IE 8 - IP Address Mapping Accelerator

On the ASP.NET forums where I moderate, the poster's IP address is displayed at the bottom of the post. Often I am curious and paste the poster's IP address into an IP locator web page to find out where they are posting from. This was tedious.

Once I installed Internet Explorer 8 and saw what accelerators could do, I decided to write one to do the work for me. It wasn't too hard.

Here is what the accelerator text looks like (it's just an XML file):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<os:openServiceDescription 
   xmlns:os="http://www.microsoft.com/schemas/openservicedescription/1.0">
  <os:homepageUrl>http://www.infosniper.net</os:homepageUrl>
  <os:display>
    <os:name>Map IP Address with Info Sniper</os:name>
    <os:icon>http://www.infosniper.net/favicon.ico</os:icon> 
  </os:display>
  <os:activity category="Map">
    <os:activityAction context="selection">
      <os:execute method="get"
       action="http://www.infosniper.net/?ip_address={selection}" />
    </os:activityAction>
  </os:activity>
</os:openServiceDescription>

To install an accelerator, you have to launch it from a web page. This is annoying. I tried to make the URL a local file but that did not work. I ended up with this:

<button id="myButton" 
  onclick="window.external.AddService(
     'http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/stevewellens/Accelerators/InfoSniperAccelerator.xml')">  
  Add InfoSniper Accelerator
</button>

Here is what it looks like in action. Highlight the IP address, right click and…

Here is part of the resulting InfoSniper web page:

Here are some Microsoft's accelerators: http://ie.microsoft.com/activities/en-en/Default.aspx

Here is the Developer's Guide: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc289775(VS.85).aspx

I hope someone finds this useful.

Steve Wellens