This is BrainLog, a blog by Dan Sanderson. Older entries, from October 1999 through September 2010, are preserved for posterity, but are no longer maintained. See the front page and newer entries.

January 4, 2002

I mentioned Dave's Quick Search Taskbar Toolbar Deskbar before. It has since gone through several rounds of development by its inventor and its fans, and now includes dozens of new features. For example, it can now display a clock, so you can save some taskbar space and turn off the default systray clock. Double-click on it and up pops a calendar-- a feature so useful to me personally that I had been considering learning Visual C++ just to develop a little calendar tool. The deskbar can now use other browsers besides IE, including Netscape and Opera. Developers can easily add extra sites to search using an XML file, instead of editing the .htm file in several different places-- which includes a documentation field that updates the help display with any new searches you might add. Dave even included my contribution, a fancy Amazon.com searcher that lets you search by store. Great stuff.

comments...

Anita Rowland, January 7, 2002 2:32 AM:

thanks for first pointing to this -- I had it on my west seattle machine before, and now have added it to my capitol hill machine. farwell google toolbar! I do like it a lot! but no success on the calendar yet. maybe my pen use isn't compatible and it can't recognize my double-click. I'll check out his mailing list also.

Dan Sanderson, January 7, 2002 3:01 AM:

I was incorrect, it's right-click that pops up the calendar. Try that; it works for me. (Click on a day on the calendar and it opens up Yahoo! Calendar. Almost convinces me to use Yahoo as my datebook. :)

Dan Sanderson, January 7, 2002 3:07 AM:

P.S. Developers and interested parties will want to see Dave's how-I-did-it message. He says he read this MSDN article on registering a COM object as an Explorer bar, Tool band, or Desk band, then wondering if Internet Explorer could be embedded this way and trying it.

Anita Rowland, January 8, 2002 9:45 AM:

I did find the correct way to invoke the calendar (by finding for "calendar" in the changes log). I also like the command-line-stylee "run" feature since I spend so much of my time telnetted into PINE when at West Seattle.



So many features! I'll have to try to learn one a day. I'm a sucker for tools. have you tried wingo?

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