Explorer Bars

This tab displays third-party Explorer bars installed on your system.

What's An Explorer Bar?

An explorer bar is a panel, usually shown on the left of the browser window, e.g. Search, History, Favorites, etc. Apart from displaying various useful information, an explorer bar can also track IE events, modify web page text, open new browser windows, etc. in the same way a BHO does.



Location

An explorer bar is a COM object whose CLSID is stored under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID key. To designate that this object is an explorer bar, it implements one of the two component categories: {00021493-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} or {00021494-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}.

The Disable Action

The disable action removes the COM object of the bar from the list of objects that implement the explorer bar component categories.

You must restart Internet Explorer for the action to take effect.

The Delete Action

The delete action (depending on the selected options):

  • Removes the COM object of the bar from the list of objects that implement the explorer bar component categories, deletes the bar CLSID from the key: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT \CLSID;
  • Deletes the bar file;
  • Unregisters the bar file (DLL module).

You may need to close all Internet Explorer windows to delete an explorer bar file.
You must restart Internet Explorer for the action to take effect.

Properties


Name Short description of the bar.
CLSID Class identifier (globally unique identifier - GUID) associated with the bar OLE class.
Publisher The developer (a company or a person) of the bar.
Program ID Programmatic identifier - human-readable identifier of the bar OLE class.
File A full path to the bar file.
File Version File version information. The information is retrieved from the file resources. Also includes product version information if it differs from the file version.
File Size File size in bytes.
File CRC32 Cyclic Redundancy Checksum (Check) of the file.
File MD5 Message Digest 5 of the file.
File Creation Date The date the file was created.
Location The location (registry or a folder) of the item.
Safe Indicates whether the item in a safe or in a blocked list. Yes - item is in a safe list. No - item is in a blocked list. N/A - items is not in a safe nor in a blocked list.
Status Indicates whether the item is enabled or disabled.

Tips and Tricks


  • In Internet Explorer main menu click View -> Explorer Bar to select which bars to display.