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| | IEToggle
PAD file: 'Portable Application Description' files are datasets which allow software authors to communicate specific and most often requested information
about their products to online communities in a concise and standard way. Click
here for IEToggle PAD file which can be opened in a standard browser. Click
here for IEToggle PAD file in XML format (data can be extracted and
parsed using standard XML toolkits).
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Download
IEToggle upgrade (V 1.3.0). You can now double-tap any side of your
screen with your mouse pointer, to open or toggle to a web
site/application of your choice. This version also features an
auto-cache-purge option. Simply specify what you want deleted from cache
(Internet Files, Cookies, History), and how frequently. IEToggle keeps
your cache trim and taut, and your performance optimized. Click here
for alternative link to V 1.3.0. |
IEToggle is an essential utility for
Internet Explorer. The good folk over at
Redmond USA who unleashed Internet Explorer on an unsuspecting world, could have
provided such a capability with their browser, but if they'd been so thorough,
I'd have to find something better to do than stay up nights writing tools like
this...
So what makes IEToggle so compelling? Well, more and more Business applications are
becoming web-based these days. Problem is, these applications either all appear
as the same 'little blue e' Internet Explorer icon on the Taskbar when minimized
(in Windows NT, 2000) like this:
or, each open browser instance gets placed in a pop-up folder above a
single Internet Explorer icon on the Taskbar (in Windows XP) like this:
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Hence, to locate and
maximize a browser instance running a specific web application, you either
need to mouse over each 'little blue e' icon and read the Tooltip (in Windows
NT, 2000 - as shown in first image), or scan through each of the icon descriptions in
a pop-up folder (in Windows XP - as shown in second image). And even if you 'Alt-Tab' to switch from one
application to another, you need to read the description for each icon in order
to locate the one of interest.
This process can become tedious if during the course of the day you need
keep going back to say, a couple of particular web applications out of the many
open on the desktop - every few seconds you take to 'locate and maximize',
very quickly adds up. Also, let's say you have a different page of the same web
site/application open in multiple browser instances - in this case the
'locate and maximize' approach doesn't easily let you 'flip' between the open
pages. The solution to these issues is IEToggle.
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The
need for IEToggle originally emerged at a Contact Centre, where the old
maxim 'Time is Money', is particularly applicable - where anything which
simplifies application use or desktop navigation for consultants, and
boosts productivity, is considered very seriously. |
| But IEToggle is
valuable for anyone who welcomes the use of shortcuts and easier ways of
getting 'round their applications. |
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Set any hotkey combination of your choice (or click on a
dedicated icon in the System Tray) to either open, or immediately locate and bring to
the forefront, a specific web site/application. |
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Toggle between all Internet Explorer browser instances
running a particular web site/application, by repeatedly pressing your
chosen hotkey or clicking on a dedicated icon in the System Tray. |
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You can have multiple IEToggle instances running at once
- ie multiple dedicated icons in the System Tray and/or hotkey
combinations, each for a specific web site/application. |
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For added convenience, IEToggle comes packaged with a
'Multi-Instance Creator', which allows you to specify how many IEToggle
instances you'd like to set up, and the application then goes and creates
them, placing shortcuts to each instance under Start>Programs. |
 Once
you have installed IEToggle, be sure to read through the ReadMe.txt file - which
explains the key features of IEToggle, and its expected behaviours.
| The IETMulti.exe file launches the
Multi-Instance Creator. Use the scroll-bar to select the number of
instances you'd like, then press the 'Create' button. In this example, the
IEToggle2 directory already existed, so the directories IEToggle1,3,4 were
created, and shortcuts to the IEToggle exe files in each of these
directories were placed in Start>Programs: |
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| Clicking an IEToggle shortcut in
Start>Programs, or clicking the file IETogxxx.exe directly, launches an
IEToggle instance, which places an icon in the System Tray. Right click
the icon and choose 'About' from the pop-up menu: |
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| The About box opens when you choose 'About'
from the pop-up menu (which appears when you
right-click the IEToggle icon in the System Tray). Doing so removes the
IEToggle icon from the System Tray. Click the 'Settings' button to open
the IEToggle Settings panel, where you
configure the IEToggle instance: |
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| Once you've made your settings in the
IEToggle Settings panel, and you close the panel, and then you close the IEToggle
About box, the IEToggle icon for that IEToggle instance gets
re-instated in the System Tray, and your
settings take effect. |
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Click on numbered labels
on the adjacent IEToggle Settings Panel to go to corresponding explanation of
feature(s). |
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IEToggle Settings
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This
is the path of the web page you wish IEToggle to open, when you:
-Click the IEToggle icon in the System Tray, and
the page is not open already;
-Press the Toggle Between hotkey combination;
-Right click the IEToggle icon in the System Tray,
and choose Open New Instance from the pop-up menu. |
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IEToggle
looks for this word in the URL of each open IE browser instance, to determine whether or not to toggle to that
instance, when you click the IEToggle icon in the System
Tray, or hotkey. Choose a word which uniquely
identifies the web site/web application, and which will always appear in the URL string, regardless of which page of the web site/web application happens to be open in the browser instance. |
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If
desired, IEToggle can look for this word in the WindowText ie text in the top left of the IE browser
window (which usually contains the words 'Internet Explorer'), IN ADDITION TO the
URL Keyword, to determine whether or not to toggle to that
page. Choose a word which uniquely identifies the web site/web application, and which will always appear in the
WindowText, regardless of which page of the web site/web application happens to be open in the browser instance. |
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Choose the icon you wish to appear in the
System Tray, which when pressed, will either
open your chosen web site/application, or if it is already open, toggle
between open pages of the web site/application. |
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Type the text you wish to appear, to describe the icon’s purpose, when you mouse over the icon in the
System Tray. This Tooltip name is also the text used for
labeling IEToggle shortcuts in Start>Programs, and in the
Windows Startup folder. |
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Shortcut in Start>Programs: Tick this checkbox, to place a shortcut for IEToggle in Start>Programs. The shortcut caption will be the same as
Tooltip text. If no Tooltip text is entered, and this checkbox is ticked, then any existing shortcut in Start>Programs is removed.
Shortcut in Startup Folder: Tick this checkbox, to place a shortcut for IEToggle in the Windows Startup folder, so that IEToggle launches whenever Windows starts. The shortcut caption will be the same as
Tooltip text. If no Tooltip text is entered, and this checkbox is ticked, then any existing shortcut in the
Windows Startup folder is removed. |
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Pressing
the Launch New hotkey is an alternative to right clicking the IEToggle
icon in the System Tray, and choosing Open
New Instance. To set a hotkey, simply place cursor in the hotkey textbox,
and press the hotkey combination on the keyboard that you wish to assign. The combination appears in the textbox. Then, tick the ‘Enabled’ checkbox adjacent to the textbox. |
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Pressing
the Toggle Between hotkey is an alternative to clicking the IEToggle
icon in the System Tray. To set a hotkey, simply place cursor in the hotkey textbox,
and press the hotkey combination on the keyboard that you wish to assign. The combination appears in the textbox. Then, tick the ‘Enabled’ checkbox adjacent to the textbox. |
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The
Restore button reverts the hotkeys to what they were when you first opened the
IEToggle Settings panel. |
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The
Enable All button ticks both 'Put shortcut in
Start>Programs' and 'Start on Windows startup'
checkboxes. |
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The
Disable All button clears both 'Put shortcut in
Start>Programs' and 'Start on Windows startup'
checkboxes |
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1.
I've installed IEToggle, but an error is generated when I try to run it.
What do I do? |
The most likely cause is a missing dll or ocx file in
your Windows directory, and this is most likely to occur with Windows NT,
as Windows 2000 and XP have the requisite files registered by default. The
necessary files are msvcrt.dll, scrrun.dll, wshom.ocx.
a) Check that these files exist in the Windows System directory (which in
Windows NT/2000 is usually C:\WINNT\System32
and in Windowx XP is usually C:\Windows\System32).
b) If you find any files are missing, download them from the DllDump
website, and copy them into your Windows System directory.
c) Register each file. The way to do this is:
-Press Start in the bottom left corner of Windows, and select Run.
-In the Run dialog box which pops up, type regsvr32 FILENAME and press
Enter, where FILENAME is simply the name of the dll or ocx file. eg if
wshom.ocx was missing, you would download this file and then register it
like this: regsvr32 wshom.ocx. A messagebox will advise that the
registration succeeded.
d) Run IEToggle. |
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2.
I killed the IEToggle process in Task Manager, and now IEToggle won't
start up - a messagebox appears saying that an IEToggle instance is
already running. What's up? |
| If you close IEToggle from the 'Applications' tab in
Task Manager, the application should shut down correctly and not result in
the stated problem. However, if you shut down the IEToggle process (under
the 'Processes' tab in Task Manager), the application does not have an
opportunity to clean up after itself, and can cause the stated problem. To
fix, before running that IEToggle instance again, open the RunStatus text
file in the IEToggle application directory, change the '1' to a '0',
resave the text file, and then restart IEToggle. |
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3.
Why does IEToggle say 'reserved for use by other applications' to certain
hotkey combinations, even when those hotkey combinations are actually
available for use? |
| IEToggle was originally designed for a Telco's Contact
Centre, whose requirement it was that certain hotkey combinations be
reserved for use by the Centre's CRM application, and so it should not be
possible for IEToggle to register those hotkeys. This feature has been
retained in the general V 1.1.4 release of IEToggle. |
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