How can I programmatically resize an explorer bar?

Andrew Miadowicz

I have an Internet Explorer extension that displays a horizontal bar which I would like to programmaticaly resize depending on what content I'm currently displaying. Despite searching online and experimenting with sending resize messages to the parent (and the parent's parent) of my band window I can't get IE to change the size of the bottom bar. In fact, what I see happening is that immediately after I send the resize message the bottom bar flashes briefly to the size I set, but then reverts quickly to its previous size.

Does anyone know of a way to achieve such resizing

Thanks,

Andrew

IECUSTOMIZER

Hi,

The Explorer Bar height/width is stored in the registry as a value under the bands CLSID entry in the Internet Explorer\Explorer Bars key.

A good example to look at is the Alexa toolbar (which is a html Explorer Band and can just as easily be implemented as an Explorer Bar (tweak Implemented Categories)) which uses a satellite BHO to resize the (toolbar) window object on document resize events to maintain a fixed height for their toolbar. I am not sure if they also write the size value to the registry but you may want to consider reseting the value of the height/width each time your bar is unloaded also, so that the next time it is loaded it is displayed at the desired width/height.

There is also a maximum height/width that you can set for an Explorer Bar, which I think is 50% of the IE Window height/width.

Regards.