Developer’s Toolbar for IE6
I’m not sure if this is going to be news to anyone other than me, but I often float around the web checking out various things and found something pretty interesting over at Microsoft.com of all places. What I found was available from a large list of popular downloads.
Specifically what I found a was a web developer’s toolber for IE 6.x. I was shocked and surprised. I have wanted one on many occasions. Firefox is my default browser, but I use Internet Explorer (IE) quite a bit so as to see things from that perspective — which was how I learned that some hard-core web developers were missing the boat by no longer making sites for IE even though it is still the most widely-used browser. I wrote an article about it, in fact.
The toolbar’s not as good as Firefox’s is my first impression, but it’s not to bad either. It needs placement options, but I confess I haven’t explored it thoroughly yet. The real news here is that it’s almost a departure from the usual Microsoft lack of support of things useful to anyone outside of their backbone consumer-level user-base. It’s a small download and an easy install, and it seems to have the features one would expect. So, hey, it’s another tool for the tool box. Enjoy.
Fabian De Rango responds:
Posted: September 25th, 2005 at 12:26 am →
I just added Internet Explorer 5 Accessories to My IE 6 and it adds toggle buttons to turn on or off images and adds searching from the tool bar is this the same thing as your talkin about?
Fabian responds:
Posted: September 25th, 2005 at 12:27 am →
oo you linked it, sorry completely different sounds nice I download it.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: September 25th, 2005 at 9:36 am →
Well I had some time to mess around with it, though most of my time was spent not with the developer’s tool bar, but with the tool bars in general. I had a huge problem with the new tool bar, initially. That being that it was on the same row as my address bar. My address bar used to stretch the full width of my monitor almost, but when I installed the tool bar it nearly obliterated it — reducing it to a mere inch-and-a-half more or less. And worse, when I placed my cursor in the address bar and used Ctrl+A to select the URL so I could copy — Ctrl+C, it didn’t work. Buggy it is, in this regard I think.
However, I solved that problem. Using my brower’s controls, I did “View > Toolbars > [Deselected] Links” (I don’t use this). I then did “View > Toolbars > [Selected] Unlock Toolbars.” I couldn’t quite figure out how to move them around — as in the rows — or shift the button columns to alter the spaces. My cursor changed but it didn’t work. Then, by a sheer accident I suppose, I clicked on my address bar. This did three of things all at once: 1) It extended my address bar to full width as it was before. 2) It moved the new web developer’s tool bars up one row, onto the row with my favorites icons, messenger, etc. 3) It moved some of that row’s buttons into a visual icon-style pulldown. I then relocked the tool bars.
For me it placed them all into a pull down except for Stop (Red X), Refresh (opposed curved green arrows), and Home (a little house). The rest, history, favorites, AIM, MSN, etc. are in the pulldown. Those, fortunately, are customizable. It works for me. I like the set-up now. I must say it now allows me to do stuff with IE that I couldn’t before. Prior to this I found myself, if using IE at the time, that if I needed any developer’s tool I had to paste the URL into Firefox. Like I said I use Firefox by default, but this did come up time and time again. This is a big convenience.
The tools seem very similar and seemingly functiuon the same way, but I still haven’t fully explored the bar. I like the View DOM window but for me it opens in a pinned state at the bottom of my window. This Mikey no likey. I have to click “Pin” (?) and then click “Pin” again and it put the View DOM in a window that I can move around. That I like, but the indirect route seems odd. Again, full exploration is not complete so I may be missing some additional customization features.
Now that I have reclaimed my address bar I am pretty happy about the new set of tools I have. You know, in case I’m driving down the information super highway in my 2004 Internet Explorer 6.2 and it breaks down. I now have a road kit
Fabian De Rango responds:
Posted: September 25th, 2005 at 10:10 pm →
some webdevelopers run away from the ideas completely of not using internet explorer i know what u mean, my site isnt compatable that great with ie but that should be fixed in my reboot hopefully
Fabian De Rango responds:
Posted: October 2nd, 2005 at 10:05 am →
Link to the blog finally fixed up.