Hands on: Repurpose Internet Explorer Favourites

The quip about ‘Lies, damn lies and statistics’ has been variously attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, Mark Twain, Winston Churchill and others.

So it came as no surprise when looking up statistics for browser usage that there were some differences of opinion.

Out of three more or less random and self-styled independent sources, all agreed that the top contenders were Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, with Opera, Safari and others trailing way behind.

However, the percentage share between the top two varied wildly, from 76-16 in IE’s favour to 52-40 in Mozilla’s. Either way there are a lot of people not using IE as their default browser.

If, like the writer, you are a Firefox user, it is not always a good idea to try to remove IE completely.

Windows Update needs IE, and you may find some sites don’t work properly in Firefox, or certain third-party applications rely on IE – as an update vehicle, for example. It’s a good idea to upgrade to IE7, for the enhanced security, even if you never use it.

So, Firefox fans, with all your browser bookmarks stored in an HTML file under your profile, you have a redundant, yet perfectly serviceable Favourites folder. OK, maybe ‘perfectly’ is an exaggeration, as it’s spelled ‘Favorites’ but there’s not much you can do about that. You can rename the folder to ‘Favourites’ but the interface will continue to use the US spelling.

So, let’s put it to some use. In XP, first check that Favorites is on the Start Menu. If not, go to Start Menu Properties, Customise, Advanced and tick the appropriate box. Next, make sure new shortcuts don’t have the ‘Shortcut to…’ prefix.

There are several ways of doing this, including editing the Registry and – according to Microsoft – renaming, then deleting, a shortcut five times. The easiest is to use the XP version of Tweak UI, click on Explorer, then clear the ‘Prefix Shortcut to…’ option. If you don’t have Tweak UI, you can find it on the PCW downloads site.

Now right-click on Favorites in the Start menu, and Open. Delete (or move elsewhere) any remaining web links. Now create some new shortcuts to your most commonly used, or favourite, folders. The easiest way is to hold down the Alt key and drag the folders in from another instance of Explorer.

If you end up copying or moving the folder and its contents instead, (it happens to me too) don’t forget the ‘Undo…’ command on the right-click menu.

Having created the shortcuts, you’ll see that Start, Favorites gives you a sub-menu of all your favourite folders. Better still, in any Explorer window, going to the View menu, Explorer Bar, Favorites will display these in the left-hand pane. It doesn’t have the versatility of Vista’s favourite folders, as you can’t combine it with other panels such as common tasks or folders, but it’s more use than XP’s uncustomisable ‘Other Places’.

A variation on this is to use the subfolder of Favorites named Links as a container for favourite folder shortcuts. This has the advantage that you can show it as a toolbar in any Explorer window – go to the View menu, Toolbars and check Links. You can also add it to the Taskbar from the list of available toolbars.

One problem with the Links Toolbar is that you can’t get much on it, as it shows the icons and folder names in a single line. One trick, which works in both Explorer and the Taskbar, is to drag the toolbar’s handle to the right or drag another toolbar up against it from the right until just its title is visible. Click on the double arrow beside the title and a vertical list of the contents will appear.

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