CertGuardian

Do you use Tabs in Internet Explorer 7? Ever wonder where that page is? Curious about how to customize that page to fit your needs?

Yeah, I’ve asked and answered all those questions myself. I’ve come up with a quick solutions for you to play with. In both XP and Vista the page is trapped in a .dll file, but that doesn’t make it untouchable. All you need to do is redirect the page to any page you want.

You cannot edit the About:Tabs in Windows XP or in Windows Vista, but you can edit the Registry Key that points to the existing page. Which means that you can point that page to anything you want. Doing so opens up a whole new world for you developers. Even if you’re not a developer, you can still point the existing page to any page on your computer, or even on the internet.

That being said, what I have done (yes, I’m a developer) is copied the “source” of the About:Tabs page (open a new tab, then r-click and “View Source”), then saved that page in “C:/Documents and Settings/Default User/Application Data/Microsoft/Internet Explorer” as “TabsWelcome.html” (of course, you can save it anywhere you want).

Once you have the page created and saved, it’s a minor task to change the original path to that file.
NOTE: This will require editing the system registry. If you’re not familiar with the system registry, you should not attempt this. Please get someone that knows what they are doing, and MAKE SURE YOU PERFORM A BACKUP OF THE REGISTRY PRIOR TO MAKING ANY CHANGES.

I’ll assume from this point that you’re familiar with the registry. Use the following information to find the “Tabs” key. (NOTE: The quickest way to do this is to search for “AboutURLs”

What you will need to do is change the Registry Key Data to reflect the location of your new page. In our case, C:/Documents and Settings/Default User/Application Data/Microsoft/Internet Explorer/TabsWelcome.html

Registry Key Location: HKLM > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > Internet Explorer > AboutURLs
Registry Key Name: Tabs
Registry Key Type: REG_SZ
Registry Key Data: res://ieframe.dll/tabswelcome.htm

That’s it, now you have a completely customizable About:Tab. What I’ve done to mine is added some of the more frequently used links, added notes to myself, my favorite searches, etc.

What’s the point in all this, you ask? The point is (for me) to reduce the time it takes to open a new tab, then hunt through 1000s of my favorites to find the right one. Now that you have a completely customizable Tab, you can add, edit, or delete anything you want in realtime.

And if you want the page to be dynamic, you can use a simple <!– #include file=”” –> directive to include an ASP page.

Are there downsides to modifying the local tabswelcome.html file?

Yes, as with everything there are pros and cons to modifying this page.

• Pro: You can add nearly anything you want to the page.
• Pro: It is a LOCAL file, so you won’t have to worry about other’s accessing it.
• Con: It is a LOCAL file, so you’ll have to transfer or re-write the page for every computer you want it on.
• Con: If you run a Virus Scanner, the changes you make can be seen by the scanner as a browser hijacking, and may be reverted without your consent.