Highlighting Text in E-Books and IE8 Accelerators on a Mac

I’m waiting for e-book devices that allow the reader to highlight text. This is essential for students reading textbooks, and for nonfiction readers. Any chance of that happening?

A: Your wait is over. Major e-book readers I’ve tested, such as Amazon.com’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader Daily Edition, already allow highlighting. In other words, you can select any section of text in a book and give it a gray background so it stands out from the rest of the text, persistently. It’s not yellow or any other color, because the screens are grayscale and don’t display colors, but it is highlighting. You can also add notes on e-readers.

I have a Mac laptop that I use at home with Safari and Firefox installed. My office environment uses Windows and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8. One of the features of IE8 that I really like and often use are “Accelerators.” I would like to know if there are accelerators available for download for the most up-to-date versions of either Safari or Firefox.

A: Accelerators are a particular feature of IE8 that allows users to perform an action on a highlighted portion of a Web page—like mapping an address or translating a word—even using services provided by companies that compete with Microsoft. Microsoft has put a system in place for companies to write accelerators and users to download them.

Firefox, on both Windows and Mac, has a massive collection of add-ons, some of which work in a manner similar to Accelerators, but it doesn’t have a directly competing feature. Safari on your Mac also can accommodate added features from third-party companies, some of which can work like accelerators, but it also lacks a feature that specifically goes head to head with IE8′s Accelerators.

I am going to law school in the fall, and I was wondering which laptop you would suggest I get for this three- to four-year time period of my life?

A: It really depends on your priorities, resources and environment. If you’re on a tight budget, value lots of choice, and enjoy playing games during breaks from work, you might pick a modestly-priced Windows 7 laptop. However, I’d stay away from netbooks, which can be cramped for writing long documents. If you have more to spend, and value freedom from malware, great built-in software and the convenience of dedicated stores, you might buy an Apple MacBook or MacBook Pro. But I would also recommend asking the school and current students, since it can be advantageous, or even necessary, to be using a laptop that the school prefers or that runs any special software the school requires.

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reggie999

I haven't used IE8 myself but the Accelerators described sound similar to a Firefox add-on called Hyperwords that I use frequently. But Hyperwords doesn't work with Safari.
reggie999

I haven't used IE8 myself but the Accelerators described sound like a Firefox add-on called Hyperwords which I use frequently. Hyperwords doesn't work with Safari however.
erikchristopher

Actually, in Higher Ed you can highlight, copy and paste and a variety of other useful student functions with EBL, ebrary and other aggregators. Many libraries using these ebook platforms also have a lot of other features that come with them, like linking to other resources and also the ability to copy and paste with citation to follow and highlight with notes and save the titles to your own bookshelf, more functional then kindle or other single purpose eReaders and you can do it all from your laptop as you write that paper.

Ask your librarian, you might be surprised what you can do with the eBook platforms out there in higher ed.
JohnDoey

I also haven't used IE8, but Accelerators sound like the Mac's system-wide “Services.” For example, in Safari, you can highlight some text, choose “Safari > Services > Search With Google” to search for that text in Google.

By default, there are only a few Services enabled, but if you choose “Safari > Services > Services Preferences” you can turn on other Services. There is one to add the selected text as a Contact, or generate a summary of text, or call a selected phone number, or look up an address in Google Maps. Many 3rd party applications also include Services. For example, the Scrivener writing tool provides a Service that lets you add any selected text in any application to Scrivener as a clipping. You can also create your own Services with AppleScript.

In any other application aside from Safari, the process is the same, but the name of the application menu changes of course. In Finder, it would be “Finder > Services > [name of Service].”

Services are available in all Mac OS X versions, but I'm referring to Snow Leopard here.
JohnDoey

If you buy a Mac plus AppleCare 3-year service plan, you are guaranteed to have a functioning computer for 3 full years with no further charges, which can be great peace of mind when going through school, not to have any unexpected expenses such as paying a guy to clean malware off your PC. The AppleCare service plan includes the software and the hardware. If you have any problem at all, you just take the Mac to the Genius Bar at an Apple Store and they get you back up and running at no charge.

The Mac also runs all personal computer apps, so as you go through school you can run whatever tools a course may require. Out-of-the-box, a Mac can run software made for Mac OS, Unix (including Perl, Python, PHP), Java, HTML5 Web apps, and Flash apps. You can install Adobe Air very easily to get those apps, and you can even install Windows inside the free VirtualBox virtualizer to run Windows apps, DOS to run DOS apps, Linux to run Linux apps. So everything runs on there. You also get a lot of built-in Mac apps, including iLife, so if you have a need to edit video or work with multichannel audio or create a video DVD, you have those tools already.

The so-called “Unibody” MacBooks are also very rugged. I've been carrying a MacBook Air everywhere inside a sleeve inside a knapsack for almost exactly a year with lots and lots of use and it looks brand new.

If you're studying any software development, the Mac is how you make iPhone/iPod apps, which can be a major feature for some people.
jimmurdock

I am new to the digital wold and I now have a 16g Sony Walkman and I want to add Slacker Internet Radio to my Walkman.They are asking for a DEVICE ID # which I cannot locate.Any Ideas where it might be ??

Highlighting Text in E-Books and IE8 Accelerators on a Mac

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