ebaY sidebar for Internet Explorer 8

eBay has just launched a new sidebar offering in beta. I have been collaborating with eBay on this wonderful Internet Explorer 8 sidebar. What is unique is that they are the first Internet Explorer sidebar that utilizes Silverlight™ as part of the presentation layer opening up specific UI features to make the application standard out.

Here is a screen capture of the sidebar on the left running in Internet Explorer 8 on my laptop:

The sidebar utilizes eBay’s Services to obtain real-time information about the customer’s transactions, using an internet connection. Even when the user is not running Internet Explorer, a separate notification service (located visually in the tray) informs the user about important events.

Here is a short  video  on the eBay sidebar with Jonathan Gabbai Global Innovation Manager on the functionality and technical advantages of using Silverlight and IE8 features.

The eBay sidebar is a great example of “Software-Plus-Services” strategy as there is software that runs on a computer you control in this case it is IE8 and Silverlight, plus services delivered over the internet as eBay services, working together to enable cool new rich engaging experience for the eBay user and making both software and services better than either by themselves.

For more information on the eBay IE8 Silverlight sidebard, please see the following related articles:

Case Study: Coming Soon

Channel9 Video: eBay on IE8

Yahoo! optimized IE8 Web Slice

If you are a Yahoo! Mail user and your currently using IE8 you will love the feature called the Mail Web slice that is available as part of Internet Explorer 8 optimized for Yahoo!. The Web slice gives signed-in users quick previews of their Mail right from a drop-down page within browser, so no matter where you are on the Web, your Yahoo! Mail is right there with you.  To use this feature – after downloading the Yahoo! optimized IE8 – make sure you’re signed into Yahoo!, then just click on the Y! Mail slice on the favorites bar whenever you want a preview of your Inbox.

So don’t wait download Internet Explorer 8 and start enjoying some of the cool features like Accelerator, Web Slice , Visual Search and many…many more rich features.

Additional  IE8 features optimized for Yahoo! can be downloaded at  ie8addons.

Internet Explore 8 Optimized for eBay

Following the launch of Internet Explorer 8 at MIX09 eBay has their Accelerator, Visual Search and Web Slice available at eBay. If you haven’t yet given it a try, as Tim Sneath Director Windows and Silverlight technical evangelism team has very nicely captured the eight good reasons that might persuade you to check out IE8.

Here is a nice Channel9 video  with Jonathan Gabbai Global Innovation Manager, talking about how eBay is using the different features of IE8. In the first part of the interview Jonathan talks about the  eBay Web Slices, Accelerator and Visual Search Provider. In the second part of the interview he talks about the upcoming eBay IE8 Silverlight Sidebar which is currently in pre-beta.

IE8 isn’t a good browser, it is much faster than leading browsers such as IE7, Fire Fox and Chrome. Here is a nice video on the performance tests of real-world sites with leading browsers. A great web performance is about more than the speed of the scripting engine – in the real-world, it’s an end-to-end test of all the browser components.

The IE8 add-on gallery has roughly over 1,200 Web Slices, Accelerators, and add-ons available from companies like Digg, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo, Amazon and more.

So don’t wait download Internet Explorer 8 and start enjoying some of the cool features like Accelerator, Web Slice , Visual Search and many…many more rich features!