[HN Gopher] Show HN: My small program from 2007 that gave Intern...
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Show HN: My small program from 2007 that gave Internet Explorer
tabs
Author : EGreg
Score : 90 points
Date : 2022-06-10 18:58 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tabbed.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (tabbed.org)
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| It's funny that this was written in 2007, when this finally
| became an official IE feature.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| Something similar for Opera from back in the day:
|
| http://web.archive.org/web/20021015195623/http://digdug.cx:8...
| Beltalowda wrote:
| Didn't Opera already have tabs by 2002? IIRC
| Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox had them since the first releases as
| well, or at least very early on in the early 2000s.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| I was at Google when Chrome launched and had a 20% project that
| let you queue up interesting web pages to read later (kind of
| like Pocket does). I tried to pitch it to the Chrome team but it
| never made the cut (maybe the right call). But I kept using it
| myself until it broke.
| j5155 wrote:
| If I remember correctly, a read later feature was actually
| recently added to Chrome...I guess it wasn't as good of a call
| as you thought!
| matsemann wrote:
| Cool that your website is still running!
|
| How did the program do what it did?
|
| How did the referral program and skinning contests work out?
| [deleted]
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| IE was so hackable - remember some Chinese firm (Maxthon) built a
| complete new browser by just embedding Trident and using ActiveX.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I remember something like this called Avant Browser.
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| Not just IE - things like MSN Messenger and uxtheme.dll had
| lots of mods. I also remember greasemonkey (from a bit later of
| a time) being huge, too.
|
| I wonder why it's less of a thing now. Is it because of the
| increased difficulty (frequent updates), or is it because there
| isn't as much need for such mods?
| skeaker wrote:
| In the case of Discord which would be today's MSN Messenger,
| it's not often done because your account will be terminated
| if you are found to be using a modded client.
| Jaxkr wrote:
| Lots of people use BetterDiscord (which is EULA compliant
| afaik) without a problem. Discord is more hackable than
| anything thanks to the web UI.
| ajstiles wrote:
| I did something similar (NetCaptor)... starting in 1997. It's
| cool to see that Maxthon is still around.
| solardev wrote:
| You were my hero back in the day! I remember spending so much
| time editing the Wikipedia entry for NetCaptor to get it more
| visibility.
|
| For a LONG time, even after Firefox, NetCaptor was still the
| best browser around. I used QuickSearch all the time (and
| still have that habit to this day).
|
| Next to Tim Berners Lee, IMO, you are the web's true unsung
| hero. THANK YOU a million times for bringing the single
| biggest improvement to the web browser in two decades.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| You the OG - think I used Netcaptor before Firefox came
| along.
| chrisbrandow wrote:
| you are still my hero...
| qsort wrote:
| "The best 3 skins are going to receive a Gameboy Advance" is just
| perfection.
|
| How did you implement it? Was there some kind of API you could
| hook into to extend iexplore? Sorry if it's a dumb question but I
| don't know anything about windows programming.
| EGreg wrote:
| I just used Win32 APIs, and I made a window that "stuck to" the
| bottom of IE windows, and followed them around. The tabs were
| rendered there. I forgot what I did for maximized IE windows.
|
| To make the tabs "switch" I basically hid and showed the IE
| windows, by their window handle. I think Win32 allowed you to
| do that to windows of other applications, back then.
| wolpoli wrote:
| I remember learning about the Win32 API, and then proceed to
| delete/move UI elements of other Window using VB. I
| immediately tried to move the "continue" button of WinZip.
| Does anyone know if these APIs are still allowed or are they
| locked behind the UAC prompt now?
| jdsfighter wrote:
| You're bringing back waves of nostalgia. I used to
| frequently read AllAPI.net and come up with mischievous
| implementations for my own amusement. A quick Google Search
| netted the following project
| (https://github.com/microsoft/CsWin32). Looks like my
| evening is gone.
| brewmarche wrote:
| Cool find! I've only known
| <https://github.com/dotnet/pinvoke> which offers ready-
| to-use NuGets for various Win32 APIs.
| [deleted]
| jchw wrote:
| As far as I know, most of this stuff still works. There
| might be some security boundaries that apps can opt into,
| but most of them do not. So something running as your user,
| you can probably manipulate the UI of.
|
| There's been some amusing ones even not so long ago, like
| this one:
|
| http://kylehalladay.com/blog/2020/05/20/Rendering-With-
| Notep...
|
| edit: Bad example, they are using WriteProcessMemory. Still
| a lot of fun, but not the same. I was thinking of this:
|
| https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/1263190719721766918
| Pathogen-David wrote:
| > Does anyone know if these APIs are still allowed or are
| they locked behind the UAC prompt now?
|
| For better or worse this sort of thing still works just
| fine for apps which still use Win32 controls. All that's
| really changed with regards to UAC is non-privileged apps
| can't mess with privileged ones.
| EGreg wrote:
| Back then, I used to write little programs like this:
|
| https://www.oocities.org/trentgamblin/sizehack/hackman.zip
|
| https://qbix.com/Recycle.exe (video game)
|
| and programming columns like this:
|
| https://www.flipcode.com/archives/Theory_Practice-Issue_00_I...
|
| Those were the days. Simple, and to the point stuff.
| lagrange77 wrote:
| > https://www.flipcode.com/tpractice/
|
| The Issue links seem not to work anymore. "[an error occurred
| while processing this directive]"
| dontbenebby wrote:
| Cool stuff Greg! Tabs are what made me switch away from IE to
| Firebird.
| denysvitali wrote:
| Firebird?
| therealmarv wrote:
| name of Firefox before they were changing it (they said there
| was another open source project with name firebird too)
| https://website-
| archive.mozilla.org/www.mozilla.org/firefox_...
| flatiron wrote:
| https://firebirdsql.org/
| kome wrote:
| Phoenix
| ews wrote:
| Correct: Phoenix came before Firebird, which came before
| Firefox.
| apocalyptic0n3 wrote:
| At some point, wasn't it also just referred to as the
| "Mozilla Suite" and was a single do-it-all program? That
| had to be nearly 25 years ago now and I'm blanking on
| exactly what it was.
|
| Also... 25 years later and I'm still using Firefox daily.
| Go figure.
| midzer wrote:
| Crazy Browser from ~2000 was another browser (IE based) which had
| tabs.
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(page generated 2022-06-10 23:00 UTC)