The list of methods exposed by the IE DOM can be found at:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms533053(VS.85).aspx

Not all of these, of course, are provided with window.external, many are indeed just W3C, or other standards.  Nevertheless, it is probably sensible to go through the list to check which have been implemented in IETester and which have not.

I suspect that you may have the problem of establishing which methods were implemented when (i.e. in which versions of IE).  I will certainly be happy to help where I can.

To save you time, I have gone through the MSDN documentation to provide you with a list of window.external methods:
AddChannel (don't know when - IE4 probably - deprecated since IE7), AddFavorite (from IE4), AddDesktopComponent(don't know when - IE4 probably), AddSearchProvider (IE7), AddToFavoritesBar (IE8), AutoCompleteSaveForm (IE5), AutoScan (don't know when - IE4 probably - but a rather pointless method, needs to be implemented though, as who knows who uses it), ContentDiscoveryReset (IE8), ImportExportFavorites (IE6 XP SP2, now deprecated, but don't know since when, perhaps since IE8), InPrivateFilteringEnabled (IE8), IsSearchProviderInstalled (IE7), IsServiceInstalled (IE8), IsSubscribed (don't know when - IE4 probably - deprecated since IE7), NavigateAndFind (IE5),  ShowBrowserUI (don't know when first implemented - IE4 probably - but MSDN notes various items of new functionality with updates of OS and/or browser).

I'm sure there are also properties, objects, collections, etc., implemented by window.external; I will try to work through the list tomorrow for you.

Some of the methods provided in the list above are clearly more important than others - the deprecated/obsolete ones are clearly less important, whilst AddFavorite and those first implemented in IE7 and IE8 are more important.  Those that provide access to Microsoft specific browser functionality (e.g. AddFavorite) must be more important than functionality that can be implemented by a combination of ECMAScript possibly with the support of server code in Perl/PHP (e.g. NavigateAndFind).

Hope this helps.

Hope my original report didn't sound too grumpy - it was very late at night and I needed to go to bed!

Regards,
Paul.

Last edited by Paul McKeown (2009-03-26 16:57:36)

Here is the IETester implementation :

http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/WindowExternal