plastic - 29 Mar. 2004 - 01:08:

IE toolbar - question for grigri & other people good with javascript/coding.

Long introduction, sorry. Lately I've been playing a bit with <link /> navigation. 'Link' is a tag you put between the head tags of a html page, can be used to attach a stylesheet, but also to add an extra navigation layer underneath webpages, with lines like <link rel="next" title="" href="" />, <link rel="contents" title="ToC" href="home.html" />.

Here's the official link types,, though people are using some other ones too, permitted by specs - more info here.

Now, they're invisible by default, up to browsers to make they available someway, if desired. Opera on Windows pops up an extra toolbar when it finds them present, Mozilla has same feature, unchecked by default. Go to View, Show/hide, Site navigation bar to enable. For Firefox there's Link toolbar, an extension that adds such a toolbar to statusbar. And for IE, there's the LinkBar.

Now, the IE linkbar doesn't satisfy very much. Icons are ugly (.dll is compressed), it lacks configuration, and has options like popup blocking and search not needed, title can't be removed.

So, I remembered grigri's (I)E ToolBand (Html toolbar for IE (and explorer),I know source is not available/working, grigri), noticed some people playing with this and javascript (links follow), and tried some stuff. Found out even playing with other people's javascript is plain simple not for me, way over my head. What I tried was doing something like they do here, in a frames environment, translated to situation where interaction needs to go on between toolband and page - it's just sample code reading 'next' and 'prev'. I can get the toolband to open something in main page, well documented, but I can't get it to read something from main window and interpret it.

So, the minimal question I want to raise here is directed at grigri and maybe one or two people who have been playing with grigri's TB. Could you look at js code linked above and tell me if there's some simple adjustments to be made there that make it work for the TB also, like it does for frames as setup there ?

Would make me happy, I could adapt to add some more besides 'next' and 'prev', create something like a 5/6 button bar that would work for me. Ofcourse, if that was all I wanted, I'd just have asked grigri directly, and not explain myself here this thoroughly. It's the nature of these <link> relations - they're a really great way of providing a standard navigation for all sites, next to custom navigation, easy to implement for whoever. I see them used more these days, but they won't really be catching on with a good way to show them in IE.

So, I did what I do best, show brighter people then me what would be a cool idea (and hope to get them interested). Build the toolbar, just the visual part, no images, but glyphs taken from common Windows fonts (9x users, get 'Lucida Sans Unicode', a really good font, here. Randomly showed some buttons enabled (the 'rel=""' is on the page) and disabled (the related 'rel="whatever"' is not on the page). It's here and please imagine it in a seperate toolbar.

So (2), the extended question/project here, are there people able/willing and interested to get this going ? I do realize I ask a lot here (just presenting some visualization), so forgive my boldness, just figured I'd try.

In the end, I would like it to read both "rel=" as "rev=" (backwards referencing associations), add not standard rel/rev uses in the dropdown menu, title attributes converted to tooltips on the buttons, I made most of it show off in the example. The rel="bookmark" thing might deserve some attention (link anchors in same page, how'd that look/work).

Helpful code, maybe:

• The firefox extension is build on javascript too, and source is available. Here's links to their js files, custom dtd and .css file;
• Here's someone who tried it by installing an ActiveX control (I've got it if needed, you need to enter your email to get a download link) and use a .wsf file (wouldn't do anything but giving errors here);
• Download of grigri's toolband is here;
• Download of linked samplebar I did is here.

Edit: note result would be something 'open' going this route. It would be easy for anyone doing a version with custom images added, add/delete buttons. Browse the web with standards, yet completely custom preferences based.