A separate instance of the toolbar script is loaded with each visible toolbar. Therefore each Internet Explorer browser window with your toolbar shown has a separate instance of this script running. Each instance is initialized when the toolbar is first shown in that Internet Explorer window and is unloaded when the window closes. If the user hides/un-hides the toolbar during the lifecycle of the browser window the toolbar script is not unloaded, instead it is just advised about the event (OnShow event). Thus all the internal variables of the script are preserved during the lifetime of the window in which the toolbar is shown. 

The toolbar script does its work by sinking events and doing actions in response to them. The toolbar script has direct access to the Toolbar user interface area, the browser work area and to the internal toolbar utilities. It can create additional objects from the ScriptBar's run-time library or 3-d party components (using Host.CreateObject) and thus access a huge set of additional features and ways to interact with the PC and perform complex tasks.

The toolbar script has a set of pre-defined objects which it can access by using the names listed below at any time. E.g. the script can call their methods, read/write their properties whenever needed. These objects are created and initialized by the newObjects ScriptBar core before the toolbar script starts and they give it access to the elements (visual and internal) of the ScriptBar. Through them the toolbar script is able to: control the visual state of the toolbar's user interface area, fully control the main work area of the browser, use the utility routines supplied by the ScriptBar core, create additional objects for its needs. These objects are:

Toolbar

A WebBrowser2 object representing the toolbar work area. This object is implemented by the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser control which hosts the toolbar's user interface HTML. This means that the toolbar user interface and the browser work area are accessed in the same fashion, only the names of the objects used to reach them are different.  

See WebBrowser2 for details and links to the reference information from Microsoft.

Example: To access a HTML element in the toolbar work area with ID "myelement" you use code like this:
Toolbar.document.all("myelement").<element_member>

Browser

A WebBrowser2 object representing the browser work area. his object is implemented by the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser control which is hosted in Microsoft Internet Explorer application and shows pages and other content as the user browses the WEB. Through this object the toolbar script can direct the browser to certain URL, determine the current location, dig into the page/pages currently viewed by the user, extract content from them or change their elements. 

Example: To access a HTML element in the browser work area with ID "myelement" you use code like this:
Toolbar.document.all("myelement").<element_member>

Host

Is the object which represents the newObjects ScriptBar core itself. It provides utility methods the toolbar script needs in order to perform vital tasks, create additional objects from the ScriptBar run-time library, 3-d party objects and thus gain access to almost all of the features of Microsoft Windows operating system.

Settings

Is an object that supplies minimal information needed by the toolbar script to determine its install location and other parameters that may be needed by the developer in order to construct an install location independent code. 
In the version 1.0 of newObjects ScriptBar there is only one entry in it which can be accessed this way:
stringvar = Settings("BasePath")
The stringvar receives the full path name of the install location of the ScriptBar's DLL. This is a directory path and always ends with "\" character. Thus to compose the path name in the same directory it is enough to concatenate the file name to it:
filepath = Settings("BasePath") & "myfile.txt"
This allows the toolbar script find and use any additional resource files needed for its work, for example database files, custom configurations, log files and so on.

To access various other features supplied by the run-time libraries and 3-d party components the toolbar script uses Host.CreateObject method to create certain object and saves it to a script variable. Then the created object is used to call methods, read/write properties on it. The newObjects ScriptBar's run-time library contains a rich set of objects. They all ship with the toolbar and thus they are always available on the system on which it is installed. It is strongly recommended to use the objects from the ScriptBar's run time library instead of any other 3-d party object whenever the required feature is supplied by them. This will keep the final product easy for re-distribution and will guarantee its compatibility with all the supported operating system versions. If a 3-d party component is a must the developer must take care to re-distribute its DLL(s) with the final product or/and implement system check for their availability prior or during the installation process. 

A simple example code which illustrates some of the information on this page is shown below. More sample code snippets can be found on the pages describing the different objects and fully working examples can be downloaded from our site. A few words about the sample's functionality can be read below it on this page.

The toolbar script file (in VBScript)

The names of the pre-defined objects used in this sample are bolded and the event handler routine is bold-itallic.

' This code is in VBScript, but it can be written in JScript as well
' This snippet looks for certain words in the 
Const cSFShareDenyNone = &H00000040
Const cReadLineAny = -3

Dim sf, words, file

' Read the words/expressions from the file
Set sf = Host.CreateObject("newObjects.utilctls.SFMain")
Set words = Host.CreateObject("newObjects.utilctls.VarDictionary")
words.allowUnnamedValues = True

Set file = sf.OpenFile(Settings("BasePath") & "words.txt",cSFShareDenyNone)

' The file contans one word/expression per line.
' We load them into a dictionary object and we make them upper case
' to make the search a bit more easier below
Dim line
While Not file.EOS
    line = Trim(file.ReadText(cReadLineAny))
    If line <> "" Then
        words.Add "", UCase(line)
    End If
Wend

' We handle this event which is fired whenever a new page opens in the
' browser work area. And we search that page for the words loaded during 
' the toolbar initialization
Sub OnDocumentComplete(frame,url)
    Dim I
    Dim docContent
    Dim str
    str = ""
    docContent = frame.document.body.innerText
    For I = 1 To words.Count
        If InStr(UCase(docContent),words(I)) > 0 Then
            If str <> "" Then str = str & ", "
            str = str & words(I)
        End If
    Next
    Toolbar.document.all("Found").innerText = str
    Toolbar.document.all("Found").title = url
End Sub

The toolbar user interface HTML.

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1251">
<title>Toolbar</title>
<BASE HREF="%BASE%">
<SCRIPT>

</SCRIPT>
<STYLE>
    body { font-family: Arial; font-size: 11px }
    td { font-family: Arial; font-size: 11px }
</STYLE>
</head>
<body bgcolor="buttonface" text="buttontext" topmargin="0" leftmargin="0" SCROLL="NO">
<TABLE WIDTH="100%" HEIGHT="100%">
  <TR>
    <TD VALIGN="Middle" nowrap WIDTH="100%">
        <B><SPAN ID="Found">&nbsp;</SPAN></B>
    </TD>
  </TR>
</TABLE>
</body>
</html>

The contents of the words.txt file used to try the sample (see the snapshot below):

Windows
system
drivers
software
components
DLL
developer
computer

And a snapshot of the sample while the browser shows a page from our site.

Comments

This basic sample uses the toolbar as a simple display area. It loads a text file with a word/expression on each line and searches those words/expressions in each page viewed by the user. The words found are listed in the toolbar's work area. Assume that it is a kind of reminder for the user - informing him/her that the page may contain something of interest.

Of course, this is just a sample. A real-world application should be more precise and more flexible. For example SQLite COM database can be used for the words, some buttons/images can be on the toolbar to allow user enable/disable it, a precise logic can be used to identify the frames (if the page is a frameset) and may be display the results grouped by frame and so on.