website you are on and then click on the blue Accelerator icon that appears above your selection to get options available to you through the function.

These may be Blog with Windows Live, Email with Windows Live, Map with Bing and so forth. Some of the options may not be relative; in the screen shot below I’ve highlighted a segment of an article and to choose the Map with Bing option basically faults out because the highlighted text doesn’t correspond with something that could be mapped.

When you choose a more relative option such as Translate with Bing (in our example) your results will be shown in the display window that pops up.

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Managing Internet Explorer 8 Accelerators from the All Accelerators Submenu

When you run Internet Explorer 8 for the first time on your system you are prompted to accept a selection of default Accelerators, or you can choose your own from an online list of Accelerators that are provided.

You can manage your accelerators by choosing the Manage Accelerators option from the All Accelerators submenu.

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This will bring up the Manage Add-ons window for Internet Explorer 8 titled View and manage your Internet Explorer add-ons where you can choose to work with not only the Accelerators but also Toolbars and Extensions, Search Providers and InPrivate Filtering.

To work with any one of the existing accelerators or to get additional information on it you’d need only to highlight it and the tool will provide you with additional information on it such as its Status, where it is Available on its installation point and some other additional information.

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If you decide that you want to find more accelerators there is a link on the bottom left hand corner of the View and manage your Internet Explorer add-ons window.

When you select that link you are brought to http:/www.ieaddons.com/en/accelerators by default where you can choose from many additional available accelerators that may fit your needs.

They are available on the left hand side of the page and grouped in categories:

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Manage Your IE8 Accelerators from the Manage Add-ons Option

The alternate way of getting to the manage your Internet Explorer add-ons options is to go through the following steps once you have opened Internet Explorer:

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Click the Tools button and then select the Manage Add-ons option.

In Manage Add-ons section under Add-on Types you would click Accelerators to display a list of your current Accelerators.

As before, you would go to the bottom left of the of the open window and select the Find More Accelerators link which will bring the Internet Explorer Gallery webpage.

From here you would be able to click the Accelerator you want to install and then click Install Accelerator.

Once you have done this you would go to the Add Accelerator dialog box, do one of the following:

If you’re adding a new Accelerator, click Add. When you add an Accelerator you have the option to Make this my default provider for this Accelerator Category by choosing it in the check box.

If you already have an existing accelerator and want to use the new option instead you would click Replace.

There are other management actions that you can take from this console as well.

If you need to change the status of an Accelerator you can do this simply by clicking the Enable, Disable, Set as default, or Remove as default buttons.

If you want to you can also change the category of an Accelerator by choosing CHANGE next to the Category field in the status area at the bottom of Manage Add-ons.

To remove an Accelerator you would simply click the Remove button.

In Summary…

In this article, we took an overview look at Internet Explorer 8 Accelerators. We also reviewed how to manage the Internet Explorer 8 Accelerators from the All Accelerators submenu and how to manage the IE8 Accelerators from the Manage Add-ons option.

Thanks for reading my article covering Internet Explorer 8 Accelerators in Windows 7.

I always welcome your feedback on this article or suggestions of other article topics you would like to see!

Thanks for reading.

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