Posts Tagged windows live messenger

IE8: Now Optimised for Guardian.co.uk

Aug 6

Posted by Blue E Blogger in Uncategorized | No Comments

This week we’ve been looking at how IE8 has kept its spot as the world’s most popular browser and grown its audience over the past few months (stats from Netmarketshare )

One way more and more people are discovering IE is through special versions our team have been working hard to create that follow your interests more closely. We’ve recently tied up with The Guardian newspaper to bring an even faster experience of the newspaper via IE.

The new browser really integrates with guardian.co.uk and offers some great new features:

  • Latest News webslice –  Ever feel like you’re out of the loop of what’s going on in the country? With the Guardian’s Latest News feed important headlines will be subtlety  alerted to you as you surf and kept in a webslice so you don’t lose your page
  • Comment is Free webslice – The Guardian’s comment section, one of the most popular areas of Guardian.co.uk, is now accessible from your Favourites bar
  • Bing Search – Search guardian.co.uk from your IE search box directly 
  • Guardian Multimedia – Take a look at the Guardian’s award-winning photography and latest videos without leaving your page

 

To download Internet Explorer 8 optimised for guardian.co.uk take a look at the ieaddons. The Guardian also has their own article on the advantages of webslices at http://www.guardian.co.uk/internet-explorer-8/optimised-for-the-guardian

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Internet Explorer Goes Touchscreen

Jun 25

Posted by Blue E Blogger in Announcements | No Comments

This week we’ve looked at how interfaces will evolve, so no doubt in not too long you’ll be able to surf around IE without touching anything at all. Did you know, however, that it’s already possible to do away with the mouse and move over to a beautifully vibrant Touchscreen already?

I’m currently writing this post on an HP Touchsmart. This is really amazing technology when coupled with Windows 7, IE and surfing Bing & MSN. We built Windows 7 and IE8 & IE9 really thinking about touch as part of the heart of your browsing interface. From the Windows 7 dock you can fire up IE 8 and surf around, clicking hyperlinks to take you to wherever you want to go.

Take a look at our Microsoft Partner websites to learn more about the amazing PCs out there that run touchscreen IE.

http://www.hp.com/touchsmart

Dell also have a great touchscreen laptop – the Latitude XT2

http://www.dell.com/tablet?s=biz&cs=555

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Microsoft Future Gazing Film

Jun 23

Posted by Blue E Blogger in Uncategorized | No Comments

Charles Arthur and Jemima Kiss point out that there is a ‘Star Trek’ effect in the technology world. Because a generation grows up watching futuristic gadgets in awe these actually shape the product design of the future. Motorola had a big hit with the Moto Razr (it was the biggest selling phone in its year of launch) but perhaps its design features were ‘inspired’ from somewhere else?

Microsoft have put together a great future gazing film looking at the future of interfaces. It’s really worth taking in. Thanks to Libin Pan for the mention

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The Future of Interfaces

Jun 21

Posted by Blue E Blogger in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Whenever Microsoft launches something really cool it’s great for us here at Internet Explorer. We’ve been inundated with e-mails and buzz this past week following the spectacular launch of Xbox Kinect at E3 last week. No expense was spared – the show started with a 45 minute display from Cirque de Soleil to really communicate the freedom of movement you have with Kinect. Take a look below to see what everyone is getting so excited about.

Whenever a revolutionary new system comes into play – be it in consoles, mobile phones or even kitchen appliances the question is raised – when will I see this built into my computer? Kinect points to the future of interfaces and suggests that the vision in Minority Report is less far away than we ever imagined. Take a look at this fascinating presentation at TED from John Underkoffler (it really gets going about 7 mins in).

His prediction is that this style of interface will come as standard in your computer within 5 years. This week on the IE blog we’re going to do a bit more future gazing, showing Microsoft’s predictions for the future office and cool computers running IE that will amaze you even now.

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IE – It’s a Funny Old Game

Jun 11

Posted by Blue E Blogger in Uncategorized | No Comments

As the World Cup kicks off we want to flag to you again that you can easily follow all the matches online with our dedicated World Cup webslice:

http://www.ieaddons.com/gb/details/news/World_Cup_Coverage_2010__UK/

Real-world games are a great way of testing a human being, from the mental dexterity needed to analyse your teams strategy on the go to having the lightening fast reactions to take opportunities as they materialise in the game.

The virtual world is no different. This week we’re looking forward to IE9 and giving a taste of the special preview you can download from here – http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/ Our team of developers have devised some pretty crafty games to test our the new browsers speed, graphics capabilities and new navigation features.

One game, Browser Flip, measures how fast your browser is at handling HTML, java script and CSS at the same time. See how quickly you can flip over the tiles by running your mouse over them in IE8 and IE9 by going to http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/11BrowserFlip/Default.html

Another improved feature is improved map zooming. Have a go by installing the IE9 preview and going to http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/10MapZooming/Default.html

An important part of our testing for IE9 is to make sure graphics appear smoothly on the screen for you – upping the number of frames per second so that everything flows naturally and doesn’t flick or stutter. The final test you can try with the IE preview  is of our Flickr Explorer:

http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/10FlickrExplorer/Default.html

These little games give our team here some real feedback on IE so we can make our browser even stronger. It’s a team effort, so please get involved, give our new browser preview a kick around http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/ and let us know – http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/03/19/the-internet-explorer-testcenter-welcome-page-clarification-corrections.aspx -  what we can do to run away with the best browser trophy in your eyes.

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Why IE9 is a Perfect Fit

Jun 9

Posted by Blue E Blogger in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

We’ve done a bit of looking back on the Blue E blog, but we wanted this week to look forwards to IE9. We’re currently testing IE9 and are looking for as many people as possible to get involved in testing our preview version and to give us feedback so the finished product really meets everyone’s needs. Take a look at http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive to try the preview.

One featured we’re proud of on the new browser is how it can shape shift like a chameleon to your PC, whatever form-factor you have.  Using CSS3 Media Query support IE9 adapts to different display resolutions (like height, width, orientation) on the go. This means your new browser will optimise the way webpage look for your large screen monitor, netbook or mobile.

Take a look at our test screenshot:

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IE9 Preview Downloaded 1m+ Times!

Jun 8

Posted by Blue E Blogger in Announcements | No Comments

The UK IE team had the pleasure of welcoming Ryan Gavin, Microsoft’s senior director of Internet Explorer, in London last week.  Ryan was interviewed by the Guardian’s tech legend Jack Schofield. Jack is leaving the Guardian to go freelance, so at the IE team we want to wish him all the best for the future. To have a read of the interview, take a look here – http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/may/31/microsoft-ie9-html5-standards

Ryan was very excited about the progress of our special preview of IE9 – the test drive version has already been downloaded over 1m times in just 2 months! In our speed tests we believe we’ve created the fastest ever browser, trouncing other browsers for the speed of loading up a page.

To take part in the preview if you’re a developer or a curious member of the public, just goto http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/ . We’re constantly looking for developers to get involved and feedback their own experiences, so please do at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/03/19/the-internet-explorer-testcenter-welcome-page-clarification-corrections.aspx

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Working 9 to 5 with Web Slices

Jun 4

Posted by Blue E Blogger in Tips & Tricks | No Comments

With the emergency budget around the corner for June 22nd many businesses both large and small will be watching carefully to see what new ‘efficiency savings’ will be taken to reduce the countries £157 Billion deficit… and the effect it has on the FTSE and Dow Jones.

Continuing this week’s theme of working smarter with IE, we’ve highlighted a few more Web Slices you can use to make small efficiency savings at work.

http://www.ieaddons.com/en/details/finance/Finance_from_Bing/

http://www.ieaddons.com/en/details/news/CNN_Top_Stories/

If you’re a fan of The West Wing you’ll know that Pizza is the answer for a long night in the office.

http://www.ieaddons.com/en/details/shopping/Dominos_Pizza_Slice/

And if you’re really tired of working 9 to 5, then take a look at Dolly Partons’ own webslice. IE wonders if the song would have been as popular if she’d worked 8.30am – 4.15pm?

http://www.ieaddons.com/en/details/music/Dolly_Parton_News_and_Video_Diary/

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Bringing Home Practice into the Office

Jun 3

Posted by Blue E Blogger in Uncategorized | No Comments

We’ve had lots of people asking us for a bit more information on Web Slices and how they work. Take a look at the video below for a full tutorial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqXR79P_Uzo

Onto today’s post, then…  In today’s ever more connected world it’s easier than ever to work from home. But it’s a bit of a debate in the IE office as to whether it makes you more productive or not. Surely you’ll be distracted by the screaming kids or the washing machine??

Well the data’s in from RescueTime – working from home can boost productivity by as much as 22% with more time spent on the tasks that mattered for work. A full breakdown can be found below and on their blog at http://blog.rescuetime.com/2009/11/18/does-working-from-home-make-you-more-productive-yes-with-data/

A friend of ours pointed out that even though they’re at a FTSE 100 company (that we’ll keep nameless) their computers were so old “they literally have to crank them up in the morning, like a classic car.” This insight is telling – many companies do delay updating computers to a point that causes a worrying loss of productivity.

We’ve had a great response to IE 8 from the web community and reviewers have said “Upgrading to IE8 from IE7 is a no-brainer”. So this is another aspect where a homeworker can outperform an office worker – by have more up-to-date software at home.  If your office is a bit behind you might want to give your management a nudge… upgrading to IE8 and Windows 7 will boost productivity every minute you’re at your desk.

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Internet Explorer is a Piece of Cake

Jun 2

Posted by Blue E Blogger in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Sometimes you don’t want to have your cake and eat it…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK4iR_stpoo

The Internet is just the same, while society has moved forwards thanks to the sharing of knowledge (as we explored in last week’s post) you can also become overwhelmed and consumed by information, this posed a particular question to our Internet Explorer developers – wouldn’t it be great if you could ‘slice up’ the Web.

Think how much time you waste every day surfing backwards and forwards from page to page just to find tiny snippets of information – to check how your eBay auction is going, to look up the weather or find out film times.  You spend a great deal of time clicking from site to site. With IE Web Slices you can save your favourite pages onto your toolbar and a quick rollover the Web Slice brings up the information in seconds.

We’ve loads of Web Slices in our IE gallery – take a look here: http://www.ieaddons.com/en/webslices/

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