Web Slices a rip off of OS X feature?
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Microsoft Web Slices are a new feature in IE 8, according to the WinSuperSite blog, that allows you to take a slice of a Web site and create a quick link to that slice while in IE 8.
For example, if you wanted to just check the top news stories on CNN.com, you could create a Web Slice that would only load that portion of the CNN.com page and the have quick access to it through Internet Explorer 8 without having to load the whole page. If that sounds familiar, it is — because it is essentially the same thing as Mac OS X had with its widget creator in Safari. It gave you the ability to take portions of Web pages and turn them into widgets so you could access them in Dashboard without having to open a Web browser.
Since many people will be replacing IE 8 with Firefox on their computers, I think it would have been a better idea to have used Apple’s idea on the subject and allowed for the creation of custom gadgets that could have existed on the sidebar. At least that way people would have access to the feature, which is a useful tool once you use it, without having to subject themselves to using Internet Explorer. Perhaps Firefox and Opera will incorporate a similar feature in their next release.
7 Comments
Zenium
April 5th, 2009
at 8:53pm
Wow! Another example of Microsoft developing a new feature that someone else already implemented.
Why am I not surprised by this?
Web Slices a rip off of OS X feature? - Blog Blog
April 6th, 2009
at 6:47am
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April 6th, 2009
at 11:07am
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Aryeh Goretsky
April 6th, 2009
at 11:00pm
Hello,
Didn’t widgets exist before either Safari or Internet Explorer added them as Klipfolio, Konfabulator or, for that matter, PointCast (circa 1996)?
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
David Millar
April 17th, 2009
at 9:40am
They’re not so much introducing the widgets as a new feature as they’re specifying a new microformat to facilitate getting and updating widgets.
Cheap and shoddily implemented, yes, but a decent try on their part. I give Microsoft a pat on the back and a B- for this one.
RJain
April 29th, 2009
at 7:32pm
Could it be that the OS X got this idea from Microsoft? Consider that ages ago Excel 97 had Web Query feature, whereby you could view a slice of data from this web site and another slice from another web site, all in one sheet. Your uncle had an Excel sheet which would show hightlights from US, UK and Indian news source, stock quotes and weather while your aunt served tea. This was before RSS, even before Google News I think. So while you kids were born around the time OS X came, big bang happened eons ago.
RJain
May 11th, 2009
at 1:23pm
After some further research, I found out that I was wrong and this idea is actually a reimplementation of Apple’s Desk Accessory feature with live content updating. I apologize for misleading anyone who looked at my comment.