IE8 users can now get Live Search instant answers, including financial information, weather conditions, movie show times, calculations, equations, conversions, and definitions directly in the IE8 search box.
To see the stock quote answer in action, type MSFT in the search box; you’ll get the current stock information, plus the performance graph supplied by Comstock. If you want details, just click on the image and you’ll go to moneycentral.msn.com for more info.
To see the latest weather forecast, type weather in the search box and you’ll get the weather icon, current temp, as well as the predicted high and low temps from Foreca.
Want to try a few of your own? Use the queries below (in bold) to see more:
Instant answers are available by default with IE8 when you're using Live Search in the U.S.
Enjoy!
- Alfred Liu, Senior Development Lead, and Beatrice Oltean, Program Manager
Great...the features are cool BUT I have the Live Search Toolbar so now I have TWO search boxes...which one should I use?? Microsoft should really try to clean things up. If I have the Live Search Toolbar then the other box should be deleted or just have suggestions in the address line like Google Chrome.
AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And what about other(no US) countries. Russian version does not support suggestions ans cool background img. And suggestions don't full in US version..
Sounds good, but the search box in IE8 RC1 does nothing for me most of the time. For both Google and Live as providers, it does nothing when you hit enter. And the suggestions area just says "An error occurred". I have tried removing both and re-adding them but nothing. They have both worked intermittently over the last week.
Love IE8, but getting tired of having to go to a search site by URL!
Any chance for an API so other browser manufacturers could do the same thing?
Don't forget that you can do the same thing in the address bar, just by starting with a question mark and a space. Like:
? msft
? define alert
etc.
Handy for those of us who prefer having just one box.
Fantastic work :)
Great stuff - have you considered having a currency conversion feature? I find it's one of the only reasons to go to Google anymore.
Feed: LiveSide - Windows Live news and interviews Posted on: Wednesday, February 04, 2009 12:04 AM Author
Thank you. That's an awesome feature. I'm more eager than ever to move back to Windows from Mac OS X ... I'll only miss the two-finger mousepad scroll.
Is this feature only available after IE 8 official release?
My IE 8 is Beta. Cannot find this feature.
I agree with the others - The Live search team needs to work with the Windows Live team to do something about the redundancy in having a second Live Search box in the Windows Live Toolbar. Maybe it should auto-detect if the browser already has Live Search enabled and disable the one in the toolbar?
A currency converter would be great! MSN Money's currency converter can take a page from Yahoo! who has a fantastic AJAX converter, and it can easily find what type of currency you're looking for as you type by either country name or currency type.
Please release features in international countries more often - It'd bring more user satisfaction.
looking towards definitions as well, makes everyone's life easier. Don't try to do advertisement in the search results. Thanks.
The search bar in IE8 RC1 is one of the browser's strongest point, I love it -- it's one of my favorite new features.
In all honesty I use Google as my default search engine but I am really liking this new Instant Answers feature. If I can make a small suggestion: How about adding a drop-down option to "define:", "weather", and other such search entries that would drop down a slightly bigger pane with more info, such as a longer definition entry. Translation would be cool too. The default translation would be based on that set in the Live Translation accelerator (I have mine to English - Spanish).
@mstyura We are evaluating other markets where we can ship this feature. First we will start with the markets already supported by suggestions: Australia (AU), Canada (CA), India (IN), Ireland (IE), New Zealand (NZ), Philippines (PH), South Africa (ZA), United Kingdom (UK)
@Shecky Have you changed the default search provider for IE8 RC1? This feature is enabled by default in IE8 RC1.