Apologies if this has been covered, I poked around through search and what not and didn't see an IE8 thread anywhere (Webslices doesn't even produce a search result).
So, has anyone been playing with IE8 yet? I'm probably a little late to the bandwagon since the whitepapers came out in March, but it's pretty interesting from an online marketing point of view. Obvisouly when designing applications I don't care about my personal browser preference, I just care about the market penetration of a given browser compared to the general niche I'm targeting. While much of the web is busy furiously masturbating itself into a spittle-inducing rage as it mashes out rants with its chubby, pizza grease-covered fingers about which browser is better, smart online marketers will be taking this time to figure out how we can use what's next to make money.
I'm not sure 100% how much of this stuff has been promoted through one of MS's other channels previously and how much is brand new to IE8, but this is my first exposure to their usage of the concepts as "WebSlices" and "Activities" and the like. Here's a link to the main "Developer Readiness" site.
Here's the whitepaper for "Activities":
MSDN Code Gallery - File Downloads
Here's the whitepaper for "WebSlices":
MSDN Code Gallery - File Downloads
The whitepaper on extended support for ACID is less exciting from a marketing poinjt of view, but I thought it was interesting.
MSDN Code Gallery - File Downloads
Anyhow, I haven't played with any of this yet and I'm really not a coder anymore (not much of one anyway), but it's pretty elementary stuff, so I don't need very good chops to play with it. Just from a 30,000 foot view I could imagine some pretty obvious scenarios to start with using this stuff.
WebSlices:
What are they? They appear to pretty much be a rehashing of RSS feeds. I guess what makes them interesting is that they're putting a user interface spin on them this time instead of just stuffing them in a buil in newsreader and that's what makes it look like it might work. The ability to brand your RSS feed to someone's toolbar and control the presentation (stylesheets, etc) a bit more will be helpful. More importantly is the addition of RSS feeds to the primary parts of the actual browser shell that are prominent on installation instead of seconding them to the nether regions of the optional sidebar. The focus on chronology is really interesting and the constant polling displayed as a simplified "Ooh, yer doohickey has new content!" is probably better than simply incrementing a number next to a feed name and turning it bold. There are also intriguing behaviors with respect to designating an alternate feed to take over when an existing feed "expires" based on the chronological stuff.
Probably even more important is the simple re-branding of RSS Feeds as WebSlices for a publict that, by and large, doesn't give two shits about paying attention to RSS Feeds. The simple truth is that while RSS Feeds are technically a push technology they require an extraordinary effort by the user to be of any use for marketing (that's extraordinary in the technical sense, not melting steel with rays from your eyeballs). Most people simply don't know what RSS is, fewer still will add your feed and fewer still will ever read it. Of course some people do well with RSS, but it's not really a barnstormer of a technology from an online marketing point of view. Who knows if WebSlices will be able to get John Q. User clicking and adding content, but it's worth taking a look at and developing for I reckon. Certainly placing the "Add WebSlice" option within the body of the page instead of as an abstract "RSS" button somewhere else on the browser means that people will be more likely to take action.
Activities:
Activities aren't really any morr revolutionary, but they're kind of interesting. Personally I think they're less interesting from an online marketing perspective just because they require a user to think about the concept of an "Activity" and then add it to his or her contextual menu and then actuall use it whereas the WebSlices are featured prominently in the interface and are pretty much a one-click subscription process I believe.
All that being said, Activities are roughly like small background web services presented a contextual menu options on the right-hand mouse button click (I believe). In that respect they're not much different than a lot of helper apps - you can blog something, post a photo, do pretty much anything you can do with any web service, but from a contextual menu. This is fairly interesting in that it allows you to keep your service, site or brand built into the browser in much the same way a toolbar is, so you can imagine all the possible uses.
Scenarios:
I'm exhausted today, so I don't have much creatvity flowing, but I can rattle off a couple of tired examples in case the utility here doesn't jump out at you.
WebSlice Scenario:
You have a site about Rotary Nasal Clippers (very exciting!) and you present your offers via RSS Feed as a WebSlice. You entice someone to add your WebSlice to get the latest deals on Rotary Nose Clippers - AS SEEN ON TV - and once or twice a day you release an update. Their IE8 polls regularly and when it sees your new offer it lights up BLING BLING the appropriate WebSlice box on the browser. Once they see this lit up they highlight the WebSlice and it renders a displayed offer based on the markup in your WebSlice RSS Feed thingee object.
MS Examples here.
Activity Scenario:
Like I said, not quite *as* jazzed about Activities. On their face they're much more interesting than WebSlices, but teh intarnets is chock full of "clever" applications created by tech-focused programmers that go fuck all nowhere because the tech dorks are always focused on what they think is cool and not what the user is likely to actually do that could make money. My main trepidation here is that I think most people likely to install and use an "Activity" are already smart enough to be doing this some other way and to ignore IE8's boiler plate, hoi polloi interface for web services like "Activities". Who knows though.
Anyhow, disclaimers aside, just check out the MS apps for good examples of activities - they're pretty straightforward:
here
Blargh, just thought I'd share since I made several posts yesterday that didn't add much to the discussion other than sarcasm. Disclaimer: I am a years-old Maxthon user and I don't give a fuck what anyone uses to browse, just give me a clear market preference! There's nothing worse than having a market split between two browsers.
So, has anyone been playing with IE8 yet? I'm probably a little late to the bandwagon since the whitepapers came out in March, but it's pretty interesting from an online marketing point of view. Obvisouly when designing applications I don't care about my personal browser preference, I just care about the market penetration of a given browser compared to the general niche I'm targeting. While much of the web is busy furiously masturbating itself into a spittle-inducing rage as it mashes out rants with its chubby, pizza grease-covered fingers about which browser is better, smart online marketers will be taking this time to figure out how we can use what's next to make money.
I'm not sure 100% how much of this stuff has been promoted through one of MS's other channels previously and how much is brand new to IE8, but this is my first exposure to their usage of the concepts as "WebSlices" and "Activities" and the like. Here's a link to the main "Developer Readiness" site.
Here's the whitepaper for "Activities":
MSDN Code Gallery - File Downloads
Here's the whitepaper for "WebSlices":
MSDN Code Gallery - File Downloads
The whitepaper on extended support for ACID is less exciting from a marketing poinjt of view, but I thought it was interesting.
MSDN Code Gallery - File Downloads
Anyhow, I haven't played with any of this yet and I'm really not a coder anymore (not much of one anyway), but it's pretty elementary stuff, so I don't need very good chops to play with it. Just from a 30,000 foot view I could imagine some pretty obvious scenarios to start with using this stuff.
WebSlices:
What are they? They appear to pretty much be a rehashing of RSS feeds. I guess what makes them interesting is that they're putting a user interface spin on them this time instead of just stuffing them in a buil in newsreader and that's what makes it look like it might work. The ability to brand your RSS feed to someone's toolbar and control the presentation (stylesheets, etc) a bit more will be helpful. More importantly is the addition of RSS feeds to the primary parts of the actual browser shell that are prominent on installation instead of seconding them to the nether regions of the optional sidebar. The focus on chronology is really interesting and the constant polling displayed as a simplified "Ooh, yer doohickey has new content!" is probably better than simply incrementing a number next to a feed name and turning it bold. There are also intriguing behaviors with respect to designating an alternate feed to take over when an existing feed "expires" based on the chronological stuff.
Probably even more important is the simple re-branding of RSS Feeds as WebSlices for a publict that, by and large, doesn't give two shits about paying attention to RSS Feeds. The simple truth is that while RSS Feeds are technically a push technology they require an extraordinary effort by the user to be of any use for marketing (that's extraordinary in the technical sense, not melting steel with rays from your eyeballs). Most people simply don't know what RSS is, fewer still will add your feed and fewer still will ever read it. Of course some people do well with RSS, but it's not really a barnstormer of a technology from an online marketing point of view. Who knows if WebSlices will be able to get John Q. User clicking and adding content, but it's worth taking a look at and developing for I reckon. Certainly placing the "Add WebSlice" option within the body of the page instead of as an abstract "RSS" button somewhere else on the browser means that people will be more likely to take action.
Activities:
Activities aren't really any morr revolutionary, but they're kind of interesting. Personally I think they're less interesting from an online marketing perspective just because they require a user to think about the concept of an "Activity" and then add it to his or her contextual menu and then actuall use it whereas the WebSlices are featured prominently in the interface and are pretty much a one-click subscription process I believe.
All that being said, Activities are roughly like small background web services presented a contextual menu options on the right-hand mouse button click (I believe). In that respect they're not much different than a lot of helper apps - you can blog something, post a photo, do pretty much anything you can do with any web service, but from a contextual menu. This is fairly interesting in that it allows you to keep your service, site or brand built into the browser in much the same way a toolbar is, so you can imagine all the possible uses.
Scenarios:
I'm exhausted today, so I don't have much creatvity flowing, but I can rattle off a couple of tired examples in case the utility here doesn't jump out at you.
WebSlice Scenario:
You have a site about Rotary Nasal Clippers (very exciting!) and you present your offers via RSS Feed as a WebSlice. You entice someone to add your WebSlice to get the latest deals on Rotary Nose Clippers - AS SEEN ON TV - and once or twice a day you release an update. Their IE8 polls regularly and when it sees your new offer it lights up BLING BLING the appropriate WebSlice box on the browser. Once they see this lit up they highlight the WebSlice and it renders a displayed offer based on the markup in your WebSlice RSS Feed thingee object.
MS Examples here.
Activity Scenario:
Like I said, not quite *as* jazzed about Activities. On their face they're much more interesting than WebSlices, but teh intarnets is chock full of "clever" applications created by tech-focused programmers that go fuck all nowhere because the tech dorks are always focused on what they think is cool and not what the user is likely to actually do that could make money. My main trepidation here is that I think most people likely to install and use an "Activity" are already smart enough to be doing this some other way and to ignore IE8's boiler plate, hoi polloi interface for web services like "Activities". Who knows though.
Anyhow, disclaimers aside, just check out the MS apps for good examples of activities - they're pretty straightforward:
here
Blargh, just thought I'd share since I made several posts yesterday that didn't add much to the discussion other than sarcasm. Disclaimer: I am a years-old Maxthon user and I don't give a fuck what anyone uses to browse, just give me a clear market preference! There's nothing worse than having a market split between two browsers.