I’ve added the last remaining missing parts, and PeteSearch running on Internet Explorer now has exactly the same features as the Firefox version! The source code is in CVS, or you can download the source as a zip here. To complete the feature set and reach alpha, I implemented search term highlighting and the summary text popups.
I’m planning on a substantial beta testing period to nail down the bugs, but before I release it as a binary I need to write an installer. Initially I was looking at NSIS, since I used that in the past, but it seems like .msi installers are the modern way to go, so I’m learning about wix, and hope to get something sorted out in the next few days. The only sticking point at the moment is figuring out how to handle the DLL registration, since apparently the code-based self-registration that the MS BHO examples use is heavily deprecated. Instead it looks like I’ll have to try and capture what the executed code is doing using a tool like tallow, and put that into a wix script. As always, I’ll let you know how that goes, and I’ll be adding some posts on other issues I’ve hit during the conversion.
Pete Warden's blog 