Organizing IE7 Toolbars

Question

What a Horrible experience has been using IE7. First I can't put more bars in the same row as the address bar? So I get a incredibly big address bar and loose a lot of screen.

Other problem is that toolbars dont stay in the place you put them. They keep moving even if you lock the toolbars. Is this a Primary BUG at IE7?? Is there anyway to make IE 7 as useful as IE6 and customize bars the way I want and not the way the developers wanted?

Thank you in advance for solutions....

Answer 1

I HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM AND WOULD VERY MUCH WANT MICROSOFT SHOULD FIX IT BY A PATCH IN WINDOWS UPDATE OR SOME OTHER WAY

THANKS

DAVID

Answer 2

Hi All,

Toolbar tip - This applies to all versions of Internet Explorer. I have been using IE since the mid 90's and it was only recently that I discovered this toolbar trick, quite by accident.

Keep your toolbars unlocked and to minimize screen usage place all of your toolbars on the one line, though any more than 4 toolbars per line seems to be not allowed (this may be different for wide screen monitors).

Each toolbar has a chevron on the left hand side ("|"). Double click on this chevron and the toolbar display will expand or contract to show the toolbar contents.

I think this why the toolbar control in Internet Explorer is called the re-bar. TG that the IE7 dev team decided to retain the rebar in IE7. The early beta versions used Office toolbars.

Answer 3

Same problem.  With IE6 I was able to keep all necessary tools in the address bar. I hope this is an oversite by developers and will be corrected ASAP.  I am going back to IE6 for now.

Answer 4

I have the same trouble.  I am running IE7 on WinXP Professional with the Google and Yahoo toolbars in addition to the Classic Menu Bar, Links, and Status Bar.  I have set the Links bar in the same bar as the Yahoo bar which is in the same bar as the Classic Menu bar and have also tried to set the Links bar within the Google bar.

EVERY time I close the IE7 window, the Links bar drops down to form it's own bar and sometimes the Yahoo bar does this as well.  This is in spite of me unlocking the toolbars, setting them up as described above and locking the toolbar.

How do I force IE7 to remember the toolbar layout as I have chosen?

Thanks,
Mike

Answer 5

>Is there anyway to make IE 7 as useful as IE6 and customize bars the way I want and not the way the developers wanted?

Yes, I am working on a toolbar that is designed to replace the standard navigation bar of IE7. And there are several tweaks buried in the Windows registry as well to customize the UI.

http://www.quero.at/

Viktor

Answer 6

Thanks Rob, for the tip... and Viktor, for your suggestion... But both are irrelevant to the OP's message.

I obviously also experience the same problem... and (as some of you probably did...) found this tread doing a Google search in hopes that someone actually had a *solution* to it!  :(

Does anyone at MS read these postings...?  Does anyone know if MS is going to DO anything about this annoying problem?

Some toolbars just -won't- stay where they're put... Which makes for a bunch of wasted space... Clearly it's not the end of the world or anything, but it is certainly annoying!

Anyone from MS...?

Cheers

Answer 7

Here's the test plan to show how the Google toolbar hijacks the Toolbar layout in IE7 (untested in 6)

Start IE7 and unload the Google toolbar (if loaded) and just to be safe, any other third-party toolbars that you have installed. Arrange your remaining IE7 toolbars to your pleasure. I have the Menus and Links toolbars on the top line. Close IE7 to save your toolbar layout.

Open IE7 and it should show the last retained toolbar layout.... as expected.

Load the Google toolbar. Place it on a line of its own. Close IE to save the Toolbar layout..

Open IE7 and you will see that the toolbar layout has changed... All toolbars are displayed on their own lines...

Select the Tools>Manage Addons menu and find and disable the 'Google Toolbar Browser Helper' (the BHO part). Re-arrange the toolbars to your pleaseure.... note that the Google toolbar is still visible even though the BHO component has been disabled. (acutually it is still in memory, but it won't be loaded the next time the browser is started).

Close IE7 to save your toolbar layout.

Open IE7 and this time it should have retained your saved toolbar layout.

Conclusion - The Google toolbar hijacks ITBarLayout from within its satelite BHO. Disabling the satelite BHO of the Google toolbar returns toolbar layout behavior.

Other known hijackers - Del.icio.us toolbar

Seems to be a misunderstanding by toolbar developers to use a satelite BHO to write to ITBarLayout to force their toolbars to be displayed in the toolbar, dispite the users preferences.

For those of you with RegMon.exe - Place a hook on the satelite bho to track the registry writes to ITBarLayout.

Regards.

Answer 8

There seems to be only only one solution to this and that's sticking all the toolbars that move before the google one in one row and that will force them to stay there and remember the position.

Answer 9

ES Blu:  That's great if it works for you... But I just tried it and it doesn't work even if I take out my links toolbar (which is pretty much a whole row on it's own, so with it I couldn't put all of them on one row)

Rob: That worked!  - So the Google BHO doesn't actually do anything useful...?  It seems like my Google toolbar is still there and functional without it.

Thanks!

Cheers

Answer 10

I just wanted to thank you for that helpful post. I have been beating my head against a brick wall, so to speak, in frustration from not being able to make my toolbars behave -- ever since I was "given" IE7 about a month ago. I suspected Google might be my problem all along, but didn't know enough to remove the BHO!

Finding out that others have had the same problem makes me feel less, uh, crazy!

So far, all is well now! I am so grateful!

 

Answer 11

Man, you  need to get that information into TechNet so we don't have to use GOOGLE to find the answer.  Thanks a TON IECustomizer!!!  I nearly lost an entire day at work trying to fix my PC, and MS really needs to get this published.

 

Oh, and thanks for giving me another place to fiddle-around with IE.  Nice to know where things are.  :-)  I never bothered to look there.

Answer 12

You need to get this out to everyone (Google, MSDev, Forums around the Globe).  I don't know how many hours I've spent researching this problem.  There is a lot of misinfo about this problem in various "expert" forums, including registry edits and various herbal remedies, but none of it works.  As a longtime sufferer from OCD, you might have saved me months worth of supplemental therapy.  Your solution is pretty hard to find: I wish the masses could be told of its relevance.  Thank-you!

Answer 13

k,

Its pretty hard to find the right door in these large organizations. I was bagged out in another forum for suggesting that the fault lay with the Google toolbar and not IE7. I will do a write up and publish it and hopefully the powers that be may catch sight of it and put in the fix with an update to the Google toolbar. In the mean time I have published the Disable the Google BHO component registry tweak at

http://www.iecustomizer.com/?url=DisableGoogleBHODownload.asp

This is for the average user who may find my instructions for locating and disabling the BHO component of the Google toolbar beyond theirselves.(If there are any Vista/IE7 users out there I would be grateful if you could post back that the above fix works on your environment... untested yet on Vista... should work, just adds an entry to the Addon managers list of disabled extensions in the registry)

I was kinda expecting Google to have picked up on this feature of their toolbar as per their 'do no evil' software policy. Seems alot of IE7 users mistake to Google toolbar layout hijack for an IE7 feature.

It is not just the Google toolbar that has this feature. Also the delicious toolbar... (IE6 SP1/SP2)... that I have found so far.

So beware....If you find that you cannot customize the layout of your IE7 toolbar, it is most probably because of an Add-on toolbar that has a satellite BHO that rewrites the ToolbarLayout each time IE is started. The only other possible cause is the Group Policy setting to allow toolbar customizations.

Regards.

Answer 14

Thank you for your comments!

Even when I start a new window, the Upromise toolbar is gone and I have to add it again.

Maybe I will switch to Firefox

Answer 15

I repeat the thanks of others for your posts here.  The behavior of the toolbars in IE7 has been driving me crazy for months!

 

I would only add that I have found another BHO that hijacks the toolbar layout, and it is none other than Windows Live Toolbar! LOL!

 

If Microsoft can't even get this right, how can we expect anything more from third party software?

 

What are the implications of leaving these BHO add-ins disabled?

 

Thanks again...

Answer 16

I just re-enabled Windows Live Toolbar BHO and my toolbars are still in place.  I have not tried to move them around, though.  Could be that once the toolbars are configured Windows Live Toolbar BHO does not mess with it.

 

Google Toolbar BHO still screws up the layout, though, so I am leaving it disabled.  The toolbar still seems to be functional, even without the BHO enabled.

 

I tried to update Google Toolbar just now it says that I am already running the latest version, which is 4.0.1601.4978-big/en.

Answer 17

 

Hi guys i know im late like realy late in going to IE 7 as i had the same problems as all have with google toolbar as well. I did the same trick with the Ebay toolbar as well now i have the 2 bars were i wanted them it was the only thing why i was not using IE 7 sooner on my XP machine but i have to use it with my vista machine.

Answer 18

Hi,

 

Can you post back with the CLSID of the Ebay toolbar so that I can add it to my listings?

 

If you are interested I have just posted up several Ebay Side Bars for IE5-7 at http://www.iecustomzier.com/?url=Ebay_EB_Download.asp

 

 

Regards.

Answer 19

I have something to add to this after spending the last 4 hours trying to get the Google Toolbar to stick up top on the same line as the Menu.  It just would not stick, even with the Google toolbar BHO disabled, on this new re-build of XP SP2 on my work machine.

 

That's when I finally clued in -- this BHO disabling works with the latest Google toolbar 4.x.  But not with 3.x.   I use 3.0.131.0 (and hate the 4.x versions) -- I want to keep my easy, quick, drop-down search history in 3.x...

 

I also knew that with every IE7 upgrade I had done at home, the 3.x toolbar stayed locked up top just fine, so what WAS the issue here at work??!!  It was the fact that I had not installed the 3.x toolbar with IE6 before upgrading to IE7 on the work machine.  I had installed XP, installed IE7, did the all updates, then installed Google toolbar 3.x.  And nothing stuck after that -- even with toolbar BHO disabled.

 

So, if you are tearing your hair out after an XP rebuild and --  like thousands -- still use Google toolbar 3.x, then make sure you install it on IE6 before updating to IE7. 

 

I suspect this "won't stick issue" will also happen if you have upgraded to Vista from XP, use Google toolbar 3.x, and did not install it before your Vista upgrade.  The reason I say that is because this PC used to be an XP/IE6 w/ Google 3.x toolbar, then upgrded to Vista, machine.  Before I formatted the drive because I was so fed up with Vista (but that's another story!).

 

Perhaps this can be added to the great FAQ at IECustomizer.com.

 

Cheers! 

Bill  

Answer 20

 

aiite, u wanna have the ability to custimize yur ie7 toolbars? this is all i can offer:

 

to be able to move yur "MENU BAR" to a different line than yur tabs, or address bar do this...

 

1. double click on the little, moveable, chevron beside the "home" button,

2. after double clicking, while still holding the last click, drag the mouse down

3. release quickly

4. yur menu bar has now been moved to another line

 

thank god Microsoft has thousands of over paid developers and testers to fix this sorta thing eh??? lol

Answer 21

Hi,

 

I'm using Windows Vista Business and I did the manual BHO disable (god send that that is, ditto everyone elses it took me ages to find this post/cure!) and as long as I have Google in the toolbar line first everything stays put.  I haven't tried the download though, did you want me to try it?

Answer 22

Hi,

 

If you have applied the manual disable of the Google Toolbar's satellite BHO, and the toolbar is no longer hijacking IE7's toolbar layout then there is no need to download the registry fix.

 

The purpose of the registry fix is to allow non-experienced users to apply the fix without a knowledge of Toolbar and BHO extensions. The Addons Manager can be confusing to novice users and locating a specific BHO extension as opposed to the satellite Toolbar component can be confusing.

 

Regards.

Answer 23

I was casting about trying to find a solution to this problem and found this forum thread.  The solution suggested here did solve the problem but I am writing to indicate we shouldn't so hastily blame the toolbar developers.

 

I am running two computers in my home office.  One has Windows XP Home and, on that computer, the toolbar arrangements have stayed as I have set them.  The other, where this problem was persisting, runs Windows XP Professional.  After disabling the Google BHO on the Windows XP Professional system, the toolbar arrangement I wanted to have is maintained. 

 

I went back to the Windows XP Home computer and looked to see if the Google BHO had been disabled all along and it is currently enabled.  So, from my experimentation, I feel the problem is within the Windows XP Professional operating system and the way it interacts with IE7.

 

My two cents worth. 

 

 

Answer 24

 

it also appears that the adobe pdf toolbar (installed with professional version of acrobat 8) causes the same problem on my vista/ie7 desktop.

 

Disabling the toolbar and bho got rid of my problem.  I never used them anyway...

Answer 25

IECUSTOMIZER wrote:

Here's the test plan to show how the Google toolbar hijacks the Toolbar layout in IE7 (untested in 6) Start IE7 and unload the Google toolbar (if loaded) and just to be safe, any other third-party toolbars that you have installed. Arrange your remaining IE7 toolbars to your pleasure. I have the Menus and Links toolbars on the top line. Close IE7 to save your toolbar layout. Open IE7 and it should show the last retained toolbar layout.... as expected. Load the Google toolbar. Place it on a line of its own. Close IE to save the Toolbar layout.. Open IE7 and you will see that the toolbar layout has changed... All toolbars are displayed on their own lines... Select the Tools>Manage Addons menu and find and disable the 'Google Toolbar Browser Helper' (the BHO part). Re-arrange the toolbars to your pleaseure.... note that the Google toolbar is still visible even though the BHO component has been disabled. (acutually it is still in memory, but it won't be loaded the next time the browser is started). Close IE7 to save your toolbar layout. Open IE7 and this time it should have retained your saved toolbar layout. Conclusion - The Google toolbar hijacks ITBarLayout from within its satelite BHO. Disabling the satelite BHO of the Google toolbar returns toolbar layout behavior. Other known hijackers - Del.icio.us toolbar Seems to be a misunderstanding by toolbar developers to use a satelite BHO to write to ITBarLayout to force their toolbars to be displayed in the toolbar, dispite the users preferences. For those of you with RegMon.exe - Place a hook on the satelite bho to track the registry writes to ITBarLayout. Regards.

 

Thank you, thank you, thank you...

Answer 26

I had the same problem but when i did the following, my layout sticked.

 

1. I had the google toolbar installed, (not Loaded), and i disabled it in the manage add - ons

the Toolbar

the Notifier

the Helper

 

2. I had the yahoo toolbar (loaded)

 

3. I have the menu bar...

 

4. Then I installed the mcafee site advisor.

 

5. After I installed the mcafee site advisor, a new ie window opened and i closed the current window and switched to the new window.

 

6. I opened the manage add-ons window and i found that the google toolbar, notifier and helper are enabled.. I disabled those again..

 

And that's it..

 

Hope it works for you

 

 

Answer 27

"How the Google toolbar hijacks the Toolbar layout in IE7" 

You are an IE God, IECUSTOMIZER. Your reply was the solution for me. Worked perfectly. Thanks.