Change the title of your browser

Titlebars are boring. All they every say is the title of the web page and the name of the browser. I want mine to say something, to stand out.

Internet Explorer
Do you want the Internet Explorer title bar to reflect your company name? You could always roll out your own distribution of IE using IEAK (Internet Explorer Administration Kit). The problem is that would require users to basically reinstall what is already there. Why not just use Group Policies (XP Professional)?

Here’s how to do just that:

  1. Open the Group Policy Editor (on the local maching, Start -> Run -> gpedit.msc).
  2. Expand (click the plus sign) the Windows Settings folder under User Configuration.
  3. Expand Internet Explorer Maintenance.
  4. Click on Browser User Interface.
  5. Double-click Browser Title in the right-side pane.
  6. Put a check mark next to Customize Title Bars.
  7. Type in the text you want in the Title Bar Text: field.
  8. Click OK and exit the Group Policy editor.

No reboot is required for this setting to take effect. After doing that, my title bar now shows:

Microsoft Internet Explorer provided by my employer

If you are using this in a Windows 200x domain Group Policy, the changes will take effect after the next policy update or logon.

Mozilla Firefox
I had to remove the info here because the extension doesn’t work with 1.5.01. I’ll put something back when I find something that works. I apologize for the error. Thanks sligh for the heads up.

Opera
You will have to edit the INI file in the Opera program directory. In Windows, C:\Program Files\Opera is the default installation location. The INI file name is different for each version of Opera but they always follow the format OperaX.ini. In the current release of Opera, 8.53, the INI is called OperaDef6.ini.

Open the INI file and add the following line under [User Prefs]:

Title:Your text here

You do not have to put the text, Your text here for this example, in quotes. Save the file and open Opera to see your new, catchy title.

(Article 8, Day 10)

30.Mar.06 Browsers, Tech Tip

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6 Responses to “Change the title of your browser”

  1. sligh | March 30th, 2006 at 10:49 am

    that’s a great article .. It is useful ..But!
    http://www.sligh.biz/chf/title.jpg

  2. wyckedone | March 30th, 2006 at 11:02 am

    Doh! It said it was compatible with Deer Park which became Firefox 1.5. I had tried Firesomething and it worked with 1.5 but I thought it was overkill just to change the titlebar.

    Sorry about that. I’ll make the change.

  3. J | March 30th, 2006 at 4:54 pm

    Windows cannot find ‘gpedit.msc’. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and blah blah blah…

    Ideas?

  4. J | March 30th, 2006 at 4:55 pm

    GPEDIT.MSC (Group Policy Editor) isn’t available on XP Home Edition, partly because XP Home cannot join a domain by design. Although the took is designed to be used in an Enterprise environment running Active Directory, all it really does is making registry entries. So, the best alternative is to edit the registry using Regedit. Be aware that editing the registry incorrectly can make your system unbootable or cause other issues, so proceed carefully before diving in!

    Um, DAMMIT!

  5. wyckedone | March 30th, 2006 at 8:07 pm

    I’ll see if I can find a way to do it in XP Home.

  6. sudhakar samanth | November 3rd, 2006 at 10:26 pm

    thanks for the info..

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