Microsoft Community Bar

The Community bar adds context-dependent content to the web browsing experience. The Community Bar is actually an entire platform for applications whose content depends on the page that the user is currently viewing. It is very easy for anyone to create new Community Bar panels.

User Experience

As you browse the web, you can see (and leave) notes from other people who visited the same page, tag the page with a bookmark or category label, view all the inlinks to the page, find related pages, and perform context-specific search. We are working to also allow you to chat with other people viewing the same page (or domain), and also to see blog postings related to the current page. Check back in two weeks!

Context Search: One of the primary Community Bar features is Context search. Unlike traditional Web search, the Community Bar allows you to perform searches in the context of the Web page you are currently viewing. The simplest of these is the site search. If you visit a particular site, you can immediately search within the pages on that site by entering a query in the context search panel (the top panel in the community bar). Changing the search drop-down to inlinks allows you to search among all the pages that link to the current page. Finally, you can search among pages that are similar to the current page. For example, if you are on a site about digital cameras, and you do a search (in the top panel) for "accessories", then you will find pages about digital camera accessories.

Publishers

If you are a publisher of an existing site, creating a Community Bar panel can be an easy way to reach a new audience. A panel allows your site to provide continuous benefit to users as they browse the Web.

The Community Bar can also automatically create a community among your users. It provides an easy way for your users to interact with each other, through the existing notes, tagging, and (future) chat panels. If you think your users would enjoy this ability, feel free to encourage them to download the Community Bar with a link directly to the installer. If you have any other ideas how you would like to see your users, your site, and the Community Bar facilitate interaction, suggest it by emailing us (cbar@microsoft.com).

Developers

It's very easy to create new Community Bar panels. A panel is simply a Web page with some javascript. There are literally hundreds of possibilities for interesting new panels. We encourage anyone who is interested in writing a panel to do so; We eventually plan to list the known custom panels so that all Community Bar users can find out about your new panel. If you are interested in developing a new panel, see the Panel API and feel free to contact us if you have any questions or want some help (use the feedback link to the left).

Screenshot

Here is a screenshot of the Community Bar in action. The bar is on the left portion of the browser. You can see that this page has been labelled with the tag "jazz", a few people have left notes (the red note is a private note to myself), and there has been some chatting in a chat associated with the page. Below the tags, chats, and notes, you can see a list of some inlinks to the page, as well as some similar sites.

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