Specifying target sites for IE-8 accelerators

Question

I'm referred to this forum by

Dinesh Kattameda
Tier 2 Application Support
Server and Tools Online Operations Team

I posed this question to Microsoft Support.  M Imran suggested I bring it to MSDN forums for consideration.

I'm new to Vista, IE 8 and Accelerators.  I've read the help info on Accelerators.  I don't see a way to specify that my accelerator take me to the web site of my choice to get the info I want on the text I've selected in the web page I'm reading.

For instance:  I use a web site at myutmost.org frequently.  This is a Bible devotional site which always includes a partial text of one verse of the Bible.  I want to use the IE-8 accelerator function so I can select the chapter reference for the verse shown in myutmost.org, then have the accelerator take me to BibleGateway.com where I can paste the reference into that site's search bar to bring up the entire chapter context.  I don't see a way in the accelerator help info to specify that an accelerator take me to BibleGateway.com.  Is there a way to do this presently or is this something to suggest for advancement of the accelerator feature?

For clarity on what I want to do, let me walk through the process with anyone who will follow me on this.  I go to http://www.myutmost.org/.  I click on the link titled "Today's Reading".  For today it takes me to http://www.myutmost.org/01/0127.html for Jan 27.  The text is shown for Matthew 6:25, meaning chapter 6 and verse 25, but I often want to read the whole chapter, in this case chapter 6.  So I select, or highlight, just Matthew 6, not including the ":25".  The IE-8 accelerator arrow immediately shows up, and when I click on the arrow it shows the list of possible things I can do with it.  If I select "All Accelerators" in that list a second list appears, with "Find more accelerators"and "Manage accelerators" at the bottom.  But so far I see no way to command, or program, my accelerator function to take me directly to http://www.biblegateway.com/.  If there was a way, I would simply right click the highlighted portion, Matthew 6, click Copy, then click the accelerator arrow to take me to BibleGateway.  Once there I would just paste "Matthew 6" into the BibleGateway search bar.  As it is, without this capability, I have to highlight the text and copy it, open a new tab or window, click on the BibleGateway shortcut in my favorites bar, then paste "Matthew 6" into the search bar.

Note that in the Windows Help and Support article titled:

Using Accelerators to find addresses, define words, and do other tasks with selected text

it states:

" You can also choose the web services or websites that Accelerators use to handle different types of tasks. "

This seems to say I should be able to choose BibleGateway.com as the website that one of the Accelerators would use to open a new tab and take me there.  But I cannot find any instruction on how to do just that.

Is it doable now, or is this an idea for development?

Answer 1

Hi,

You will have to ask biblegateway.com if they have programmed an search accelerator to do what you want to do.

Any search Accelerator though, will take you to a search results page that may list links to biblegateway or other sources that match your selected text.

What do other ppl do? My brother uses a special software program (don't know its name) that gives external links as he hovers his mouse over published biblical text.

"Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die getting there"

Regards.

---

Rob^_^

Answer 2

Thank you, Rob, for the insight and quick response, and humor.

As you said, I tried using the "Search with Google" accelerator, which is one of the four defaults that come up when I click the accerator arrow.  Of course, I selected the Bible book name and chapter number first while in myutmost.com's page.  When the Google accelerator opened the search results page biblegateway.com was the first three options, with a link to "show more results from biblegateway.com.  When I clicked on the first option, biblegateway.com immediately presented the entire chapter text, exactly what I needed.  As it turns out, that method has less number of steps, to get from the page with the reference I want to look up, to the page with the results I'm after.  With the accelerator method, 4 steps: select text, click accelerator arrow, click search accelerator, click search accelerator page's link to resource.  With my customary method, 6 steps: select text, right click, click 'copy', click quicklink button to resource in my command bar, paste text in resource's search bar, click search.  The difference is about 6 seconds, a good benefit.

I will check with biblegateway.com about this, even send them my original question for their technical consideration.

Thank you for giving me your time and expertise!

John

Answer 3

 I asked : [e-mail] about it 2 years ago ,2009

 

The word bible not even in the Accelerators web page No God I guess they DON'T *****

Answer 4

Hello,

A couple years ago, I created an IE Accelorator for BibleGateway.com.  I have just put it on my website.  Here is a link:

http://www.jeremiahmanchester.com/ie/biblesearchaccelerators.html

I hope this Accelorator is useful for you and for others.  I can't promise to offer support/enhancements for this Accelerator, and it may stop working if BibleGateway.com changes the parts of their website that this Accelerator uses.  Let me know if you have any questions, though, and I will be happy to help if I can and as time allows.

Jeremiah