I was quite occupied recently but I have two pieces of good news: First, Quero is now open source and secondly, I have also managed to build a new version.

I have thought about releasing Quero as open source since the release of version 1 five years ago but decided to stay closed source for the time being in order to keep more control over it.

Over time I also got some offers for selling the source code or bundle it with other software which I politely refused. Over the past 5 years I have learned how to write good and bad code, got acquainted with many internal Microsoft technologies (GDI, COM, Uniscribe, Windows Desktop Manager, WinINet, WinHTTP, Crypt32, ...) and also hacked Internet Explorer in order to implement dynamic JavaScript filtering and replace the navigation bar. At least for the latter the IE team has eventually provided a group policy setting which I am taking advantage of in the new release.

From a developer's stand point I understand the benefits of open source software and believe me I wished many times to have access to the source code of IE and Windows, which would have saved me from so many hours figuring things out.

I am glad releasing Quero finally as open source, which is quite a natural step for a freeware project in my opinion. You are welcome to improve the code or take it as a reference for your own add-on project. The next challenge will be to see how comaptible Quero will be with IE9 but until then I wish you hassle-free browsing with Quero.

New Features

• Quero is now open source, licensed under the GPLv3
• New method to hide the standard navigation bar using the NoNavBar group policy (changing the setting requires Administrator rights)
• Extended Favicon support (favicons are now displayed in the history and search-engine drop-down list if available in the cache)
• Support for custom search engine icons added
• SSL certificate information is now displayed in the Quero box (box does not turn yellow any more to be more consistent with IE8)
• Quero button is now optional, entire toolbar can be hidden if you only want to use the ad blocker
• Added Site Search capability which allows you to search for keywords on the current Web site (Google Site Search engine added to demonstrate this feature)
• Experimental option to hide the Favorites button added (useful for reducing the interface to just one line if tabbed browsing is turned off)
• Optional page loading animation added (useful if tabbed browsing is turned off, requires IE7 or higher)
• Using Explorer's blocked pop-up sound instead of own sound
• New graphics for the home and go button
• Discontinued development for Windows 98
• Removed additional settings for Quick Find, it is now either on or off
• Removed option "Set focus in search box" (functionality replaced by Quick Type)
• Fixed: searching from the context menu did not work in pop-up windows (or if tabbed browsing was turned off)