Inside Technique : Extending the Browser
By Scott Isaacs

Creating browser extensions with DHTML is a very easy and powerful way to enhance your browser. In this article, we show you how to create extensions similar to our InsideDHTML Tools and help you add two very simple extensions to your browser.

Internet Explorer allows you extend the context menu with an HTML file. In this file you write a script and use DHTML to manipulate the browser. Next you install the extension by either modifying the registry settings for the browser or running a .reg file (we will show you both techniques in this article). Once completed, the next time you run Internet Explorer and right click on a document, the extensions will be available.

Since part of the installation process is registering a URL to the extension, you can create web-based extensions. For example, our InsideDHTML Tools, register the source as URL's pointing to our web-site. This allows us to update and improve the extensions always knowing that you will be using the latest versions.

In this article, we demonstrate how to create extensions. The first is a simple demonstration to help you get started, and the second extension is a page annotation tool designed to be used in conjunction with our Generate Page tool.

At the conclusion of this article we provide a tool that helps you create the necessary registry files for quick and easy installation of your extension. First, we explain how the extensions work including the security model your extensions are constrained by.

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