Winding down my series of experiences with applications and services in the Windows Live Essentials suite, I want to start talking about some of the cool add-on’s that make the online experience a very powerful one.

Microsoft continues to offer a similar toolbar for users of MSN which pretty much does the same thing as Live Toolbar by offering the following services:

• Take MSN with you: MSN Toolbar is always with you when you're online on your PC. Stay up to date without leaving the Web page you're on.
• Put information at your fingertips: Top headlines, news and features from over twelve MSN channels with a single click. Connect with your friends through Windows Live Hotmail, Messenger and Spaces.
• Find it fast: Use the handy search box to find whatever you're after. Get Live Search results even when you use another search engine, plus make specific MSN channel searches.
• Customisable: Change the colour to jazz up your Internet browser!

Access to various Windows Live Toolbar services (click to enlarge)

The Windows Live Toolbar is more simplified but more cohesive, featuring a Live Search Box and links to Windows Live services such as your Windows Live Profile, Mail, Photos, Calendar, Sharing and Translation services. The Search field features an integrated list box so you can search specific content such as Web, News, Maps, Images, Feeds, current web page or your computer on the fly. The great thing about it is no matter where you are on the web you can stay signed in and have immediate access to these Windows Live services. You can preview your Mail inbox, see new photos from friends and family in your social network and preview events in your Calendar.

Adding a Toolbar button

Applications:

If you find the Live Toolbar predefined set of applications too limited, you can install additional buttons which range in services such as Wikipedia, Office Live or Live Skydrive. I love the Wikipedia button since I am always looking for information on topics that interest me, you can find more at the Windows Live Gallery where there is a healthy collection of add on’s for Live Toolbar.

Windows Live Gallery provides access to additional buttons for the Live Toolbar

Translating a web page from its native language to English using Translate. (click to enlarge)

Its way more simplified and focuses more on content. The Translate this page button handles translation of web pages written in foreign languages to your native language. How well does it work? I didn’t spend too much time to find out, but the speed is very fast. I translated a Windows Live Space written in Portuguese to English; the results were not impressive, but I could understand what was written on the page without too much deciphering. Translated pages can be viewed in multiple ways including side by side, Top/Bottom, Hover over with Translation or Translation with original. English speaking users have the option of translating up to 13 languages, worldwide languages that can be translated to English include Chinese Simplified and Mandarin, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, French and German to name a few. The only gripe I have about the Live Toolbar, it doesn’t support Firefox and there is no Internet Explorer 64-bit support either.

Previously

A Quick Look at Windows Live Sync
Windows Live Essentials – Integration with Microsoft Office 2007

Windows Live Tags: Windows Live

, Clubhouse , Story , Toolbar , Windows Live Toolbar , MSN Toolbar , Windows Live Profile , Mail , Photos , Calendar , Share , Translate , Services , Online

Winding down my series of experiences with applications and services in the Windows Live Essentials suite, I want to start talking about some of the cool add-on’s that make the online experience a very powerful one.

The Outlook Connector provides access to your Windows Live services such as Hotmail, Contacts and Calendar inside of Microsoft Office Outlook with the ability to sync between the two. The advantages are you are able to utilize the rich capabilities of Outlook for syncing, viewing multiple calendars for instance, keep offline copies of your hotmail email and contacts.

You can manage how you receive your Hotmail messages from the Outlook Connector menu

Storage availability being displayed by the Server Status Toolbar.

When you install Live Essentials, a new menu is added to Outlook called Outlook Connector. From there you can sign into to the service which requires a Hotmail or Live ID, additional requirements include Outlook 2003 or later. Benefits include having additional Hotmail accounts and the ability to manage them as one profile. The Server Status toolbar manages the synchronization between your Windows Live services (Mail, Contacts and Calendar) along with displaying your storage usage. I am a bit curious about the storage usage, since the toolbar displays 625 MBs out of 500 GBs for my account. I don’t think I would never need that amount of storage just for mail so it must be some mistake. Another great thing about managing your Mail, Contacts and Calendar, it’s automatically exposed to the Windows Search Index in Vista or Windows Desktop Search if you are running it on Windows XP.

With the Outlook Connector, you can view your Windows Live Hotmail contacts in Outlook. By organizing your contacts in Outlook, you can take advantage of the advanced contact management features that Outlook 2007 offers such as the new Business Card View, Instant Search, and the ability to sort contacts by different criteria such as location or colour category. Additionally, any changes you make to contact information in Outlook will automatically be synchronized with the Web version in your Windows Live Hotmail account.

With the Outlook Connector, you can view your calendars from Windows Live Calendar in Microsoft Office Outlook, including other people’s calendars that have been shared with you. By managing your calendars in Outlook, you can take advantage of the time-management features that Outlook offers such as viewing multiple calendars in Outlook at the same time. With Outlook 2007 and the Outlook Connector, you can also:

• View tasks and flagged messages beneath your appointments on the days in which they are due
• Categorize your appointments with custom colour categories
• Overlay multiple calendars

Changes you make to your Windows Live Calendar Beta calendars in Outlook are automatically synchronized with the Web version in your Windows Live Hotmail account.

Previously

A Quick Look at Windows Live Toolbar
A Quick Look at Windows Live Sync
Windows Live Essentials – Integration with Microsoft Office 2007

Resources:

Microsoft Office Outlook Connector overview

Technorati Tags: Clubhouse,Story,Hotmail,Windows Live,Windows Live Essentials,

Outlook Connector,Microsoft,Outlook 2003,Outlook 2007,Windows Live Hotmail,Email,Contact Management,Calendar,Services,Software plus Services,Cloud,Storage

I have added some performance results for Internet Explorer 8 vs Firefox 3.0.7 using a broad band connection, you can see them in the second table below. Thanks to Jeff Hatfield for the help with this test.

It has been in development for a long time now with the first beta released back in March of 2008. Microsoft is once again back on track with regular releases of the Internet Explorer. Version 7 released back in November of 2006 was what some would say a necessary release that infused the platform with new momentum and reinsured its trust in end users while keeping Mozilla Firefox at bay, who are also continuing their fight against IE with the Firefox 3.5 release which by the way offers some new nifty features. The fundamentals of this Internet Explorer release revolve around Microsoft’s security initiatives, improved compatibility and developer experience. Microsoft also took a different approach to beta testing this release of Internet Explorer, instead of the usual private testing phase then a public test, the Company started out the gate with a public release for the first beta which I consider to be a welcome change to how it engages with customers. It proves that the Company is interested in what we say and want us to help shape the future of the browser which should be a good opportunity.

Installing Windows Internet Explorer 8 RTM 64-bit

Setup:

Internet Explorer 8 is available for Windows XP x86, x64, Server 2003 x86, x64, Vista x86, x64, Server 2008 x86 and x64. Phew, that’s a lot; I wish the IE Team would just consolidate this down to just two executables, 32 and 64 bit. I focused on testing IE 8 on Vista 64 bit. Installation is a quick and easy 5 step process requiring one restart to complete setup. When you launch Internet Explorer 8 for the first time, you are presented with a configuration wizard; this basically enables features such as Suggested Sites for discovering similar sites of interest based sites you visit. Also, you can let IE gives you the option of choosing a whole sale of Windows Live branded services and tools for Internet task such as Search, Translation, Mapping, Email, Definition and Blogging along with search and compatibility.

Post setup

First Experience

It seems the toolbar area has taken a definite step back, especially where it concerns screen real estate. I respected IE 7’s focus on consolidating and simplifying the Interface. Now with IE 8 where there were only two toolbars, now there are three layers, not to mention the occasional pop-up banner and the fact that the Tab toolbar shares space with a set of browser controls such as Home, RSS, Email, Print, Page and Tools makes the Interface look like a total kludge. I will admit, I don’t own a 24 inch wide screen Dell LCD, but I do own a 17 inch Dell CRT which maxes out at 1024 by 768, so you basically get the idea that I am in a squeeze here. As for that additional toolbar, it’s called Favorites Bar, a place that host snippets of subscribed content from sites you regularly visit. Although you can remove it by right clicking the toolbar and uncheck the Favorites Bar option, it will return to its original state when the Web slices feature is invoked. What the IE Team could have done here was to make the IE 8 Add Favorites buttons be integrated to left of address bar similar to the Refresh and Stop buttons. It would seem like a logical idea that un-clutters the interface and streamline its look and feel, Firefox 3 already has a similar feature.

Checkout: What I like about Internet Explorer 8

Internet Explorer 8 introduces a lot of ease of use comforts though; areas such as the Address Bar are now streamlined to make navigating the interface a sure pleasure for surfers. Auto Completion now suggest websites that you might want to go to, suggestions are based on your history of websites you like to visit, your personal web browsing history and Feeds that you have subscribed to. Typing in a URL offers some address bar tricks, if you click the arrow below the URL in the middle, it will reveal a number of commands:

• Go to – Enter

• Navigate to – Ctrl + Enter

• Open in a new tab – Alt + Enter

• Open in a background tab – Alt + Shift + Enter

Hands down, this beats Firefox in the Power User category, offering a faster, more intelligent browsing experience. It also lessens the repetitiveness of common takes that users often do in the browser. One thing would have made this feature even more friendly and powerful, an actual command key to reveal the commands, instead of shifting between the keyboard and mouse. Changes such as a single Favourites button, chrome based skin with a flatter appearance and removal of the Tools and Feeds menu (but changes back to Feeds when browsing), are now pushed under the chevron. Taking the spotlight are Web Slices, Read Mail and Safety. Internet Explorer 8’s Address bar also details information such as the type of application protocol along with the domain name and top level domain name. It might not seem readily useful but makes it easier to identify the security of a website along with the domain name.

The search box features new convenience improvements to its search facilities, providing more detailed options when text is typed in called Visual Search. For instance, based on your search history, a list of Search option links are listed by the Search Engine of choice. Type in ‘Mariah Carey’ for example and you will see a number of query filters, which could range from lyrics, songs, soundboard, news, jokes or popular topics. Search suggestions can also be populated based on your history. If you want to get the latest weather report without going to a weather site, Live Search provides results right there, simply enter your location. I also love the new tabbed Search on the fly option which allows you to quickly change Search engines based on your query. I use Wikipedia a lot, it’s very cumbersome having to type in the query through Google, search for it then open Wikipedia. With this feature, you are take immediacy to the source, which is sure to be a hit with those who want a more detailed browsing experience with better results.

Internet Explorer 8 also improves Tab management with Color coordinated tabs a fun, useful way to keep track of the many websites you might have open in the web browser. Whenever you open a link in a tab from within an existing tab, it creates a color set indicating the tab from which it was opened. Coordinated Tabs also works in ‘Quick Tabs’ view and ‘Tabs List’.

Accelerator and Web Slices

Integration with Windows Live would of course be a must. You can see this already through the Search Field, but version 8 takes it a little further by integrating it deep into other parts of the browser, such as the contextual menus called Accelerators. For instance, right clicking a link gives you a choice of options such as blogging with Windows Live Spaces, email with Live Mail or Translate through Windows Live. Highlighted text on a page adds additional options such as Searching through your Default search engine define with Encarta and even search through Live Maps. Users familiar with Smart Tags in Microsoft Office might also find the Accelerator menu share some distant similarities; it gives you additional options for finding and management of these extensions. It ultimately eliminates the mundane task of copying text back and forth between web pages. Internet Explorer 8 introduces Favorites Bar which includes the new Web Suggestions feature for finding similar sites of interest for a particular website you are browsing. Another unique addition in IE 8 is Web Slices which allow for sections of a web page to be subscribed, stored and monitored from the Favourites Bar without having to go to the actual site. The success of Web Slices will ultimately depend on how many web pages out there decide to support it, also It doesn’t work for me sometimes, for example, I tried to get the weather update from a web slice I created for ‘Kingston, Jamaica’ but IE refused to display the results, instead, displaying only a ‘page not available message’. It’s a neat idea though that promises to make information obtained from the Internet more personalized.

Developer and Compatibility

Microsoft has not forgotten about improved performance and compatibility. The browser definitely feels snappier, using IE 8 on a mobile phone connection web pages load respectably faster, it seems like some significant changes have been made to the caching engine itself. The IE 8 Team have noted that considerable improvements have been made to the HTML parse, CSS engine, Jscript runtime and the associated garbage collector. Version 8 offers a compatibility layer, so that sites designed for an older version of the browser will continue functioning as normal. Common problems you might see if a website is not updated to support the latest features in the browser include, out of place menus, images, or text. An integrated contextual compatibility button built into the address bar appears next to the Refresh and Stop button whenever compatibility issues are detected, when clicked it refreshes the website and presents it in its original state as if you were browsing in a supported version of the browser, nice! What I notice when you do enable Compatibility mode is, you lose access to some of the new features of the browser.

Performance

To really gauge its performance I believe I have the perfect setup, my Motorola 350 cellular phone which I use as a dial up modem. To be honest, you are not gonna notice any major difference between the browsers speed if you are running on a DSL connection since pages just load instantly. With the dial up configuration I was able to see some nuances and indicators that proved which browser and which version definitely is faster when it comes to surfing.

Dial up

NA – Website did not load in a reasonable amount of time to be considered acceptable.
My Blog – Live Spaces – http://adacosta.spaces.live.com
ZDNET Blog – http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft

Connection – GPRS
ISP – LIME (formerly Cable & Wireless)
Speed – 5 KBs per second

Broad band

Connection – Cable
ISP – Comcast
Speed – 1.5 MBs per second

As you can see in the above table, performance is negligible, this also indicates that results will always vary depending on your Internet Connection. Internet Explorer 8 has improved performance in some scenario’s especially with the proliferation of broadband these days. The majority of users won’t notice a difference in load time for pages, but if you are still using dial up, I will conclude though that Firefox remains faster compared to Internet Explorer 8.

The table features a list of some of the sites I visit daily. Well, given the above indications, IE 8 is not so fast and I have even tried comparing a Firefox 3.0.7 install where web pages are not cached and it still beats IE. What Microsoft does best though is fidelity. I notice when I was trying to load the new Facebook, Firefox loaded it quickly enough, but it would not load properly, while Internet Explorer 8 took its time, but loaded up the web page properly. It’s a weird performance test I know, but this how I prove which is faster. My personal satisfaction really depends on the web paging loading fast enough for me to interact with, not necessarily to load all features of the site immediately.

Security, Reliability and Add On Management

The new InPrivate mode allows users to clear any private information such as cookies, visited web pages and the entire session itself. There is also an improvement to Phishing Filter through Smart Screen which puts greater focus on web pages that try to collect personal information from users; it’s great for preventing scamming sites that utilize URLs such as PayPal or known banking merchants. This is done through a black list of known or suspected phishing sites so it’s an ongoing game of cat and mouse, users should still be cautious about how they enter personal information on the web. Internet Explorer 8 ActiveX permissions are more independent allowing users to define how they run depending on the site. Improved reliability (including automated crash recovery and tab restoration), and enhanced support for accessibility standards. IE 8 has a much cleaner, organized way to manage all your Internet Explorer add-ons in simplified categories. This is one area; I had hoped the IE Team would have also applied to the Internet Explorer 8 Options dialog.

Some things I would have liked:

• Download Manager - trust me, it needs it, I find it very handy in FireFox and Safari - Pause/Resume, Manage.
• Non-adjacent Selection of text on web pages.
• Customizable toolbar, I personally wouldn't mind if buttons such as Home, Feeds, Print, Page, Tools and Help were on a another toolbar group such as the Address bar group, I need more real estate for Tab's that's much cleaner. The new Favorites Bar in particular eats up a lot of space.
• List View layout for Options, similar to Office 2007 Options dialog. Also make the Advance settings a part of the list view Options, this includes: Accessibility, Browsing, International, Multimedia.
• Make Print Preview utilize a Tab instead of opening a separate window.
• Close button Tabs like Firefox.
• One unified 32-bit and one unified 64-bit installer.

Internet Explorer 8 is an excellent update, the focus on improving the browsing experience, relevancy and synergy with Windows Live services, developer productivity and easing compatibility in addition to the features that focus on making the browsing experience more secure, personal and not intrusive will surely give users reason to stick with the platform and might even bring some users over from Firefox which I personally have had problems with in the memory resource department.

Resources:

Download Windows Internet Explorer 8 RTM


Windows Internet Explorer 8 Compatibility View List
Internet Explorer Team Blog
Internet Explorer 8 Add-ons Gallery