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posted by Steven Just about 2 weeks into the beta and we re getting great uptake and comments from all of you. Today I wanted to take a few moments and talk in more detail about a fun feature that we ve added to Windows Live Messenger and how it came about. When we were sitting around brainstorming ideas for new features in Messenger, some of the team was saying we have to do webcam display pictures. Everyone will want to use their webcam to make expressive video tiles. Makes sense. I need a picture of myself to put up in Messenger and there s a camera plugged in facing me seems like a no brainer. Well this was just the beginning. The team started developing this idea that was based on dynamic display pictures which allow you to set a mood for an avatar. Why do you need a mood tile? Lets say you are in a conversation with your best friend and they say: Hey guess who is coming to my birthday party? and you say Who? , and he says: Your ex girlfriend This would be a great time to have a mood tile. With mood tiles you can change your appearance of your display picture to react dynamically to the conversation. Open the display pictures dialog by clicking on your display picture from the main window Click on the button that says Tile with Moods you need to have a Webcam installed. Here is the one I use. Here you are presented with a dialog that allows you to take five still frames or five, 4 second video clips that you can make into a dynamic Mood tile. Clicking on the camera or webcam button records the frame or clip. When you are satisfied with what you recorded, click on the next empty box and record capture the next mood. Each mood has a corresponding emoticon. You can modify which emoticon is used for each mood. The default capture is what your display picture will look like most of the time. When you are in a IM conversation with someone you can show your mood tile off by pressing the keystrokes for the emoticons. Here is a quick video which shows off how this might play out for you. Using a mood tile in Messenger If you want to create a video display picture without the mood options you can do that too. Open up the display picture dialog, click Webcam Snapshot and either capture a still frame or 4 second video to set as your display picture. Put on your funniest expression and have some fun. Steven

Greetings, I m Russ McRee of Microsoft s Online Services Security amp; Compliance Incident Management team. My team serves as incident handlers for the various types of attacks our online services face. High on the list of incidents we handle are cross site scripting attacks. nbsp; There s an unfortunate misconception surrounding cross site scripting XSS attacks that result in them being perceived as less impactful than other types of attacks, and often more theoretical than practical. I believe this mindset increases inherent risk for Internet users. I wanted to share some statistics that show why I think the addition of the XSS Filter to Internet Explorer is so significant. The Web Application Security Consortium WASC recently released its findings from the Web Application Security Statistics Project 2007. The data in this report adds to the statistics I cited in The Anatomy of an XSS Attack, for the June 2008 ISSA Journal. Some highlights from the WASC study: Of the most prevalent vulnerabilities, including SQL injections, information leakage, predictable resource location, and cross site scripting, XSS was the most prevalent at 41 . Of 10,297 sites analyzed for the WASC study, 28,796 XSS vulnerabilities were discovered, accounting for 31 of all sites surveyed. Additional statistics: According to the Internet Security Threat Report from Symantec, during the last six months of 2007, 11,253 site specific, cross site scripting vulnerabilities were documented, compared to 6,961 between February and June in the first half of the year, for a 62 increase in six months. According to a WhiteHat Security Statistics Report, 90 of all websites have at least one vulnerability, and 70 of all vulnerabilities are XSS. While statistics can always be used to prove a point, more important are the actions taken to alleviate a problem. Since XSS vulnerabilities are of epidemic proportions, the XSS Filter in IE8 intended to protect consumers from this massive attack vector is a great thing. David Ross, Security Software Engineer on the SWI team has driven the effort that discovers likely XSS in a cross site request, and identifies amp; neuters the attack if it is replayed in the server s response. Users are not presented with questions they are unable to answer IE simply blocks the malicious script from executing. Simply put, IE 8 s XSS Filter seeks to provide defense in depth via automatic detection and prevention of common XSS attacks, a pervasive security threat facing Internet users, without deterring performance or compatibility. Referring back the statistics above, this translates into 70 of possible threats faced by IE 8 users deterred by the XSS Filter. nbsp; I m really excited about the work that the Internet Explorer and SWI teams have been doing nbsp; here to provide new levels of protection for users. Russ McRee

posted by Steven We know people like to personalize Messenger. Colorization, display picture, friendly name and personal status message have been the main surfaces for self expression in Messenger for a while. In this next version of Messenger we wanted to give users a new surface that allowed them to both theme their main window with pictures and images that were meaningful to them but also make them social by applying them to the conversation windows of your network. Scenes is one of those features that when people see it for the first time they get it right away. Think of it as the wallpaper in your IM salon. When you change your scene your network gets to keep up with you and your mood. So you might be asking yourself why would I want a Scene? Well here is an example of how I used scenes in Messenger. When I returned from family summer vacation in Southern California I wanted to stay in a beach mood. Messenger and Windows Live made that easy. This is what I did. There were three photos my wife took that really summed up the great time we had in California. The weather was beautiful and the waves were awesome. That isn t me . The third photo was a picture of my daughter on the carousel in Long Beach. When I launched Messenger I clicked on the curl in the upper right corner of the main window of Messenger: This opens up the Select a Scene dialog. From here I could browse to the picture I wanted to theme my main window and the conversation windows of the people I IM with. Messenger comes with a few scenes which you can use or you can pick your own by clicking the Browse button from this dialog. You can pick any PNG or JPEG photo to paint your main window. Be sure to pick one that can scale larger for the conversation window of your contacts. They ll get to see what you picked! From this dialog I can also let Messenger auto select a complimentary matching color for the rest of the Messenger main window, or I can further customize it by selecting my own favorite color. You can preview the changes by clicking the Apply button. You can also just drag and drop photos directly on to the top of the main window from Photo Gallery or from your pictures folders. When you do this Messenger auto selects a matching color as well. Here s the video we posted the other day on updating your scene just in case you didn t see it. On Monday I set my scene to the picture of the surfer. When my friends IM d me the conversation window had the picture of the surfer. Lots of people asked me about my vacation and I shared other photo albums with them on Windows Live. On Tuesday I set my scene to the picture of the sunset and Wednesday the picture of the carousel. The nice part about setting the pictures every day was that every time I launched Messenger I was reminded of all of the good times we had and in every conversation window there was something my friends and I could talk about. It s also important to note that others currently only others that are using the Beta version will see your scene when you IM with them. This is by design. One of the product managers referred to scenes as analogous to the clothes you wear. Many people use fashion as a way to express themselves and scenes give you an opportunity to do that digitally, through Windows Live Messenger. This is V1 of scenes and I am really interested to get people s feedback on the feature so that can take it to the next level in the next version of Messenger. Steven

posted by Lonn Hi everyone, it s been a week since we ve launched the beta and we re really pleased by the overall positive comments we ve heard, both on this blog and throughout the media. As with any beta, things might not always be perfect and we appreciate you trying it out and letting us know what you think. I ve been reading through the comments and forwarding all the bugs and feedback on to the Messenger team. Because of the amount of feedback we get it s impossible to personally respond to all of you, but just wanted to say thanks again. It s particularly helpful when you provide steps to reproduce your problem. All major issues have been logged and are being addressed. Here are a few that I wanted to quickly comment on, that were brought up by some of you. Custom emoticons don t display properly to the user. We re working on fixing this… Fyi, they do show up to the person you are sending them to . Changing your status using the drop down menu can cause errors with the layout. This is a known issue around High Dpi. The work around for now is to your the File menu to change status. Ad content. I ve brought up some of the concerns raised about the contents of a few ads with the advertising team and they are looking into this further. Regarding feature requests changes. We will continue to work towards the final release and feedback like yours is taken into account along with input from many other sources. In the end, we re confident that we will have an extremely solid product that we re all proud of and that you will love to use. Btw, in the next few days, if you are still using a previous beta build of Windows Live Messenger that came out earlier this year, you will receive a prompt message to upgrade to the latest beta version. We strongly encourage you to accept the upgrade and give us any feedback on the upgrade experience. Yes, we care and just thought we d give you a heads up! All of you that have downloaded the latest beta version over the past week, won t see the prompt and can ignore this friendly notice. : Lastly, I ve had the pleasure of using the new version of Windows Live Hotmail over the past little while as an internal tester and highly encourage all of you to check it out when the upgrades begin to go public very soon. It s cool and it s super fast! Thanks and talk to you more soon. Lonn

Just a quick reminder that our URL has changed to http: my.live.com. The link to the personalized page from www.live.com was removed last month. Your customized pages are still there, but you may need to update your bookmarks or homepage settings to point to http: my.live.com. The My.Live.com Team

The Virtual Earth team has just released a major update that brings some great new features, as well as enhancements to existing features to Live Search Maps. Some of the highlights include: New imagery. Brings locations to life, with richer bird s eye and 3D imagery of more locations in cities across North America. Weather Integration. Features near real time nbsp;local weather and cloud formations within the 3D imagery. Localized maps. Provides maps in English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish for customers in Western Europe. Localized maps are supported for both desktop and mobile applications. Near matching capabilities. Uses near matching capabilities to find locations with alternate and similar spellings, resulting in a more relevant search experience. Landmark based routing. Enhances searching for customers in the U.S. and Canada by offering maps with familiar landmarks, such as gas stations and fast food restaurants, called out by name. Rich imagery for mobile users. Shows new maps rendered specifically for mobile devices. One click directions. Gives directions in one click, enabling you to choose from route options by shortest time, shortest distance, or traffic flow. All of these improvements are made possible by the new Virtual Earth Web Service and Virtual Earth Map Control 6.2. If you are an application developer or a webmaster, you can take advantage of these new Virtual Earth offerings as well. For more details, see Announcing the Virtual Earth Web Service and Virtual Earth Map Control 6.2. Enjoy! Chris Pendleton, Virtual Earth Technical Evangelist

The latest Application Compatibility Toolkit ACT release, ACT 5.0.5428.1080 is publicly available and can be downloaded here. To give you some background, ACT helps customers understand their application compatibility situation by helping identify which applications are compatible with Vista, IE7, and IE8 and which require further testing. ACT allows compatibility data to be uploaded from individual machines to a central location for analysis, grouping and reporting. Once an issue has been identified, help will be available on how to resolve a particular issue or create a workaround. Furthermore, partners and customers using ACT are able to post comments to the Online Application Community, where they can share data and information about application compatibility testing. The IE components of ACT are: Internet Explorer Compatibility Test Tool IECTT . The IECTT helps identify your Web based issues, shows your results in real time, and allows you to upload and view the data in the Application Compatibility Manager ACM , a part of the ACT toolkit. As you test your application or site, the IECTT records events in real time when compatibility issues occur. For instance, if one of your sites injects JavaScript to another site and the IE8 Cross site scripting XSS filter detects this as a reflection attack, a Cross Site Scripting Filter event would be logged in the IECTT UI. Internet Explorer Compatibility Evaluators IECE . The IECE can be deployed within an enterprise and will help identify Web based issues in the background. As you test your application or site, the IECE records events in the background as they occur. You will be able to view the logged events in the ACM after you upload them. Overall, these tools help customers lower their costs for application compatibility testing, prioritize their applications, and deploy Internet Explorer more quickly. The work flow for identifying application compatibility issues before rolling out a new version of IE8 is shown below: Install the latest version of ACT and IE8. Either deploy the IECE to a body of testers or use the IECTT and enable logging. Begin a regression test pass of all line of business applications and sites. Once a compatibility event has been encountered, diagnose the problem and create a suitable workaround or fix. New Application Compatibility Events added in IE8 We added logging for twelve new Application Compatibility Events in IE8, as shown in the table below. Including the IE7 events, we now currently log 31 compatibility events. The Internet Explorer Compatibility article contains more information on these events. New IE8 Event Name Event ID Cross Site Scripting Filter 1046 Intranet at Medium Integrity Level 1047 DEP NX Crash Recovery 1048 Standards Mode 1049 File Name Restriction 1056 Codepage Sniffing 1058 AJAX Navigation 1059 Application Protocol 1061 Windows Reuse Navigation Restriction 1062 MIME Sniffing Restrictions no IMAGE elevation to HTML 1064 Web Proxy Error Handling Changes nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; 1065 Certificate Filtering 1073 Internet Explorer Application Compatibility article In the past, we noticed that the ACT tool helped identify the compatibility issues that occur in a line of business application or website, however, the tool itself did not provide any guidance for remediation. In IE8, we are providing a resource that gives exactly that information. The article is linked directly in the IECTT logged message or is directly available here. The article covers the following topics for all IE7 and IE8 compatibility events: Logged Message This is a copy of the event description that you ll see in the Internet Explorer Compatibility Test Tool. What is it? This is an elaboration of the logged message explaining what the event is. Additional references are provided when available. When is this event logged? This is a short description of what has to happen in your Web page for this event to be logged in the Internet Explorer Compatibility Test Tool. Example Most events include examples that demonstrate how to make the corresponding event create a log entry in the Internet Explorer Compatibility Test Tool. These examples help make the description of the event more concrete. Remediation Guidance on what you can do to eliminate the incompatibility from your Web site. We will be adding additional examples and remediation to this article before the final IE8 release. As you can see, we refined our Application Compatibility logging in IE8 and have provided a useful resource in the IE Application Compatibility article. We look forward to you trying it out and giving us feedback in the IE newsgroups. Jatinder Mann Program Manager

Hi, my name is Jatinder Mann and I work on the Internet Explorer Administration Kit IEAK and Group Policy. Back in June, James Pratt and Jane Maliouta alluded to IEAK improvements for IE8. Today, I will be talking about the work we have done in this area. Internet Explorer Administration Kit 8 Beta IEAK8 Beta is now available publically for everyone to try. To give you some background, the IEAK allows you to deploy customized packages and manage IE settings post deployment within corporations and among Internet Content Providers ICP and Internet Service Providers ISP . For instance, Acme Corp could use IEAK to create a custom IE package for their employees that has Acme favorites, search providers, home pages, Web Slices, Accelerators, and more. We simplified creating, deploying and managing branded IE packages. We optimized the IEAK to help you build your customized IE packages more quickly and to allow you to configure and customize new features in Internet Explorer 8, like Accelerators and Web Slices. In this post, I will be talking about how the IEAK: Helps customize new features in IE8 Provides full language and platform support Builds IE8 packages more quickly and is more intuitive. Customize New Features in IE8 The following new features can be now customized via the IEAK8: Accelerators You can easily include custom defaults for Accelerators: simply point to an XML file for the desired Accelerator, or import existing Accelerators from a local machine. Web Slices In the Favorites, Favorites Bar and Feeds dialog you can now add custom Web Slices by simply clicking on the Web Slice radio button and specifying the Web Slice information. Compatibility View Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 introduces Compatibility View which is a significant enhancement over the Emulate IE7 functionality from IE8 Beta 1. You can customize this feature in the Compatibility view dialog. Search Enhancements nbsp;IE8 supports search providers which offer rich text and image suggestions; through IEAK 8 you can add search providers with suggestions and configure default search providers. Additional IE8 Features Many other IE8 features, like InPrivate Browsing, Developer Tools and Delete Browsing History, can be customized in the Additional Settings page available in the corporate license mode. For example, in a corporate environment you might want to encourage users to delete saved passwords; you can chose to have the Delete Passwords checkbox in Delete Browsing History checked by default. Similarly, you may want to turn off InPrivate Browsing mode by default. Build Your IE8 Package More Quickly Internet Explorer 8 Customization Wizard has fewer pages than the Internet Explorer 7 Customization Wizard: you ll be able to build your customized package faster now. Furthermore, we have redesigned some screens to simplify the overall flow of the wizard. Custom Components is a good example of this. Compared to the original screen, this dialog box now displays a list of custom components and allows easy addition and removal of items through a pop up window. The IEAK7 Custom Components Screen: The simplified IEAK8 Custom Components Screen: Full Language and Platform support The IEAK8 Beta can build IE8 packages for all platforms and 24 languages supported by IE8 Beta 2. Please refer to the blog posted titled IE8 Beta 2 Available in 25 Languages for a complete list of supported platforms and languages. How does the IEAK apply branding? Customers have often asked me how the IEAK applies branding to IE. Branding in this case can be defined as any customization of IE, including all the customizations mentioned above. The IEAK generated IE package contains both the IE8 setup files unless you are using the configuration only package, in which case IE8 would already be installed on your computer and you wouldn t need the setup files and customizations. The IE8 setup is used to install IE8. Upon restart, customizations are applied per user to the registry and branding files. The customizations are stored in the install.ins file found under the Custom or Signup folders in the Internet Explorer directory. The install.ins file contains all types of branding including IEAK and unattend branding. IEAK branding consists of ISP, ICP and corporate branding, while unattend branding consists of the manufacturer defaults. Branding is also applied when the user chooses to Reset Internet Explorer settings RIES . This can be done by selecting Reset under the Advanced tab in the internet options dialog. RIES will apply the branding found in the install.ins file. If a user were to remove the install.ins file and reset IE, the branding step would get skipped. In IE8, RIES comes with a Remove Branding option; however, this option only removes ISP, ICP and Corporate branding; unattend branding will not be removed. We refined the IEAK in this release and look forward to your feedback once you ve had a chance to try it out. Jatinder Mann Program Manager P.S. James discusses what s new in IE8 for IT Pros in his screencast here edit: modified first paragraph under Build your IE8 Package More Quickly ; added P.S.; trimmed down the Compatiblity View section; updated the first IEAK link

Posted by Steven Meet the new Messenger beta Hello, I m Steven Abrahams, Lead Program Manager for Windows Live Messenger. I want to tell you about some of the thinking that s gone into the new Windows Live Messenger beta, and the new features. As Aaron mentioned in our previous post, we ll have more in depth posts on each of the new features of this Messenger beta in the upcoming weeks. When we started planning the next version of Messenger, we wanted to continue providing a great user centered, hand crafted experience for instant messaging, but we also wanted to bring in some new features that connect you with the rest of Windows Live. We are truly excited about this beta release of Messenger, and so I d like to give you an overview of some of the improvements you ll see. Some of the changes you ll notice right away: Glassy: The new Messenger, like the other Windows Live beta programs, is now framed in beautiful Windows Vista glass, similar to what you may have seen in Windows Vista. Clean: We simplified the main window by removing the top toolbar and moving tabs from the side to the bottom. We found people really weren t using the top toolbar buttons except for Mail, so we found a new spot for Mail, and removed the other toolbar buttons. We also really cleaned up the conversation window, made the toolbars there more streamlined, and gave you more room to IM. People, people, people: You told us you wanted to see real pictures of people. So, now you can display your contacts real display pictures in your contact list. You can choose from 3 different picture sizes, or, no picture at all. People and web search: You can now search for people and web pages from one field. If you type in someone s name, we first look to see if they are in your contact list. If they aren t, you can try searching for their profile on Windows Live, or for other info about them on the web. You can also just type in Movies in 94118 and click web search, and we ll take you directly to the Internet search results. Categories and groups: What used to be called groups is now called categories. The old groups were really just categories of your Messenger contacts. This change makes room for a new, more powerful groups feature that you can use across all of the Windows Live services. We ll talk more about that below. We ve received a lot of feedback from our over 300 million customers, and we ve responded with some great new features. Let me tell you about a few of them in more detail. Favorite people at the top It turns out that despite how many people you know, there are only a few that you keep in touch with really often, and want to see at the top of your contact list. Favorites is a new category in Messenger think of it as your speed dial for friends, family, or anyone you just want to keep in view. You can add and remove people from your favorites list and re order them up and down. It helps you keep a select group of people easily accessible. I have my wife, friends that I frequently IM, and the folks on my team in this category. You can add as many people as you like to your favorites , or if you prefer to have everyone in one big list, you can also hide the favorites category. What s your scene? Some of you who use Messenger a lot have been asking to be able to skin and colorize windows to meet your personal aesthetic or to match your mood. Well, now you can select the scene that appears in your main Messenger window, and your contacts get to see it in the conversation window too. Setting your scene in Messenger You start by selecting a picture, either one of the default Windows Live scenes, or any photo from your own collection. When you drag the photo over the top of the Messenger contact list, the pictures is painted across the header of the Messenger main window. Pretty cool, huh? The other cool thing is that when you re chatting with a friend, your scene appears in their conversation window, and their scene appears in yours. Now your friends get to see not only your display picture and personal message, but when you re chatting, they also get to see your scene. Dynamic display pictures Dynamic avatars built through our partners have been around for a while, and lots of people love them. But now, you can make your own dynamic display picture that can react to the emoticons you use in your IM conversations. And you can make short video clips for each of your moods. Try it out. Click your display picture and select Tile with moods. Then, pose 5 times for your webcam like in a photo booth , and make a fun dynamic display picture to show your friends. What s new with people you know If you re like me, you have a huge contact list, and it is nearly impossible to keep track of what everyone is up to. You and your friends are doing all kinds of things on Windows Live posting photos, blogging, changing their personal messages but unless you check their space or they send you a message telling you about it, you may not see the new activity. Well, we understand what you re up against, and so we ve made it easy to see the latest activities from lots of different people and services all in one place: Messenger. Messenger has a new module at the bottom of your contact list called What s new. When your friends meet up for a Windows Live event, update their display picture, or post photos, comments, and blog entries on Windows Live, you see it all right there in the What s new module. You can read updates, click through to the actual item, or move on to the next update. New conversation window A lot of thought has gone into the new conversation window. In fact, I have a team of developers dedicated to just that: making the conversation window rock! One of our big improvements is to infuse your conversations with more of your personality. When you open a conversation window with a friend, the window frame allows you to instantly see their mood, what scene they ve set, and what their personal message says. Granted, if you are a purist and just want to IM, you can, still do that too. We ve made it super simple to hide a lot of the personal bells and whistles if that s what you prefer. By the way, if you use Messenger for video calls, and you have a computer and webcam capable of VGA video, you ll want to check out the new full screen VGA 640×480 video calls through Messenger. It will feel like you are watching TV. I am not kidding. You have got to see it to believe it. Photo sharing in Messenger Every day, millions and millions of files and pictures are shared through Messenger. In this latest beta release, we ve made photo sharing a richer part of the conversation. Now you can drag a single photo or a bunch of photos right onto the conversation window, and your photos show up right there. You can keep sending IMs back and forth while you and your friends click through the pictures. The photo sharing is synchronized, so if your friend clicks to the next picture, it changes on your screen as well. I use this feature every day to send screen shots to people, and share photos of my daughter with family and friends. I think you ll quickly see how it becomes a great new type of conversation. Sharing photos in Messenger Chatting with groups Up to now, Messenger had been mostly about 1 on 1 conversations. But now we ve added groups into the mix. The new groups are lists of people who can IM with each other all in one conversation window. The group could be your family, a peer working group, book club, your Friday night poker buddies, or your home owners association. Imagine you are working on a project with two or three other people, and you need to communicate frequently with everyone. Maybe it s just about fielding a quick question, maybe you want to pull together a working group to discuss a topic, or maybe you just want to see if anyone is ready to take a break and meet up for coffee. In the new Messenger beta, you can create a group and invite people to join. As members join and come online, the group lights up, and you can start chatting with anyone in the group who is online. By expanding the group in the main window of Messenger, you can see the list of members, and even start a conversation with someone you don t know yet. Groups are a great way to collaborate, but also to meet new people or deepen your relationships. What, no green guy anymore? Messenger has always been about putting people at the center of your experience. The new design for showing your online status makes it easier than ever to see when the people you care about are available for chatting. You can choose to display your contacts using one of 3 display picture sizes, or just show a small colored square that indicates the online status of each contact. We ve also color coded the display picture frames, which makes it easy to see when contacts are available green , busy red , away yellow , or offline gray . And yes, we have set the green buddy icon free from the online status system. He and his blue pal are still at the center of our brand, logo, and Messenger icons, and they ll always be with us. But we think the new design is cleaner, less ambiguous, and works well across all of Windows Live. What do you think? There have been a lot of changes in this version of Messenger. We got rid of a lot of things that had been hanging around for a while and weren t getting the kind of use we d like to see. We hope this has made the experience a lot cleaner, easier, and more fun to use. We d love to hear your feedback on the new design and experience, so we can continue to improve. And we re looking forward to the full release, and hope that you are, too. Also wanted to thank you to everyone that has provided their feedback so far, please keep it coming. I know Lonn and Aaron have read ALL of the comments posted so far and have provided summaries to the entire team. Steven

Hello, My name is S bastien Zimmermann. I m the developer owner for the Visual Search Feature, which Sharon already described in detail. I also own the Accelerators Button Feature, and during IE7 worked on Setup and Phishing Filter now SmartScreen Filter . In this post, I would like to get you started on creating your own Visual Search service provider for Internet Explorer 8. If you own or develop websites of any kind even if it s a small website or an intranet site this post is for you. Making your website available for search from within the browser enables your customers users to access your website whenever they need a service from it, without having them type your full web address. Additionally, you and your brand are always there with them, right in their browser. The more useful the service, the more likely users are to install it to have an ongoing connection with your website. To keep things simple, I will take the Hello, World! approach: give you the basics so you can quickly get your service running. To keep things simple, this service won t even be dynamic at first. Once the foundations are there, it will be easy for you to tailor the sample to your own needs, no matter what language your pages are written in. For the sake of simplicity, I assume in this post that your website is at http: www.example.com please replace all references of this domain with your own website domain. Defining Your Service Before users can install your service, you ll first need to define it in a way the browser can understand, i.e. through the OpenSearch Description XML file. Copy the following code and paste it into a file that you ll put at the root of your website. We ll name it opensearch.xml, so it will be accessible by anyone at http: www.example.com opensearch.xml: lt;?xml version 1.0 encoding UTF 8 ? gt; lt;OpenSearchDescription xmlns http: a9.com spec opensearch 1.1 gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;ShortName gt;example Search lt; ShortName gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Url type text html template http: www.example.com results.aspx?q searchTerms gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Url type application x suggestions xml template http: www.example.com suggestions.xml gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Image height 16 width 16 type image icon gt;http: www.example.com favicon.ico lt; Image gt; lt; OpenSearchDescription gt; There are three important pieces we define in this file: A Results Page URL whose MIME type is text html, where the user will land after a search here, results.aspx. The searchTerms part will automatically be replaced by IE with the user s search terms. In this sample, I assume your website has an integrated search engine. If it doesn t, and unless it s an intranet website, you may replace that URL with the following one instead, which will search your domain using live.com: http: search.live.com results.aspx?q site:www.example.com searchTerms A Suggestions Service to assist users while typing their search queries here, suggestions.xml. If you do not want to have a suggestions service, you may omit this line IE will handle it just fine. Also, if you already have a suggestion service available that uses JSON instead of XML, you may use its URL instead just replace the application x suggestions xml MIME type with application x suggestions json. An Icon here we made a reference to a favicon.ico file in the root of your website. This is the icon that will be used as a button in the QuickPick the row of search provider buttons at the bottom of the search dropdown, pictured above. If you don t have an icon for now, IE will choose a non descript default for you, just remove the whole line. But it s better if you have one this allows users to recognize your website and or brand. Note: for your OpenSearch file to work properly in IE7, it is important that the URL of type text html appears first in your file, before the one of type application x suggestions xml or application x suggestions json. Making Your Service Discoverable Next, you ll need to tell the browser where to find your service description i.e. the opensearch.xml file you just created. This is easy; just add the following line somewhere in the lt;head gt; section of any web page where you want to make your service available: lt;link rel search type application opensearchdescription xml href http: blogs.msdn.com opensearch.xml title example Search gt; That s it. Try loading the page: you ll notice that the down arrow next to the search box has lit . Click the arrow and you ll now be able to add your very own service in IE! In addition, you may want to programmatically enable the user to add your provider to IE. Just add a hyperlink or button on your page that calls the AddSearchProvider method, referencing the description file: lt;a href javascript:window.external.AddSearchProvider opensearch.xml gt;Click here to add my search engine to IE8! lt; a gt; Note: to check if the user has already installed your provider, you ll want to use the IsSearchProviderInstalled method. Finally, when your service is installed, you ll automatically be featured on the Accelerators button without any additional work. Select some text, click on the button, then on More Accelerators. Choose your service and it will be called with the text you just selected. Note that you may add support for Accelerator Previews directly from the OpenSearch file. This is beyond the scope of this post, but more information is available here. Implementing Visual Search Suggestions Now that your service is described, let s implement suggestions.xml. Here, I m going to use a sample that goes over most features to give you the basics. Ok, so let s copy the following and paste it into suggestions.xml, at the root of your website: lt;?xml version 1.0 ? gt; lt;SearchSuggestion gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Query gt;test lt; Query gt; lt;! Note: This sample will only work when you type test in the search box! gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Section gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Item gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Text gt;Hello, World! lt; Text gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Url gt;http: www.webstandards.org files acid2 test.html top lt; Url gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Description gt;Your Visual Search service is working! lt; Description gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Image width 100 height 100 alt Acid2 Smiley align top nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; source http: ieblog.members.winisp.net images acid2smiley.png gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt; Item gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Separator title This is a separator gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Item gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Text gt;This is a simple text suggestion lt; Text gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt; Item gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Item gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Text gt;And another one with description lt; Text gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Description gt;This is the description lt; Description gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt; Item gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Item gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Text gt;This is a text suggestion with an image lt; Text gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Image width 16 height 16 alt Acid2 Smiley align middle nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; source http: ieblog.members.winisp.net images acid2smiley.png gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt; Item gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Item gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Text gt;This is a suggestion with a link and an image lt; Text gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Url gt;http: www.live.com results.aspx?q Hello World lt; Url gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Image width 16 height 16 alt Acid2 Smiley align middle nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; source http: ieblog.members.winisp.net images acid2smiley.png gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt; Item gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt; Section gt; lt; SearchSuggestion gt; And voil ! If you type test in your search box after selecting your service, you ll see the cool suggestions featured at the beginning of this post. Note that anything else but test won t work, because IE checks if the lt;Query gt; tag matches what s in the search box. If you are using ASP.NET, try this for something a little more dynamic pictured on the left : rename suggestions.xml to suggestions.aspx, change the URL of type application x suggestions xml in the OpenSearch Description file to http: www.example.com suggestions.aspx?q searchTerms , and re install your service in the browser remove it first through Tools gt;Manage Add Ons . Then, replace the first couple lines of suggestions.aspx with the following and try searching with your service again: lt; Page ContentType text xml Language C gt; lt; OutputCache Location None gt; lt;?xml version 1.0 ? gt; lt;SearchSuggestion gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Query gt; lt; HttpUtility.HtmlEncode Request q gt; lt; Query gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Section title example Search gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Item gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Text gt;You typed: lt; HttpUtility.HtmlEncode Request q gt; lt; Text gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt; Item gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Separator gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;! The rest of the file comes here gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Item gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Text gt;Hello, World! lt; Text gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Url gt;http: www.webstandards.org files acid2 test.html top lt; Url gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Description gt;Your Visual Search service is working! lt; Description gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt;Image width 100 height 100 alt Acid2 Smiley align top nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; source http: ieblog.members.winisp.net images acid2smiley.png gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; lt; Item gt; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; … Conclusion The first step being the hardest, I hope this post succeeded in making it easier for you to get started. I look forward to see how you will creatively use the features in IE8 Visual Search to help your users quickly get to things they want on your site. If you need to dig deeper after reading this post, our writers created an excellent Search Provider Extensibility article on MSDN. Now, it is up to you to develop amazing services using this feature. Inspire yourself from the services already available on the IE8 Gallery, and explore the possibilities. The QuickPick menu makes vertical searches such as Wikipedia, Amazon, and most likely your website more visible and accessible, and enables users to quickly target their search on your service. So whether your website is about stock quotes and financial news, or sells music, auto parts, or cake you can provide a way for your customers to have a deep, useful, ongoing relationship with your website. I sincerely hope you will have as much fun developing for this feature as we ve all had designing it. We are interested in learning about the services you create. Let us know about them, and do upload your OpenSearch Description File to the IE8 Gallery once finished for everyone to use. Happy coding! S bastien Zimmermann Software Design Engineer edit: updated first image