Make IE British

BillyWiz

Here a question I've been unsuccesfully asking for years.

You probably already know that hitting the Ctrl+enter keys will add the "http://www." and ".com" bits before and after a word to get the approariate Americanised version of a website. i.e. do this with the word "disney" on the address bar and you are taken to http://www.disney.com

Does anyone know a way of changing the default to the UK .co.uk version?

Zeitgeist

I would also like to know if there is a way for Windows to say "cancelled" instead of "canceled" and "colour" instead of "color", but I suspect that there isn't a way.

StephenB_2

Far out! I didn't know IE did that.

I found this thread which contained this advice

Astaec: When Ctrl+Enter is pressed on address bar, Internet Explorer's default behaviour is to add "www." and ".com" to the string on address bar. However, in localized Windows, the national top level domain suffix is added instead of ".com". That's ".fi" for Finnish, for example. A thread I saw suggested that Swedish locale adds ".sv" suffix by default, which ironically belongs not to Sweden but to El Salvador! Thus it renders Ctrl+Enter completely useless for users of Swedish XP interface. Anyway, there are lots of other users, like me, who don't like the standard behavior of Ctrl+Enter in localized Windows and would like to get the ".com" back.

Here's how to do that:

1) Get a program called Resource Hacker. It's freeware. http://www.google.com/search?q=resource+hacker ;-) Unzip and run ResHacker.exe.

2) Locate all files named browselc.dll in subfolders of "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\" and in folder "C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32". The one in the Internet Explorer's subfolders is probably the right one, if it exists there.

3) Now you need to modify the browselc.dll with ResHacker.exe. Open the file in ResHacker. Open the "String Table" section and then subsection "809". There should be only one resource (1061 probably) under it. Select it. Then you'll see data on the panel on the right. The row which starts with "12936" describes how Internet Explorer's address bar is modified when Ctrl+Enter is pressed. The %s is the original string. Modify as required.

4) Click Compile Script and then File > Save. A backup copy called BROWSELC_original.DLL will also be created for your convenience.

That's it! Enjoy! ;-)

Looks a bit scary to me, but it's also here and here. Maybe this method is worth a longer look?

SJB

charlieheard

If you're set on using IE, you can use one of the browsers that piggyback on IE to give better functionality. I used to use Maxthon which (amongst LOADS of other things) allows you to use SHIFT+ENTER and CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER (I think) to add suffixes. I used the former to do "www.XXX.co.uk" and the latter to do "www.XXX.org.uk".

It also does clever things like opening links in new windows with a mouse gesture, opening all the links on a page (or the ones you choose), navigating and closing windows using mouse gestures, etc.

John_Gray

Now we need to be told how to change Favorites to Favourites!!

John

PS Of course Firefox bypasses the problem by calling them Bookmarks!