I’m a LazyBastid as well as a CheapBastid and I found it enormously useful to create a keyboard shortcut to allow me to open a new instance of IE (6) on my machine. In W2K it worked like a charm, but in XP it doesn’t.
If one instance of IE that has been opened with the shortcut is running, hitting the shortcut combo (**ctrl+shift+x ** is the one I use) doesn’t open a new instance. I’ve Googled™ on it, and searched through all the settings and I can’t seem to find anything that indicates how I force IE in XP to open a new instance when I hit the keyboard shortcut combo. If I click the shortcut it opens up a new instance fine.
I don’t know XP at all, but in Windows 98 and Windows 2000 Professional, adding MSIE to one’s toolbar allows you to click on the “e” icon and open a new instance, without having to go through keyboard shortcuts at all. Will this work for XP?
Why create a new shortcut with a hotkey combo, when IE already has one? Hit CTRL-N, and IE will open a new instance containing a copy of the page in the previous instance. Or am I misunderstanding what you are trying to do?
I’m not sure how that would work, but I’m a Keyboard Shortcut kinda guy. Having to move the mouse over to a spot on the screen takes longer than clicking my habitual ctrl+shift+x combo.
Hmmm, that works, but it can take a bit longer to load, as it is trying to open a new instance of the current page. I’d set the shortcut with a -nohome for quick loading.
Another thing is shift+click will open a link in a new window as well.
I do love how there are many ways to accoplish getting to sites, but I’ve found my method to be quickest. My usual scenario is that I have several instances of IE open with topics or sites of interest, and then a new idea pops into my head, or I want to search on something and I want to open a quick window to pursue a new topic of interest.
by the way, I’m a huge keyboard guy, I hate using the mouse if I don’t have to. One thing that has helped me is setting up keyboard shortcuts for shortcuts in the start menu or on the desktop. For example, go through your start menu and find the IE shortcut. Rick-click for properties. Under shortcut key, press a combination (I like Ctrl+Alt+E). Apply. This will go to your home page, though. If you want to change that behavior, just append “about:blank” to the Target string (outside the quotes, and it doesn’t need any quotes). That will have the exact behavior you’re looking for unless any particular program you’re using has a Ctrl+Alt+E shortcut itself.
Then, when it opens, Alt+D goes to the address bar and you are all set!
Ohhh, so the OP’s problem is that you have created a keyboard shortcut as I described, but it won’t open additional instances? sorry for the multiple posts here…
Well, nothing still happens. It doesn’t seem to affect the current open window at all when I hit the keyboard combo. As another piece of info I have the shortcut in the startbar (quicklaunch).
Well, in terms of a desktop shortcut that works for me, I found doing
Target: “C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe” “http://www.straightdope.com”
allowed me to have each shortcut open in a new window. I assigned the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + X and it would open each in a new window.
Given this, I changed the target to: “C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe” “-nohome” and the shortcut attempted to open “http://-nohome”. Clearly this would not be acceptable as it tries to resolve the domain name.
Then I changed the target to: “C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe” -nohome
It works with this target, allowing you to open as many -nohome windows as you want!
Oh, and if I have the cursor in an edit area with the Ctrl + Shift + X shortcut, there’s major lag before the IE window opens. Changing to Ctrl + Alt + X seems to have alleviated this problem. I do not know why this might be.
