TechnicalFAQ

From Best Toolbars

Q: How to use multiple search sites in the toolbar & switch between them

A: If you need to search on multiple search sites like google.com and your 
own site with your own site being the default, define the following 
commands: 

 <WEBJUMP name="search1" href="http://www.yourtoolbar.com/search.asp?q=%combo1&Searchtype=from_toolbar"/> 
 <WEBJUMP name="search2" href="http://google.com/search?q=%combo1"/> 
 
In the above lines %combo1 symbol shows the position into which the search string will be  
substituted. "Combo1" here is a name of the combo box, from which toolbar should get the
search terms.

To specify that by default the search will be performed on your site you'll have to specify that the Search combo box uses the search1 command as shown in the fragment below: <COMBO name="combo1" caption="search" hint="enter text to search" command="search1" limit="40" histmax="10"> <WIDTH>10</WIDTH> <WIDTH>15</WIDTH> <WIDTH>20</WIDTH> </COMBO></nowiki> Then you can use the SWITCHCOMMAND command: <BUTTON id="swbtn" caption="MyCompany" img=" 8" command="swtch"/> <COMMANDS> <WEBJUMP href="http://www.yoursite.com/search?q=%search" name="keMdXGRo"/> <WEBJUMP href="http://www.anotheryoursite.com/?q=%search" name="redir2"/> <SWITCHCOMMAND name="swtch" target="keMdXGRo" command="redir2"/> </COMMANDS>

Q: How can I provide news/information A: You can insert the following lines: This will insert a mini web browser window into place. By uploading news to http://www.yourserver.com/news.html you can ensure that users see your news periodically while surfing. Please use expire= and sync= to define periodicity. You can insert any html code into news.html page so that you can provide scrolling lines, flashing items and so on.

Q: How can I store usernames and passwords ? A: A.Toolbar can store username and password inside using variables like %user_pass and %user_id. You can get the sample of setting and getting such variables on our site. Samples: http://www.besttoolbars.net/developers.php

Q: How can I send POST requests via the toolbar A: To do this, define a new WEBJUMP command. The command has to be defined between tags in the configuration file. The syntax is as following:

Q: Does the toolbar allows users to customize their own toolbar? For example, we will offer a menu of buttons (contents), and users can choose which ones to add to their version of the toolbar? A: Yes this feature is supported in our toolbars. To control the visibility of individual buttons HTML options.html page can be used. To disable some buttons by default (so they will not be visible on the toolbar start and can only be made visible from options.html). Please add the attribute visibility="0" to the button definition like below: <BUTTON id="any_id" caption="any_caption" img="7" hint="any_hint" command="any_command" visibility="0"/> You can also check our developers corner http://www.besttoolbars.net/developers.php where we show examples of more advanced customizations that you can make available to your customers using CUSTOM_XML feature.

Q: How else can users customize a toolbar? A: You define what your users can do with your toolbar. The trivial example is that your users can define what buttons to show/hide on their toolbar. The advanced example can involve server side integration so the toolbar of your user will show the money earned by him or the points he won. Toolbar can store UserID and your site can feed back specific content to be shown in the user is toolbar basing on his UserID. Please also take a look to samples provide in our developers corner: http://www.besttoolbars.net/developers.php Q: How can I make active HTML drop down menus ? A: From a customization program you can add a menu item called "bubble". Then you will need to associate any HTML page. This HTML will appear in drop-own menu. "Bubble"-menus supports not only simple HTML, but also DHTML, JavaScript as well as any other Internet Explorer Plug-Ins currently installed on user's machine. Q: How can I organize news or advertising via the toolbar? A: The simple way: just include a <BANNER> tag in your toolbar and redirect it to an HTML page, which will refresh itself periodically.

<?xml version="1.0"?> <TOOLBAR name="IE Toolbar Sample" icons="icons.bmp" hot_icons="icons.bmp" dllname="toolbar"> <! News banner (HTML approach) --> <BANNER caption="news" href="http://www.yoursite.com/toolbar_news.html" expire=" 10" width="200"/> <! News include (XML approach) --> <INCLUDE_XML filename="http://www.yoursite.com/toolbar.asp" expire="10"/> </TOOLBAR>

Another way: Use <INCLUDE_XML> tag with a server side XML file. Included XML file (placed at URL http://www.yoursite.com/toolbar.asp ): <?xml version="1.0"?> <TOOLBAR> <% ' ASP script (generates XML for toolbar) Randomize MyValue = Int((4 * Rnd()) + 1) ' Generate a random number for advertisement advText = "Advertisement #" & MyValue ' Image name %> <BUTTON href="http://www.yoursite.com/advert.asp?adv= <%=MyValue% >" command="redirect" hint="" caption=" <%=advText% >" /> </TOOLBAR> Q: How can I include an .EXE into my toolbar's .CAB and make this .EXE file to be executed when someone presses a button or clicks menu item in my toolbar? A: To achieve this, you should add the following lines to the <COMMANDS> section: <LOCALHTML name="prog" href="progname.exe"/> <SHELLEXECUTE name="Prog" command="progname.exe" options="/s %combo1" not_found="Can't open Prog application..."/> Q: How can I refresh the mini web page in the banner periodically? A: You should use the expire attribute of the BANNER tag to specify a time interval at which the banner shall be reloaded. <BANNER caption="news" href="http://www.yoursite.com/toolbar_news.html" width=" 200" expire="1"/> Additionally, you can use the sync attribute to force reloads when user jumps from page to page. It could be set to one of two values: BeforeNavigate - reloads banner when user clicks on a link, or enters URL manually. OnDocumentComplete - reloads banner after the page have been loaded completely by the browser. <BANNER caption="news" href="http://www.yoursite.com/toolbar_news.html" width=" 200" expire=" 1" sync="OnDocumentComplete" /> Q: Is there anyway to show scrollbars in the bubble window so that the user can scroll up and down within the window? A: You need to have an HTML page that will use IFRAME with scrollbars (occupying the whole size of a BUBBLE) and will reference another HTML page that you need to scroll. Q: How can I toggle display of images in the browser? A: You can switch on/off display of images by using the ENABLEIMAGE command. To use this feature, you should define it in the COMMANDS section and assign a button or a menu item to it. <COMMANDS> <ENABLEIMAGE name="imge" /> </COMMANDS> <BUTTON id="btimages" caption="Show Images" command="imge"/> Q: How can I enable/disable flash animation in the browser? A: You can switch on/off display of flash by using the ENABLFLASH command. To use this feature, you should define it in the COMMANDS section and assing a button or menu item to it. <COMMANDS> <ENABLEFLASH name="flena" /> </COMMANDS> <BUTTON id="btflash" caption="Show Flash" command="flena"/> Q: When clicking a link in an html-bubble, is it possible that the redirect is opened in the main browser window instead of the bubble itself? A: Yes - just add #mainwindow to the end of your URL's inside HTML, like the below: http://www.yoursite.com/index.html#mainwindow You may also use 'in_banner' attribute Enabled or Disabled to choose the way you wish. Q: Is it possible to start an windows application directly from the toolbars? A: Yes, please read our advanced manual section related to SHELLEXECUTE command. Q: What type of commands can I use with the 'Shell command on the User PC'? A: You can launch any programs (such as word.exe, notepad.exe) or execute any commands that are accessible from the Start->Run menu (like tracert and cmd). Q: You can launch any programs (such as word.exe, notepad.exe) or execute any commands that are accessible from the Start->Run menu (like tracert and cmd). A: How can I have news, short jokes or ads scroll across the toolbar? Q: Use the . The below will create a 200 pixel wide HTML banner inside the toolbar that is downloaded from your site (jokes.html). A: <BANNER id="Jokebox" caption="Jokes" url="http://www.yoursite.com/jokes.html" width="200"/> Please see jokes.html example below: <html> <head> < META HTTP-EQUIV="PRAGMA" CONTENT="NO-CACHE"> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Cache-control" CONTENT="NO-CACHE, must-revalidate"> <style> a.ticker { color:#FFFFFF; font-weight:bold; height:10px; filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.dropshadow(OffX=1, OffY=1, Color='#666666', Positive='true')} </style> <script language="javascript"> started = true; </script> </head>

<a href=http://www.yoursite.com/jokes1.html class="ticker">A funny joke</a>

<a href=http://www. yoursite.com/jokes2.html class="ticker">A very funny joke</a>

<a href=http://www. yoursite.com/jokes3.html class="ticker">Another funny joke</a>

<a href=http://www. yoursite.com/jokes4.html class="ticker">And yet one more funny joke</a>

</marquee> </body> </html>

The jokes.html can also be a script like jokes.php or jokes.asp. Q: How can I include a .DLL into my toolbar's .CAB and make this .DLL registered when installing my toolbar? A: Please open ToolbarStudio and go 'Toolbar->Bundle files with the toolbar'. You may also download the CABARC.exe (a part of CAB SDK) from Microsoft Website and use it to package your DLL. Please make an adjust .inf file to contain the definition for your .DLL. Q: Opening a page in a new or modal browser window A: To do this, define a new WEBJUMP command. The command has to be defined between <COMMANDS></COMMANDS> tags in the configuration file. The syntax is as follows:

'options' parameter defines an options of the window and only valid for modal dialog window. It is the same as in javascript: window.open() function. This command can then be added to any button or menu item. You can use the Javascript to open a new window with specific settings. To do this you should use the following line: <WEBJUMP name="newcommand3" href="javascript:var wpr=window.open('http://www.somesite.com','chia','location,height=100,width=100')" newbrowserwindow="false"/> Q: I'm trying to edit the basis.xml file to contain a listbox. Clicking each item in the list has to redirect to a different site. A: You can use the following code: <COMBO id="se_search_option" name="se_search_option" hint="" limit="45" command="goSite"> <WIDTH>100</WIDTH> <VALUE display="Site1">http://URL of site1</VALUE> <VALUE display="Site2">http://URL of site2</VALUE> </COMBO>

And the below WEBJUMP command: <WEBJUMP name="goSite" href="%se_search_option"/> Q: Your documentation references a toolbar.dll, yet I have been unable to find it on the PC where the toolbar is installed. A: The toolbar.dll is used only as an example. The DLL is named exactly as the .cab file that you've created. Q: Is it possible to change height of toolbar ? A: You need to change the Height of both the toolbar (via going to Tools->Edit RAW XML and adding height="" to <TOOLBAR> tag) and of the icon files used by the toolbar (please change the height of the icons using Toolbar->Icons menu in ToolbarStudio). Q: Is there a way to install two of our toolbars on the same system? If we make 2 toolbars for our site can they have them both installed ? A: You can make toolbars for your site, but they can not be installed on the same machine if they are under the same license. To make independent toolbars you'll need to purchase the Unlimited License. Q: How to change toolbar language 'on the fly'? A: You can implement different .XML files and switch between them when the user presses a button on the toolbar using <CHANGE LAYOUT> command. Please see a sample in our Developer's section: http://www.besttoolbars.net/developers.php Q: I used CAB2NSIS that I downloaded from your website in order to change .CAB to .EXE. After I used this and downloaded the Toolbar in .EXE format. I want to ask you if there are any ways to add or edit .EXE? For example, I want to add "Terms of use" of the A: You'll find a couple of .nsh files right after you've unzipped cab2nsis. You can modify those .NSH files as it is explained here: http://nsis.sourceforge.net/home/ to achieve what you require. Q: Can the toolbar be fully dynamic? A: Yes, it is possible. The toolbar can get all the information directly from your website so that you can display the most up-to date links, images and banners to your customers. Q: Does your toolbar support https? Does it support server side PUSH operations? A: Yes, it supports https redirects and https calls in DYNAMIC mode - INCLUDE_XML. Server side push can only be simulated by explicitly calling .reload() method for the toolbar from Javascript. All those advanced customization techniques are explained in this manual. Q: How can I implement pagerank or URL information in the toolbar? A: Toolbar gives many possibilities for implementing such server side processing as page ranking (similar to the Google PageRank), keyword analysis and associated keyword information. To implement this you'll need to develop server side scripts. The below example demonstrates how to achieve functionality similar to Google PageRank with your toolbar.

<?xml version="1.0"?> <TOOLBAR name="IE Toolbar Sample" icons="icons.bmp" hot_icons="icons.bmp" dllname="toolbar"> ... <INCLUDE_XML filename="http://www.yoursite.com/getrank.asp?toolbar_id=%toolbar_id&URL=%url" sync="OnDocumentComplete"/> ... </TOOLBAR>

Toolbar will download the XML file generated by getrank.asp page every time the user navigates to a new page with his browser. By feeding back the appropriate XML you can give the user additional information about the page he currently visits. You can also change the appearance of the toolbar, put new buttons, menus, banners displaying (as Alexa.com toolbar does). Similarly to Alexa.com you can create a drop-down html menu that will display the detailed information about the current domain, url etc (of course you need to provide server side CGI, ASP or PHP scripts that will generate the HTML page bubble.asp in the example below)

<BUTTON id="bubble2" caption="URL info" img="1"> <BUBBLE href="http://www.yoursite.com/bubble.asp?url=%url" width=" 100" height=" 200" /> </BUTTON> Q: Toolbar Uninstall. This doesn't fully cleanup the machine if done from the toolbar menu options. Is there a way to configure it to clean up all the files in the toolbar folder and delete the folder. Uninstalling from control panel seems to do the clean up A: There is no way to uninstall the toolbar completely from Internet Explorer (because IE locks the Toolbar files). Complete uninstall is only possible from the Control Panel. Please make your uninstall button to display a HTML page telling the user to go to the Control panel to uninstall the toolbar. Q: How to broadcast notifications or alerts to my clients using Toolbar? A: Toolbar gives you a possibility to share latest news from your site with all users who currently have your Toolbar installed. There are several types of notifications. You can choose from flashing notification, dynamic menu items and pop-up alerts. To arrange such notifications you will need to add server-side scripts (written on PHP, ASP, Perl or CGI). Toolbar will call this page periodically (you define the periodicity) and receive the latest news from your website. All this is achieved either via <BANNER> element or using <INCLUDE-XML> directive. Please visit our developer’s corner http://www.besttoolbars.net/developers.php for toolbar examples and scripts using alert/notification broadcasting. You may also use Alert Plugin with a Server-Side Control Panel that allows to send messages to all of toolbar users or to some of them. For more information, please visit Alet Plug-in Q: How to track my customer's behavior with my Toolbar? A: From a customization program you can set-up a special type of Toolbar-Server interaction. Each Toolbar installed will report to your server which website the user is viewing (using INCLUDE-XML directive and %URL substitution). So you can make highly targeted offers and also rotate targeted advertisements inside the toolbar. Q: How to show alert notification to my clients from my Toolbar? A: You can set the toolbar to request periodically (like once per day or once per 10 min or once per each new page open) the dynamic page from your server. In this page you can trigger the toolbar to pop-up a window with notification or just simple display new flashing image/text in your toolbar. Q: How to show content-targeted ads from my Toolbar?

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TechnicalFAQ

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