Recently I received the below question from a reader. I answered the reader, but I thought I would also share the answer with anyone else who might be curious.
nice site. I’ve borrowed your blogroll code — its great by the way. Do you know how to link to the sidebar from a button on the ‘links’ toolbar (or even a shortcut) so that it will open in the explorer bar?
I’ve tried adding “target=_search” to the URL in the shortcut properties. Also tried adding “
” to the head section of the sidebar page. It works fine from a javascript link as in your sample. MSDN has a complex method involving registering COM objects but hope there might be an easier way.
Here’s my response:
I can indeed help!
The buttons on the links bar are just favorites/shortcuts, and shortcuts can contain JavaScript commands. Below is the code I use for a button on my Links bar to open the Memes List:
memeslist_sidebar.php’,‘_search’))
If you copy that and paste it as one line into a new shortcut address field, it should work. I would recommend you paste it as is to test first. If that works, then create a new shortcut with your URL instead of the Memes List URL.
The key parts that can’t be changed are the initial “_search” and ending “_search” because they specify the special target name IE uses internally to identify the Search bar.
