In our last post, we showed you a few ways to add Bing to your browser whether you are using the latest version of IE, Firefox or Chrome. Today, we want to demonstrate how Bing’s integration with both IE8 and Firefox provides quick access to information, to make your search easier.
Internet Explorer 8
When typing certain queries in the IE8 Search Box, Bing will return rich auto-suggestions, including Instant Answers, which provide you the information you’re looking for right from the search box.
These suggestions are available in English only in the markets designated below:
weather (e.g. Boston weather) available for the United States, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, India
stock quotes (e.g. msft), available for the United States, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom
show times (e.g. Angels and Demons) available for the United States
flight status (e.g. ua 820) available for the United States, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, India
definitions (e.g. define renaissance) available for the United States, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, India, New Zealand, Philippines, South Africa
conversions (e.g. 71 degrees F in C) available for the United States, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, India, New Zealand, Philippines, South Africa
equations (e.g. x*5 = 7) available for the United States, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, India, New Zealand, Philippines, South Africa
calculator (e.g. 2+2) available for the United States, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, India, New Zealand, Philippines, South Africa
Accelerators
Bing accelerators enable you to access your favorite online services no matter where you are on the web. From the IE Add-ons site, you can add Bing Translate, Maps, and Shop and Save with Bing Shopping accelerators. For instance, if you are in the market for a new cell phone, and you find the Samsung BD-P3600 on a website you can highlight “Samsung BD-P3600,” right click and select the Shop and Save with Bing Shopping accelerator from the pop-up menu. You can preview Bing Shopping cashback offers on the Samsung BD-P3600 or click any of the links in the preview window to see offers from specific merchants.
Web Slices
IE8 Web Slices enable you to monitor information that changes periodically. We have Web Slices available for you to track Weather, Finance and Traffic.
To find all Bing add-ons for IE8, just click here.
Mozilla Firefox
Bing provides auto-suggestions on Firefox. When you start to type a query in the Firefox search box, Bing will return a list of suggestions based on what you have entered, thus helping you find what is important to you faster and easier. Say you are a White Sox fan and you are looking for tickets. Enter “white sox” in the Search Box and you get back the list shown below…just pick “white sock tickets” and you are quickly on your way to being in the stands!
Bing is based on the Open Search standard and we use the JSON interface supported by Firefox to retrieve auto-suggestions.
As you can see, you can Bing & Decide in many ways!
Debapriya Ray, Beatrice Oltean, Alessandro Catorcini, Bill Pardi, Bing