Speed up common browsing tasks with Accelerators

Copy. Change windows. Paste. Click. Repeat.

Most of us follow this familiar routine hundreds of times a week, just to perform some common online task—such as looking up the meaning of an unfamiliar term or emailing helpful content to a colleague. It's almost automatic, if a little tedious. Wouldn't it be lovely to speed things up a bit?

Once again, Internet Explorer comes to our rescue—this time, with an extensive library of Accelerators (if you haven't tried these yet, you're in for a treat). Highlight a bit of text within your browser window, and these Internet Explorer add-ons let you quickly take advantage of popular, web-based services and tools.

To see how this works, select a word or phrase within your browser window, and click on the attractive blue Accelerator icon Accelerator icon that appears.

Up pops a list of available Accelerators, each designed to get you the info you want more quickly and easily than ever:

List of available Accelerators

As you peruse the pop-up list of Accelerators, you can preview the information they'll provide simply by pointing to them (not all Accelerators provide previews, but when they do you can often get the info you need without ever leaving your current web page).

Don't see an Accelerator you want in the pop-up list? You can choose from more—much more—in the Internet Explorer Add-ons Gallery, which you should most definitely check out. You'll find accelerators for instant access to Wikipedia definitions, maps and directions, language translations, auctions, sharing with social media, blogs or email, and scores of other everyday tasks:

Add-ons Gallery

You can navigate to the Gallery directly from the Accelerator pop-up and easily customize your set of Accelerators. It's also easy to make adjustments to your selection using the Manage Accelerators tool. See how it all works in this video, and check out Jay Munro's excellent article on the topic.

With all the time you save using Accelerators, you can get more work done—or sneak in a game of Solitaire. I promise not to tell.

Jeff