NOTE : The properties detailed on this page are not officially documented, so I cannot be sure of 100% accuracy for their details. This topic was put together initially, by testing different properties, methods and events, to see what their values were and whether they were accesible through Visual Basic Script. The ActiveX Control Pad and Visual Basic proved to be gold-mines during the testing.
| Properties | Methods | Events |
| Application, Busy, FullScreen, height, HWND, left, locationName, locationURL, menubar, Name, Parent, Path, statusbar, top, toolbar toplevelContainer, Type, Visible, width | GoBack, GoForward, GoHome, GoSearch, Navigate, Stop, Quit | None dicsovered so far |
For any window, the Explorer object properties can be referenced as :
Explorer.propertyName
When a frame based display is used, then each separate frame (or document window), contains it's own Explorer object (with suitable property values) and the whole frameset is also an Explorer object. Therefore, each different Explorer object can be referenced according to it's frame index, in the frames array (see the Frame Object). So :
windowname.frames(index).Explorer.propertyname
is also a valid way of referencing certain Explorer objects, depending on which frame the Explorer object is in. This implies that it should be possible to reference Explorer objects by referring to the window name (given in the <FRAMESET> element), but on testing, that didn't appear to work. Both parent and top work satisfactorily though, for referencing the Explorer objects of the immediate windows parent and the top-most window respectively.
The Explorer object can almost be thought of as an Internet Explorer specific cross between the Navigator and Window Objects.
NOTE : The height, width, left, top, menubar, statusbar and toolbar appear to be the only properties that can be dynamically changed. The dimensions and screen-location properties (height, width, top and left) all accept pixel values, while the remaining display option properties accept values of true or false, for displaying (or removing) the toolbar, status bar and menu bar.
Also, while all Explorer objects will return the correct screen-location (i.e. top and left) properties, there appears to be small anomaly when setting the top and left properties using the window.open method. See window.open topic for more details.
Explorer Properties
Application
The Applcation property always appears to return the value 'Microsoft Internet Explorer', which implies it is synonymous with the navigator.appName property.
Busy
The Busy property is a reflection of the current Explorer objects activity status. Generally, it returns 'False' because when used to reference the current windows Explorer object, the document will already be loaded.
FullScreen
The FullScreen property can be set to either true or false and will accordingly display the current Explorer window in fullscreen view, or however the user has Internet Explorer set up to display. Note that if the document that forces Internet Explorer to a full screen view is a single document (i.e. not framed), it will remove the menubar, statusbar, toolbar and title bar. This effectively prevents the user from having access to any method to quit Internet Explorer, apart from ending the task after pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del. If you force Internet Explorer to a full screen view, be kind and provide a way out of it. If the document is a framed one though, it reloads the current frameset with itself. (i.e. the same as if the user activated a link in the document that led to itself, with a TARGET="_top" attribute setting) In this case, none of the Internet Explorer toolbar items are removed and the size of the open Internet Explorer window is not changed.
Internet Explorer full screen view is also known as Kiosk Mode
height
This reflects the height of the particular Explorer object in pixels. Note that if the current window (hence Explorer object) is a frame in a framed set up, then the height properties of the current and parent (or top) Explorer objects will be different.
HWND
This property reflects a number that relates to the window handle of the current Explorer object. It isn't of use to Visual Basic Script developers, as they have no way of controlling the handles of windows on the users system.
left
This reflects the left-most co-ordinate of the particular Explorer object in pixels. Note that if the current window (hence Explorer object) is a frame in a framed set up, then the left properties of the current and parent (or top) Explorer objects will be different.
locationName
The locationName property returns the name of the current Explorer objects location. It is almost synonymous with the location.href property (almost as in the Explorer.locationName property returns the URL minus the protocol)
locationURL
The locationURL property returns the name of the current Explorer objects location. It is synonymous with the location.href property (therefore, is essentially the locationName property, plus the protocol of the current Explorer objects location)
menubar
The menubar property returns true or false depending on whether the current Explorer object has a menubar. In a framed document, this will obviously always be false (except for the parent.Explorer.menubar property).
Name
The Name property currently returns 'Microsoft Internet Explorer' and so is synonymous with the Navigator.appName property.
Parent
This property returns the value of 'Microsoft Internet Explorer', so is synonymous with the application and navigator.appName properties.
Path
This property returns the full path to the Internet Explorer executable (generally 'drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Internet\'). If the WebBrowser object is hosted in another application though, the Path property returns the full path of the executable file that hosts the Internet Explorer WebBrowser object.
statusbar
The status property returns true or false depending on whether the current Explorer object has a status bar. In a framed document, this will obviously always be false (except for the parent.Explorer.menubar property).
top
This reflects the top-most co-ordinate of the particular Explorer object in pixels. Note that if the current window (and Explorer object) is a frame in a framed set up, then the top properties of the current and parent (or top) Explorer objects will be different.
toolbar
The toolabr property returns true or false depending on whether the current Explorer object has a toolabr. In a framed document, this will obviously always be false (except for the parent.Explorer.menubar property).
toplevelContainer
The toplevelContainer property is something of a mystery. During testing, it always appeared to return a value of 'True', independent of the Explorer objects nature (i.e. singular, framed, nested frame etc.)
Type
This property returns a value of 'Windows HTML viewer', so can be considered a description of the application property.
Visible
The Visible property surprisingly seems to reflect whether Internet Explorer currently has the users focus (as opposed to whether it is visible or not). For instance, if the explorer.visible property value is written to the document (using a document.write method, it returns 'True', but if it is accessed in an alert method (thus losing focus to the alert message box), it returns 'False'.
width
This reflects the width of the particular Explorer object in pixels. Note that if the current window (and Explorer object) is a frame in a framed set up, then the width properties of the current and parent (or top) Explorer objects will be different.
Explorer Methods
GoBack
The GoBack method is similar in function to the history.back method in that it causes the current Explorer object to navigate to the previous URL in the history list. Note that use of the Explorer.goback method appears to be unstable through Visual Basic Script, so the history.back method should be used instead.
GoForward
The GoForward method is similar in function to the history.forward method in that it causes the current Explorer object to navigate to the next URL in the history list. Note that use of the Explorer.goforward method appears to be unstable through Visual Basic Script, so the history.forward method should be used instead.
GoHome
The GoHome method causes the current Explorer object to navigate to the users designated Home page (as set in the View|Options|Navigation page in Internet Explorer).
GoSearch
The GoSearch method causes the current Explorer object to navigate to the users designated Search page (as set in the View|Options|Navigation page in Internet Explorer).
Navigate
The Navigate method is similar to dynamically setting the location.href property, in that it causes the current Explorer object to navigate to a new URL. The full syntax is :
Explorer.navigate "URL", flags, target, postdata, headers
where :
URL is a fully-qualified URL (i.e. including the protocol, host etc, or the drive and path for local files) that points to the desired document to load
flags can be any of navOpenInNewWindow, navNoHistory, navNoReadFromCache or navNoWriteToCache to specify whether the new URL is loaded into a new window, whether it replaces the current history list entry (compare with the Netscape specific location.replace method), whether a cached version of the URL (if it exists) is loaded, or whether the new URL is to be cached or not respectively.
target is the intended frame or window name.
postdata is optional information to send to the server when navigating to the URL (if not specified, then a HTTP GET request is sent, to download the page from the server).
headers is a value to specify any additional (other than the default Internet Explorer headers) to send to the server during the document request.
NOTE : Testing proved inconclusive as to the effectiveness of using this method through Visual Basic Script. It is fully functional when using the Internet Explorer WebBrowser object in a host application, but there are other methods more reliable to perform the same operations through Visual Basic Script (such as location.href for example).
Stop
This method forces the same action as when the user presses the Internet Explorer 'Stop' button. It stops any current Explorer activity.
Quit
The Quit method quits the current explorer object. It's use is not recommended in a frame based site, as it generally causes Internet Explorer to crash, rather than exiting gracefully (as it does when used in a single document). Users may not be pleased if you unexpectedly quit their browsing session regardless though.
Explorer Events
The Explorer object has no events (at least none that have proved accessible through Visual Basic Script).
NOTE : There are also Container, Document and StatusText properties and Refresh, Refresh2, GetProperty and PutProperty methods associated with the Explorer object, but there use (in Visual Basic Script) either causes Internet Explorer to crash, or return scripting errors, so they have not been detailed here.