Recipe 13.7. Customizing Internet Explorer s Logo and Titlebar

Recipe 13.7. Customizing Internet Explorer's Logo and Titlebar

Problem

You want to customize Internet Explorer by putting your company brand or name in it rather than the default name and logo.

Solution

You can put your company name or logo into Internet Explorer in two separate locations in the logo in the upper-right corner of the Internet Explorer screen or in the name in the title bar. This recipe will show you how to do both.

Change the Internet Explorer logo

Internet Explorer has both a static and an animated logo. The static logo displays when the browser is inactive, while the animated logo displays when the browser is locating a site, connecting, and actively downloading pages or images from the web. Because you have the choice of displaying large or small icons on the Internet Explorer toolbar, there are two sizes of both the static and animated logos.

Before you begin, you'll need to create new logos to replace the existing ones. You'll have to create two sets of icons in .bmp format: one set for the smaller logo and another set for the larger logo. Each set will have a static logo and an animated logo. The static logos should be 22 22 pixels for the smaller size and 38 38 pixels for the larger size. The animated logos have to be animated bitmaps, each of which should have a total of 10 frames in it. So, the smaller animated bitmap should be 22 pixels wide by 220 pixels high, and the larger animated bitmap should be 38 pixels wide by 380 pixels high.

Create the static bitmaps with any graphics program. You can also use special icon-creation programs to create your icons, such as Microangelo, available from http://www.microangelo.us/. (Make sure when using Microangelo to choose Tools New Image format, which will let you create the icons with the proper pixel dimensions, as explained in the previous paragraph.)

To create the animated bitmaps, you'll need special tools. Microangelo does a great job of creating them, and that's your best bet. If you prefer, though, you can create the 10 separate frames for the animated bitmaps in a graphics program such as Paint and then stitch the 10 separate frames together using the Animated Bitmap Creator (http://jsanjuan.tripod.com/download.html), a free command-line program.

To change Internet Explorer's static logos to your new ones, run the Registry Editor and navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main

Create two string values named SmallBitmap and BigBitmap and give them each the value of their filename and location, including the full path for example, C:\Windows\IEbiglogo.bmp and C:\Windows\IEsmalllogo.bmp. As you might guess, the SmallBitmap value points to the smaller logo, and the BigBitmap value points to the larger logo.

To use your new animated logos, go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar

Create two string values named SmBrandBitmap and BrandBitmap and give them each the value of their filename and location for example, C:\Windows\IEbiganimatelogo.bmp and C:\Windows\IEsmallanimatelogo.bmp. Once again, as you might guess, SmBrandBitmap is for the smaller animated logo and BrandBitmap is for the larger logo.

Exit the Registry and close Internet Explorer. When you next start up Internet Explorer, it should display your new logos. To revert to the default logos, delete the values you've created.

Change the text of Internet Explorer's titlebar

Internet Explorer's titlebar displays the text "Microsoft Internet Explorer," along with the title of the page you're currently visiting. However, you can change the "Microsoft Internet Explorer" text to any text you want. Run the Registry Editor and go to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main

Add a new string value named Window Title and give it a value of whatever text you want displayed in the titlebar. Exit the Registry and close Internet Explorer if it's open. The next time you open Internet Explorer, the titlebar will have your new text.

If you want your titlebar to have no text in it, aside from the title of the page you're currently visiting, create the Window Title string value but leave the value field empty.

Discussion

You can also change the background of the Internet Explorer toolbar if you'd like, and place any graphic you want there. Just make sure, though, that the graphic is in .bmp format, that it's light enough to show black text, and it's not so busy that you can't read the menu text that will be on top of it. If you create or use a file that's too small, Internet Explorer will tile it for you. However, don't use a bitmap smaller than 10 10 pixels because all the work Internet Explorer has to do to tile images that small will slow down your web browsing.

You can make the graphic the background by using TweakUI, one of a suite of free, unsupported utilities from Microsoft called XP Power Toys. Get it from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp. After you download it and run it, run TweakUI, click Internet Explorer, and click the box next to "Use custom background for Internet Explorer toolbar." Then click the Change button and choose the file you want to use as the background. You'll see a sample of how the toolbar will look, so change the file until you find one you want to use. When you find it, click OK, close Internet Explorer, and restart it. The new toolbar will be there.

Recipe 13.7. Customizing Internet Explorer s Logo and Titlebar