How to add panels to MSIE, Mozilla and Opera

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How to add panels to MSIE, Mozilla and Opera

Add a custom Mozilla sidebar, Opera panel or Internet Explorer search field

luma

12:31 pm on Jun 24, 2002 (gmt 0)

I posted this to a Google thread [webmasterworld.com] and thought it might be interresting to some of you also.

As always, it's easiest with Opera. All you need is a regular link:

<a rel="sidebar" title="Nachschlagen"
href="http://www.example/directory/panel.html">
add panel</a>

Next comes Mozilla; it uses JavaScript

javascript:window.sidebar.addPanel ('Nachschlagen',
'http://www.example.com/directory/panel.html','')

And last, we have MSIE, and fiddling with the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Search
SearchAssistant:http://www.example.com/directory/panel.html

[edited by: tedster at 7:13 pm (utc) on June 24, 2002]

Grumpus

1:44 pm on Jun 24, 2002 (gmt 0)

Nice Stuff!

Too bad IE requires a regedit, though. I doubt many visitors are going to install and run software to get a sidebar for a site.

Oh well.

luma

2:49 pm on Jun 24, 2002 (gmt 0)

I guess you could create a panel.reg file with the new registry entries.

Grumpus

3:47 pm on Jun 24, 2002 (gmt 0)

Yeah, but it's still gonna require the user to fire up some other program or go through a "security warning" of some kind. I like that Opera and Mozilla allow people to just add the "channel" and poof, it's good. I might have to look into it some more. I have a feeling Mozilla will get a nice boost this fall if AOL goes with it. Would be nice to see a browser war back on. That tends to promote new technologies to spend the time for cross compatibility. When you've got over 90% running a single browser, the developers can get lazy. (e.g. Toolbars)

luma

9:24 pm on Jun 26, 2002 (gmt 0)

Okay, just wanted to show some working sample code for a useful sidebar and a sample .reg file for MSIE:

sample code

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<html>
<head><title>Links to add CSS2 panel to Opera, Mozilla, or MSIE</title></head>
<body>
<p><a rel="sidebar" title="CSS2" href=
"http://developer.netscape.com/evangelism/sidebar/css2qr/prop-visual.html">
add CSS2 panel to Opera</a></p>
<p><a title="CSS2" href=
"javascript:window.sidebar.addPanel('CSS2','http://developer.netscape.com/evangelism/sidebar/css2qr/prop-visual.html','')">
add CSS2 panel to Mozilla</a></p>
<p><a title="CSS2" href="css2-panel.reg">
add CSS2 panel to MSIE (via registry)</a></p>
</body>
</html>

You would also have to create the css2-panel.reg file to change the registry to get it working with Internet Explorer. The user will have to confirm to the registry update:

sample css2-panel.reg

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Search]
"SearchAssistant"="http://developer.netscape.com/evangelism/sidebar/css2qr/prop-visual.html"