10th grade, 2007.

This is a very simple web browser made in VB6 by using Internet Explorer’s ActiveX control. So yes, this literally requires one to know or handle nothing related to HTML or other things pertaining to the actual workings of an internet browser.

I worked on this browser in 2 stages. The first one was very simple and had only the most basic features like navigation, storage of favorites, viewing of history, printing and page saving. The second stage involved neatening up the browser and adding more tools like notes, pingers, WHOIS lookup and trace routes. Looking back on it, I doubt this was useful to the “browsing experience” as such, but, both the programs do have some features to their credit.

In-browsing searching:

Back in those days, I had just a dial-up internet connection. I noticed that navigating to google.com, and then maybe to the “advanced search link”, alone took almost 1 minute or two. I looked for ways in which I could avoid this awfully redundant step.

I examined google’s links as I entered search terms in the main page and in the “advanced search” page. I noticed that I could simply generate the target link and ask the browser to navigate to this link. It was no different from actually browsing to the above said links and searching from there. Further more, I looked to other search engines like Yahoo and MSN to see if I could do the same with them. To my delight, they worked the exact same way!.

I set to work on making a simple browser feature to directly query internet engine engines for a user’s search terms. I added an “advanced” search window to provide the option of  searching for querying other internet search engines as well.

Here’re screen shots of the program and the in-browser search feature.

Oh, I’d like to say that this idea was completely mine 🙂 , and as far as I know, I was first one to implement such a feature before it’s appearance in main stream browsers.

And one last thing, please understand that I was pretty much a kid back then, and back then, my idea of a “cool program” was black backgrounds, abstract windows themes and stuff… So please overlook the wannabe appearance. 😉

Screenshots: