Dave Burke - An aid to IE7 Assimilation: the Research Task Pane

An aid to IE7 Assimilation: the Research Task Pane

I'm striving for IE7 Assimilation. I didn't touch any of the betas, but thought I'd give the IE7 RTM a shot and as part of the assimilation process have not fired-up Firefox for over a week. There are things I definitely like better in Firefox, like the way searching works in FF. It is FAR superior to the circa 1991 IE7 Find popup. I like tab handling in FF more than IE7 so far, but I remember liking Maxthon's tab handling better than FF back when I switched from it to Firefox, so it's mostly a matter a familiarity, I suppose.

One thing I love yet tolerate in Firefox is dictionary lookups with "dict SomeLookupWord" in the address bar. That aspect of the function was extremely efficient, but then I'd have to deal with advertisement rich, backdoor popup-heavy dictionary sites. I look-up words a lot, so I am really liking the IE7 Research Task Pane. Below is a screenshot. It's great. Fast, get the info you want and little else, with lots of search services available (stock lookups, for instance.) I'm not a task pane kind of guy, but the Research Task Pane is a definite aid to IE7 assimilation.

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Posted on 10/25/2006 9:33:52 PM by Dave Burke
Categories: Everyday
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10/25/2006 9:49:22 PM Permalink

I can make your life even easier, Dave.

Drop down the "search" button at the top-right and click on "Find More Providers" menu item, to take you here:

www.microsoft.com/.../default.mspx

... now type this into the "create your own" form:

URL: http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/TEST.html
Name: Encarta Dictionary

Now you'll have a custom search provider for Encarta Dictionary in your search box! Ctrl+E will jump you to the search box, and (Tab, Down-Arrow) will drop the provider list down.

One less task pane to worry about!

daveburke |

10/25/2006 9:54:49 PM Permalink

This is a good option, too, if you don't like Encarta Dictionary:

http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3ATEST

10/26/2006 6:33:47 AM Permalink

Mabster, I like it! The task pane is very economical, but yeah, I think I'll try the Mabster Way for a while. While playing with providers I found WordNet out of Princeton. Encarta was too busy, Google define: too skimpy, WordNet was just right.

http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=TEST

Thank you, Mab!

10/26/2006 2:35:56 PM Permalink

Turns out, too, that Ctrl+Down while you're focused in the search box will drop down the search options - that makes keyboard searching VERY easy.

mabster |

10/26/2006 8:25:43 PM Permalink

Thanks for the Ctrl+down tip, Mabster. There must have been a user's manual released in Australia that we didn't get here.

10/27/2006 1:15:47 PM Permalink

You've left me the lone Maxthon guru out there I suppose (in the dev blogs I read anyway). However, Maxthon2 is in preview mode (http://forum.maxthon.com/index.php?showtopic=54175) and can use either the IE6 or IE7 engine. It has updated a lot of things and take some good from FF and IE7.

Erik Lane |

10/27/2006 1:36:33 PM Permalink

Erik! Always great hearing from you. Still doing Maxthon, eh? I used it for a LONG time. Thanks for the link. I'll look forward to reading more about your experience with it on your blog. Thanks!

3/2/2007 9:38:14 AM Permalink

For dictionary/thesaurus/encyclopedia lookups, IE7's research bar (pane) is dandy.  However, for MSN searches lauched there, the by default-expanded (and necessarily expanded to the associated expose URL) is a huge leap backward from previous IE versions' Search Assistant sidebar for the many users who liked probing search results from the SA sidebar rather than having to follow, arbitrarily, deeply links from main pane-delivered search results, then navigate backward to the results page to follow another results link. (Simply repeating the search would be a shorter path only if backtracking to the 1st page of results.)

While the option IE7 affords to open links clicked IN ANOTHER APPLICATION in a new tab in the current instance of IE7 is useful, as or more useful would be a  static, or (preferably) dynamic (e. g., ALT- or CTRL-selected) option to direct IE7 to open a new tab from a link clicked on its own current tab; this would--albeit at the cost of some screen real estate-- effectively mimic the SA facility without effecting the behavior of the Research bar (pane).

While IE7 arguably includes many improvements over IE6, this single change undermines all ofthem.  Comments re IE7/IE6 among participants in relevant discussion groups at Microsoft's communities fora insist I'm neither alone nor a minority voice in opining thus.

Stan |

3/2/2007 10:15:28 AM Permalink

That's interesting stuff, Stan. Thanks for detailing its behavior and commenting on its usefulness. You must be right about this, because I stopped using it quite a while ago. Thanks!

Dave Burke : Freelance .NET Web Developer specializing in Online Communities

An aid to IE7 Assimilation: the Research Task Pane

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