WebSlices in Internet Explorer 8.0

    Introduction


    I am not a big fan of Internet Explorer, however, the new functionality of the test build of IE8 , released the day before yesterday , interested me.
    Honestly, I initially decided that it was something like the ability to add a piece of a page to a desboard from Safari . However, poking the page with the mouse, I realized that the point was completely different.
    I think that those who need it, have already known about this opportunity for a long time, well, but for those who are interested, please read this brief note.


    What is it?


    In general, the idea is very nice. The ability to provide the user with blocks that he can add to his favorites. It is very convenient for tracking updated information, and you do not need to go to the page itself. In addition, the implementation assumes the presence of a large number of such blocks, the connection of the blocks with an information source (say RSS), various additional functionality (say, a description of ttl - time to live, time of the block's relevance) and even authentication.

    But the best part is the implementation. This is not a new markup, not a new unsupported HTML tag, not a Java script extension, and not even a new activeX control. This is microformat. In general, it’s great that Microsoft uses them ... you can tell the people went. Thus, outside IE8 such a block will remain just a block ... but in the “Internet Explorer” the block will be highlighted with a special icon and it will be possible to add it to your bookmarks.

    Let's look at an example.


    So, as soon as I realized what it was, like the feeling of a scientist at the beginning of the 20th century , immediately there was a desire to try it on myself.
    We have a page on which one block is updated from time to time. In fact, the last line from Twitter is displayed there .

    Page

    It is required - to create WebSlice showing these updates.

    Everything is extremely simple, we write the following code into the page:
    % Block Content%


    It turns out like this:


    Slices now appear in the list of RSS subscriptions:


    When you hover over a block, a characteristic sign appears:


    But this is how it looks at work:


    The format of a simple slice is very simple:
    1. Place it in an element with the hslice class
    2. Add two blocks
    a) entry-title - the name of the slice. Interestingly, without it does not work. So I had to hide it with display: none
    b) entry-content - the contents of the

    bolk slice add:
    This is called “microformat”, with “entry-title” and “entry-content” being part of the hAtom microformat. The hslice class can be hung on any element, not necessarily a div.
    That’s basically it.

    Now about some of the pitfalls:


    Firstly, without entry-title, it didn’t work for me. Of course, not a stone, but it is worth keeping in mind.
    Secondly, there are some problems with CSS, for example, inline-css did not reflect the background with the picture, and the link style didn’t work at all (however, I did it yesterday at half past four in the night ... somehow I was suddenly taken by a craving for knowledge) .

    donpedro Indicates additional issues:
    1. Without specifying an ID in a block, it is not defined by a layer.
    2. With windows-1251 encoding, viewing a layer from favorites turns into viewing punctuation marks (I only had Cyrillic characters). Setting the UTF-8 encoding saved the situation.

    conclusions


    I think it's a great thing. At minimal cost, you can expand your service with these small slices, as Facebook, Ebay and others have already done, and get an excellent update of the information you need. I already imagine how many services I would put there. Yes, yes ... all because of the lack of a dashboard in Windows and Linux :) However, we are waiting for implementation under FireFox. Why not? :)

    If you have any of IE8, try a slice that's here , you can now (in any case do not advertise, because there's nothing there)
    and the official description is available here:
    of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 Whitepapers

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