New IE plug-in aims to speed Web searches

[Itsme]

New IE plug-in aims to speed Web searches

By Elinor Mills, CNET News.com
Published on ZDNet News: July 13, 2005, 12:00 AM PT

A free plug-in released Wednesday for Internet Explorer allows users to mouse over Web search listings for an instant view of the content rather than having to wait for the full page to download.

The software, created by San Francisco-based Browster, uses patented "pre-fetching" instant page rendering that serves up a copy of the Web page in milliseconds in a new window on top of the original search page.

Users can click on links and information in that new window and download data from that Web site. They can exit by moving the mouse back to the main search site or click on an icon in the new window for viewing the previous or next search item in the list of results.

Browster 1.0 works with search sites like Google and Yahoo, e-commerce sites like eBay and Amazon.com and other Web sites that can be searched, like Craigslist, Bloglines, newsgroups and news sites.

The plug-in works with Internet Explorer 5 and later versions. Other browsers will be supported in the future, said Browster CEO Scott Milener.

[SnowSurfer]

i dont want to be a joy kill, but isnt prefetching a security risk for some reason

i think it is because it downloads everything on the site onto your computer through the plugin?

[bbrian]

I don't see how.. it most likely only works with IE because it uses functionality exposed by IE to download and render the pages. It would be no riskier than clicking on the link you are hovering over in the search results. This would actually be a really easy plug in to develop.