Paste-&-Go with Internet Explorer

Recently a fellow MVP, Omi, created a Firefox 3.0 extension called Paste-&-Go which allows users to copy a URL and paste it into the browser and have it open up automatically. You can download this excellent extension for Firefox here.

However, quite a few people asked for something like this in Internet Explorer. and I was surprised that many people are not really aware of the cool extensibility features of Internet Explorer called IE Browser Extensions. I had written an article for PCQuest quite a while back and also give a few “extensions” for IE for download at its forums. You can download a small set from here.

Sadly this above set does not really support pasting URLs from an external source – such as Notepad. Also, the Firefox extension only allows a single URL, while I wanted to do it for multiple URLs and open all of them up instantly. I posted on the MVP alias that I’d probably get around to writing the code during the upcoming Dussera holidays.

But I did manage getting 5 minutes free (while my son watched Disney’s Chip-‘n’-Dale) and that’s basically how much time it took to go ahead and create a browser extension for Internet Explorer that does the above. You can set this up yourself too on Internet Explorer 5 or above (including the IE8 Beta 2).

  • Open Notepad and paste the following code into it.Save the file as as HTML file, say, c:\Windows\Web\Paste-n-Go.htm 
<HTML>
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript" defer>
clip = window.clipboardData.getData("Text"); 
UrlArray = clip.split("\n");
for(i=0; i<=UrlArray.length; i++)
    window.open(UrlArray[i], "paste"+i);
</SCRIPT>
</HTML>
  • Open Regedit and browse over to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MenuExt
  • Right-click the MenuExt key and select New > Key
  • Rename the newly created key to Paste && Go
  • Double click the (Default) entry on the right pane for this new key and set the value to the location where you saved the file you created in step 1, say, c:\windows\web\Paste-n-Go.htm
  • Right-click the right pane and create a new DWORD (32-bit) value
  • Rename the new key to Contexts and set its value to 1. Your registry should look something like this now.

image

  • Copy a bunch of URLs from Notepad or another browser window

image

  • Open a new Internet Explorer window and right-click anywhere in the content area and pick Paste & Go from the context menu

image

  • This will open the URLs you copied in a window each – quite handy when trying copy a bunch of URLs someone has linked to in a forum post or a list that you have

Currently this doesn’t open the URLs in different tabs – haven’t figured that one out yet. If you know how, do leave me a note and I’ll make the required change.


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Categories: Development | Tips

Posted by vinod on October 7, 2008 09:33 6 Comments
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This blog is WebSliced!

I've just enabled a WebSlice on this blog. You can now view the latest post on this blog by subscribing to the "Vinod's Latest Post" WebSlice if you have Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2. This can be done in two ways.

  1. Hover your mouse over the first blog post till you see a green rectangle and an icon. Click on the image icon to add the WebSlice to your favorites bar.
  2. Click on the image icon on the toolbar to add it.

Now whenever the blog is updated with a new post, you will see the subscription turn bold. Click on it to see a small preview window with the entire post. You can also click to view the entire page in a normal window - say to read the rest of a long post or to comment on it.

To create a new WebSlice for your site, you can follow these tutorials: Shekhar's Blog Post, Subscribing to WebSlices (MSDN).


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Categories: Development | Internet | Tips

Posted by vinod on September 17, 2008 13:46 3 Comments
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Internet Explorer Add-ons in 64-bit mode

I've been using Windows Vista Ultimate x64 for quite a while now on my notebook and try to use 64-bit software in most cases as well whenever it's available. For instance, I have the 64-bit versions of all my Dell drivers, .NET 3.5, SQL Server 2008, Virtual PC 2007, Paint.Net, PerfectDisk, Live Mesh, IE7Pro, Daemon Tools, Zune 2.0 and others installed. One of the applications that I use constantly is Internet Explorer 64-bit.

I've found that IE7x64 is much more stable than the 32-version and is also much more responsive. However, there is one issue with it. Plug-ins like Flash and SilverLight (to mention a few) are not compatible with it. To make matters worse, most web sites check only for the browser type and whether the plug-in is install or not. If it's not, they try to install the plug-in. Which means that not only does my machine waste bandwidth by unnecessarily downloading the required CAB file (which cannot install), I also get prompted to install Flash (for instance) every time I try to browse using IE7x64 on such sites.

A solution to this problem is running IE7x64 in the "No Add-ons" mode. This mode disables even trying to load the plug-in, saving time, bandwidth and the irritating popups. You can enable this mode by modifying the shortcut to launch IE7x64 and adding the the -extoff parameter to the end like this:

"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" -extoff

This brings up the window with a message stating that the browser is running without add-ons enabled. If you do not want this message to be displayed every time you launch the browser, you can change the shortcut to add a URL at the end of the previous like to look like this:

"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" -extoff about:blank

Of course, you can replace the "about:blank: with a URL of your choice as well.

When you now browse a site having a plug-in, you will see a non-intrusive yellow information bar on top that reminds you that you are not seeing everything that is there on the page, but believe me, the page loads extremely fast due to this. Javascript and Ajax continue to work fine - it's only 3rd party add-ons that are affected and makes for a much better browsing experience.

Of course, if you do need to use these plug-ins, you will need to keep a 32-bit browser handy as well - at least till the time that the plug-in developers release 64-bit editions of their products.


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Posted by vinod on July 4, 2008 00:14 10 Comments
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