Developed by Microsoft Extended from hAtom Microformat | Latest release 0.9 | |
Type of format Web syndication, Screen scraping Open format? Yes, As part of Microsoft Open Specification Promise Website Web Slice Format Specification - Version 0.9 | ||
Web Slice is a web feed technology introduced in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 that allows certain portions of a web page to be subscribed to. Internet Explorer allows users to preview the subscribed Web Slices in a fly-out preview window. Web Slices are based on the hAtom Microformat.
Contents
Microsoft developed the Web Slice format, and published a specification under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise. The specification is not published by any independent standards body. As of 2012, Internet Explorer 8 and 9 are the only browsers to support Web Slices natively, although Mozilla Firefox has support via an add-on called webchunks.
Implementation
The Web Slice has 9 properties: the Web Slice id, entry title, entry content, end time, alternative display source, alternative navigation, alternative update source, and time to live. The 3 required properties are: the Web Slice id, entry title, and entry content.
To disable Web Slices on a web page, add
To specify the default web slice on a page with multiple web slices, add
Mozilla Firefox
While Firefox does not have built in support for web slices, extensions have been created to give the ability to read web slices.
WebChunks
WebChunks is a Mozilla Firefox 3 implementation of Microsoft Webslices. It allows you to "follow" an area of a web page through a dedicated feed bookmarked in a new toolbar. With Greasemonkey, WebChunks can insert webchunks/webslices markup into any web page so the Webchunks extension handles it.
Fireclip
Fireclip is a Firefox addon that lets you "clip out" parts of a website and watch them for changes. It lets you track specific parts of a website in a similar manner to web slices.
PageSlices
Pageslices is a Firefox addon too. It allows you to not only store parts of websites but organize them by adding on custom pages. Web site of the project: http://pageslices.net.
Google Chrome
Google Chrome, like Firefox, does not have built in support for web slices. However, the extension API new to Chrome 4 allows extensions to be created to give the ability to relatively simply create arbitrary webslices of any content from any page.
Opera
Although it was rumored that Opera 10 would have support for web slices, this did not come to pass. Opera does have a "widgetize" feature likened to web slices which allows web pages to be displayed on a user's desktop.