IE7 customization tips

howto customize IE7

[bill]

I've got a brand new installation of IE7 on my machine. I like what I see so far, but a lot of the screen real estate appears to be set in place. Are there ways to move things around to make IE7 act/look more like Opera or FireFox?

These are some of the things I really miss:

• Ability to move Tab bar location (top or bottom)
  
• Customizable placement of toolbars
  
• Mouse gestures

Add your tips and tricks here:

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• Bring back the Menu Bar!

Right click on the space next to the Tab bar. Here you can restore the Menu Bar and other toolbars that might be hidden after a fresh IE7 install.

• Add the DevToolBar

I don't know if it was just me, but I was prompted to download this toolbar. This toolbar is the web developer's friend. It has a lot of the function of the Web Developer's toolbar available for Opera and FF.

[Wlauzon]

Address in Taskbar

If there is a site or two that you go to a lot, you can right click on the taskbar at bottom and choose "address". Makes it very easy to keep a "hot link" up for frequently used sites.

[Stormfx]

Edited: Non-related issue. Good info!

[edited by: Stormfx at 8:49 pm (utc) on Oct. 19, 2006]

[bill]

Just came across the IE7 Quick Reference Sheet [microsoft.com]. It contains the following:

• General shortcuts
  
• Navigation shortcuts
  
• Favorites Center shortcuts
  
• Tab shortcuts
  
• Address Bar shortcuts
  
• Instant Search Box
  
• Common tasks

Some of the Common tasks can be helpful.

• Change website address suffix

Tools > Internet Options > Languages
For example, if you chose "net" for the website suffix, pressing CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER would add "http://www." to the beginning and ".net" to the end of the address in the Address Bar.

This is helpful if you're not mainly using .com to complete site addresses or your local language copy defaults to a suffix that you want to change. For example, sometimes I'd like to change my Japanese browsers from defaulting to .co.jp when I press CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER.

[jdMorgan]

Registry edit to move the Menu bar (containing "File Edit View Favorites Tools Help") back to the top of the window:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar\WebBrowser : ITBar7Position REG_DWORD=0x00000001

I haven't found a way to move the Command bar from its position following the tabs, unfortunately.

Jim