MSDN Magazine - March 2009 - (Page 48) I N T E R N E T E X P LO R E R 8 New Features to Slice, Store, And Accelerate Your Web Applications Daron Yöndem Internet Explorer 8 represents a major step in the evolution of the product. It provides new end user features like Web Slices, Accelerators, and search suggestions—and also brings with it more advanced developer features such as AJAX navigation and DOM storage. In this article, I will look into the details of these features to see how Internet Explorer can make life easier for both developers and users alike. You’ll see how these new features allow you to define portions of a page and control its update frequency and expiration, improve the user’s search and navigation experience, and lots more. This article is based on a prerelease version of Internet Explorer 8. All information is subject to change. Defining Page Regions with Web Slices Web Slices allow you to cut a Web page into pieces so that you can display and update only the parts you are interested in. Web Slices can be a handy solution for a user who wants to follow the updates from your Web site but doesn’t want to use an RSS reader. RSS readers can be a little complicated for some end users and are not always appropriate. Web Slices are programmatically defined parts of a Web page that users discover by moving their mouse over the slice or clicking the “Subscribe to a Web Slice” button on the toolbar. Figure 1 shows this in action. After subscribing to a Web Slice, the user will be able to see the slice title on the Internet Explorer Favorites bar. Internet Explorer will keep contacting the online source and alert the user about updates by making the slice title text bold. When you click on the title, the content of the slice will be shown in a popup window as shown in Figure 2. One major benefit of Web Slices is that users don’t need to keep refreshing a Web page in order to track changes on the site. Furthermore, depending on how you structure the data sources for your Web Slices, they can help to conserve resources on the Web server since updates will be for only relevant data, not the whole page. Additionally, by using Web Slices, your system can provide deeper statistics about how users access different parts of a Web page, which can impact further design decisions. This article discusses: • Web Slices • Accelerators • DOM Storage • AJAX Navigation Technologies discussed: AJAX, JavaScript Code download available at: code.msdn.microsoft.com/mag200903IE8 48 msdn magazine http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/mag200903IE8
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