Internet Explorer 8 shaping up with Web Assistant

Microsoft has debuted the planning for Internet Explorer 8 since early January 2007. In addition, the Redmond Company has been testing a pre-alpha version of the browser internally and it has also looked for input on the features that will make it into the next version of the browser. The future of IE7 will be dissected at MIX07 between April 30 and May 2 at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Microsoft has not let many details leak out, but it will discuss the features and layout issues currently under development for the upcoming version of its browser.

In this respect, while Mozilla is already offering alpha versions of Firefox 3.0 under the codename Gran Paradiso, Microsoft has muted all details concerning IE8. However, among the innovations presented at Microsoft TechFest 2007, apc reported one that has the potential to be the first taste of Internet Explorer 8.

Web Assistant is a project that has been cooking in Microsoft's labs, and it could be integrated in the next version of the company's browser. Web Assistant is designed to work in concert with a browser in order to deliver contextual information to the content viewed by the user on web pages. Via Web Assistant, Microsoft aims to increase search relevance.

To start with, it's not a dog with a wagging tail, or an annoying paper clip pointing out that it looks like you're searching the web. Would you like some help?

No, Microsoft ha finally learned from those mistakes.

In its simplest form, the Web Assistant processes the page you're currently viewing and recognises key words and phrases in the story.

A window pane to the right of the main screen aggregates the most common types of online searches, listing each under a tab -- such as On The Web for a conventional search, In The News for news stories, Images, and Reference (which currently points to Wikipedia).



Clicking any of the highlighted words in the main article automatically fetches up relevant links under each of those tabs, to save you from manually visiting a search engine and entering the text.



It can also go beyond simple search results. When you're looking at a webpage that discusses a movie, Web Assistant will pull up links to trailers in various formats, show positive and negative reviews (i.e. Rotten Tomatoes), and links to Amazon and eBay so you may purchase the DVD.

That much of Web Assistant looks pretty well baked.

More impressive, although still a little rough around the edges, is how the program can use context to ‘disambiguate' searches where a word may have several likely meanings and recognise the particular meaning that you're looking for.

For example, browsing a Web page on African wildlife that mentions the jaguar would ensure that the links called forth in the Web Assistant tabs would be search links, images and the Wikipedia entry for the large jungle cat rather than the car or the Apple operating system.

This obviously calls for a lot of computing smarts taking place behind the scene, and would be assisted if users allowed the PC to anonymously share their usage patterns and results with others to expand the program's base of contextual knowledge.