CustomizeIE

Catering to advanced PC users, CustomizeIE is a portable software tool that gives you the possibility to create, edit and remove extra toolbar buttons and menu items in Internet Explorer. It enables you to load scripts for automatic execution when starting the web browser.

Before proceeding any further, you should know that this is an old application. Although it still runs on Windows editions newer than the ones specified by the developer, it's only compatible with Internet Explorer 5 through 7.

It's packed in a simple interface made from a common-looking window, which includes a list you can fill with new menu items and toolbar buttons.

New menu items can be created by selecting the owner (system or user), menu (Tools or Help), item display name, description, file type (application, script, or COM object), and executable file.

For new toolbar buttons, you can indicate the owner, caption text, default and hot icons, visibility status, file type (application, script, COM object, or Explorer Bar) and executable.

The icons you have selected can be previewed. A few samples are available in the CustomizeIE downloaded package in this regard. Otherwise, you can pick custom icons from the computer or point out executables (EXE, DLL, OCX, CPL) to automatically extract icon resources from.

All these details are revealed in the main application window, and they can be copied to the Clipboard or saved to tab-delimited text documents. Modifications should be quickly applied to Internet Explorer. If it's already running, you may have to restart it to view changes. The properties of any object in the list can be edited anytime, or you can remove it.

We haven't come across any stability issues in our tests, since the utility didn't hang, crash or prompt error messages. It had minimal impact on PC performance.

To sum it up, CustomizeIE offers a simple solution for creating new menu items and toolbar buttons in Internet Explorer 5 through 7. Unfortunately, it doesn't support later IE versions.