Features
From Best Toolbars
Contents |
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Advanced Search Features
- Search Box
A search box with "search history" in the drop down menu, search by dragging & dropping keywords on the toolbar or simply clicking enter.
- Last Search
This button takes you back to the last search you performed, displaying the last results page you generated. You can turn this feature on and off.
- Combined Search
Combined Search is a great way to save place on your Toolbar while retaining access to all the different ways to search. Simply enter search terms in the search box and click on the main part of the button to search, or click the little triangle in the right-hand corner of the button to bring down a menu with different search options. Pick one of the items from the list and it will set as default. Combined Search - Combines many search options into one.
- Clear Search History
The Toolbar remembers users' recent search history. Recent searches can be accessed by clicking the down arrow to the right of the search box. A "Clear Search History" option allows your customers to clear the search box history.
- Cursor / Context Search
Users can conduct search on a word or phrase within any Web page simply by highlighting it and right-clicking to select desired "Search" options from the pop-up menu.
- Word Find Feature
Your customers can quickly locate search terms on a page and navigate to them. When users enter keywords into the search box, extra buttons containing these terms will appear on the right end of the Toolbar. Each word has its own button. By clicking a button your customers can jump to the next occurrence of that word on the page.
- Search Word Highlighting
The highlight feature allows your users to quickly locate their search terms in the search results page. Clicking the "Highlight" button will highlight all search terms with different colors on the search results page. The highlight feature is a toggle switch that may be turned on or off simply by clicking on it.
- Catch Searches on Different Engines
You can catch the searches that users make on different search engines so that their search terms (e.g. on Google or Yahoo) will be automatically entered into your toolbar search box . Then, it will take one click to search for the same keywords on your toolbar.
- Rival Search
The rival search plug-in provides an additional left-hand IE panel when the user does a web search. This panel can display alternative search results, for example, the results produced by your search engine.
- Tabbed Search
The plug-in inserts search box and button to launch tabbed search. When a user begins searching, a row of tabs will open. Each tab is a different search option, e.g. search for music, search for images, search for video and etc. You can specify as many tabs as you want, and each one will execute its own specific search using the keywords from the search box.
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Dynamic Features
- Dynamic Configuration Files
You can put the .XML configuration file within the toolbar distribution or on your web sever, achieving truly dynamic toolbar behavior. By editing a single .XML text file on your web server, you can completely change the toolbar look and operation without the need to upgrade the toolbar on part of your customers.
- External Toolbar Javascript Interface
The Toolbar has an external program interface. You can access toolbar properties (to read or edit) via JavaScript and also pass this information to the server in response to user action, like clicking on a toolbar button or menu item. Available JavaScript properties include: current toolbar version; Unique Toolbar ID; User ID, which you can set/read; username and password, primary used to implement authentication through the toolbar; other toolbar settings and configurations. The current URL and domain that users open in their browser are also accessible.
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Toolbar Plug-Ins
- Ping Plug-In
This plug-in is similar to New! all-nettools Ping Plug-In, but now you will be pinging the host from a local machine using standard Windows ‘ping.exe’.
- Checkboxes and Radio Button
You can add checkboxes and radio buttons on your toolbar, if you want to enable your users to toggle some options.
- Mini Web Page
You can put a mini web page on your toolbar. This opens the door to unlimited toolbar content. Using this feature, you can put notifications, banners, animations and sounds into your toolbar. You can put a page directly on a toolbar (BANNER feature) or as a minipage that opens up when the user clicks a toolbar button (BUBBLE feature).
- Zoom In / Out feature
By making this feature a part of the toolbar your users will be able to adjust the size of the pages they are browsing using the buttons on the toolbar.
- Launch External Applications
It is possible to run an external application from a toolbar button or a menu item. You can run system commands, open Notepad to edit a file, etc. You can even distribute .EXE applications with the toolbar and launch them by passing the keywords or URLs into a command line.
- Edit and Password Boxes
You can put edit and password boxes on your toolbar.
- Clear Cookies / Clear History
The Toolbar can clear cookies and cache in the browser thus allowing your users to maintain their privacy. You can associate this feature with any menu item or button in your toolbar.
- Domain Name Check
Using this feature you can easily check for domain name availability.
- Screenshot of current page - Web Save
Save webpages as images in .jpg /graphic format or web-archive.
- Empty Browser Autocomplete
Clears browser Autofill information for HTML forms and all passwords.
- URL Shortcuts
Using this feature you can easily create shortcuts to your favorite websites. Instead of typing the complete website URL just make a shortcut to the site which you can quickly open by typing in the address bar and hitting enter. This great feature will be definitely used by your customers.
- WHOIS service
This useful plug-in adds the button or submenu to the toolbar which provides all the available information about an IP address, hostname or domain, including country, state or province, city, name of the network provider, administrator and technical support contact information by just one-mouse clicking. This plug-in is based on the www.all-nettools.com service.
- Autofill Plug-In
Autofill is a one-click web form filler. Enter your information into the Plug-in and it’s stored securely on your own computer. Clicking the Autofill button will automatically complete a form.
- Plug-in Interface
The major distinction of ToolbarStudio v.2.17 is a specially developed Plug-in interface. Toolbar plug-ins is a pack of additional services which will enlarge toolbar functionality. You do not need to do any programming or scripting to implement these popular advanced features, just choose a plug-in from the ToolbarStudio menu and add it to your Toolbar!
- Custom Ping
This feature allows users to ping any host, specified in the searchbox, or a current domain.
- Clock Plug-In
This plug-in adds a nice-looking clock to show time in a specified location on your toolbar.
- W3C CSS / Markup Validation
This feature will add a service that checks documents like HTML and XHTML on websites you visit for conformance to W3C Recommendations and other standards. W3C CSS Validation plug-in checks Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in (X)HTML documents or standalone for conformance to W3C recommendations.
- Up One Level
When your mouse cursor hovers over an English word on a web page, Word Translator shows you that word's translation in your preferred language. You can enable WordTranslator and set your language in Toolbar Options.
- Mp3 Player Plug-In
Add an MP3 player to your toolbar. When you insert the plug-in via ToolbarStudio you can include a playlist with remote or local songs: -local mp3 files will be packed into the CAB directly and distributed with it; -remote mp3 files will be downloaded from your website just when playing.
- Login Manager Plug-In
Save your login accounts (e-mails, sites, forums, etc.) in one list and enter your sites automatically by one click.
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Internet Communications
- E-mail Checker
Check and access all of your email accounts automatically. E-mail checker notifies you when you have new mail.
- Tell a Friend
Using the "mailto" command you can create an e-mail with predefined caption and text, with some substitutions.
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Installation
- Automatic Toolbar Upgrade
For your convenience, the advanced Toolbar package is automatically upgradeable! This means that all currently installed versions of your Toolbar will be automatically updated from your website when a new version appears.
- Automatic Installation
Once downloaded by the user, the toolbar is automatically installed and integrated into the browser.
- Uninstall feature
The advanced package has an "Uninstall" feature that allows your users to uninstall the toolbar simply by clicking an "Uninstall " link in the menu.
- Distribute Additional Files with Your Toolbar
You can distribute static HTML pages, Music, Flash and even executable programs (.EXE) with your toolbar. Integrate your .EXE with the toolbar and provide extensive functionality to your toolbar users.
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Live Events and Content Management
- News Ticker Integration
If you want to achieve higher interaction levels and keep your users informed you can put a scrolling news ticker or flashing news notifications on the toolbar. You can implement server side scripts to feed news to your toolbar customers.
- Dynamic Menu Content
Menus and submenus can be created from the output of server side scripts (like PHP, Perl CGI or ASP). This could be your "Top 10 items", "Hot list", "More search results" and so on. You can specify what buttons the toolbar will have and what menu contents to show based on either your unique TOOLBAR ID or the URL you have opened in the browser. TOOLBAR ID can be used to personalize the toolbar appearance and features for your customers. You can also have multiple toolbar configurations for a single toolbar, one for logged in users and another for those who are not logged in.
- Alerts
"Alert" Plug-in allows you to send instant messages to all of your toolbar users at once. All you need to make it work is: - to put an HTML file on your server where you will keep current alert message. The file should be accessible via HTTP. E.g. URL to it may be: http://yoursite.com/tbalert/alert.html. - insert "Alert" Plug-in via ToolbarStudio into your toolbar and specify the Source URL for the HTML alert page in the Plug-in wizard. The plug-in starts to work immediatelty after you complete the Plug-in wizard. Your Toolbar will periodically query the alert page on your server and show all updates, if it is changed. So if you want to show an alert to your users, just update the alert page on your server and your toolbar will do the rest of the work for you.
- Weather On-Line
The feature shows local weather in real-time mode as image and temperature in F or C.
- RSS Reader Plug-In
RSS is a format for syndicating news and other content, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. RSS Reader plug-in allows easy implementation of an RSS formatted news line on the toolbar. Don’t leave your customers without the latest world news!
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Make Money with Your Toolbar
- Catcher for Explorer Address Bar
With ToolbarStudio you can leverage the advantages of a built-in address bar and DNS catcher. You can configure the toolbar so that when the user mistypes a URL he will be redirected to YOUR webpage instead of Error 404 or standard explorer DNS error pages. You can also configure the toolbar so that whenever users enter a word into the address bar they are redirected to your page.
- Earn Money Feature
When you sign up for Pay per click engine they usually will give you an HTML code that you can use. You only need to insert the HTML code which was given to you to the window with the Earn money plugin when prompted.
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Visual Elements
- Branding
Brand your custom toolbar with your own logo. Let your customers know that you are just one click away!
- Buttons, Images and Banners
You can have unlimited number of buttons/banners on your toolbar. Each button can have a menu that pop-ups when the button is clicked. Alternatively clicking on a button can take your users to a predefined web page.
- Easy Customization
All customization is made from a simple XML file. You can add your logo, custom links, your search, buttons, banners, scrolling text, live news feeds, etc. See our download section for a handy XML customization tool (free).
- Menu Add/Remove Button
A special menu item that enables button showing or hiding. XP Look and Feel Our toolbar now supports XP themes, so it has complete XP look and feel when installed on an XP machine.
- My Favorite Links
The menu for each button can be created/customized by users. Just add Custom Button plugin.
- Custom Toolbar Skin
You can set a custom skin (background) for your toolbar. You can also set an Internet Explorer skin automatically. Just as simple as installing the toolbar the Internet Explorer skin automatically changes to your corporate background. You can choose any /graphic for your toolbar's skin.
- Multilingual Support
You can easily manage different languages from the configuration file. When you add a new language to the configuration file, users will be able to select it from the menu.
- RTL Support
You can now change the toolbar's direction to be Right-to Left from Toolbar Settings (rtl="1").
- Multiple Configurations
Several configuration files can be used for the toolbar. This allows you to create several different appearances for your users or have several versions of the toolbar in different languages.
- Client Side Toolbar Preferences
Each user can set personal preferences for their own toolbar: - Buttons they wish to have on the toolbar - Auto Complete - Keep a search history in a drop-down list under the search box - Run search drag automatically - Update toolbar automatically, etc.
- Hot Icons / Rollover Effect
You can add animated icons to menu items, menu groups and buttons. Make your toolbar look fancy!
- Additional Visual Elements for Your Toolbar
With the ToolbarStudio you can add select-style combo boxes to your toolbar, add static texts and buttons with custom /graphics. Menu elements can have custom styles including the color for menu background, color for menu texts you can also specify colors used for highlighting of menu items. In case the toolbar do not fit fully on the desktop your customer will still be able to access the functionality of buttons and menu items (clicking on a double arrow button and selecting the appropriate element from the pop-up menu).
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Security and Privacy
- Popup-blocker
Destroy unwanted pop-up and pop-under ads. Add this feature to your toolbar and your users will never see annoying pop-ups while surfing the web. One more advantage for your toolbar users! Pop-up blocker can be configured to count the number of blocked pop-ups and play a sound or change the cursor shape when pop-up window is blocked.
- Web Filter
Advanced filtering blocks the sites that disguise their true identity. This allows to filter webpages and block adult content by setting/changing a password.
- Panic Button
Hide all IE windows in one-click or using hotkey. Hotkey can be configured to individual settings.
- Anti-Ads Plug-In
Anti-Ads plug-in will block banners, ad-links, ad-images, etc.
- Popup-blocker Manager
You can now decide from which sites you want pop-up ads to be presented to your users.
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Navigation Aids
- Watch URL
The Toolbar Watch URL feature can trigger actions based on visited URL. The toolbar can prompt a messenger alert, open the left panel, or launch a pop-up window when a specific URL is visited.
- Site Ranking
Displays the ranking of the page you’re viewing.
- Catcher DNS Error
With our toolbar builder you can use the advantages of a built-in address bar and DNS catcher. You can configure it so that if a user mistypes a URL they will be redirected to YOUR page instead of the standard Internet Explorer DNS error page.
- Set User's Homepage
You may add the following line to the SETTINGS section of the basis.XML file and the default homepage of the user will be set to the one you had defined : <HOMEPAGE href="www.yoursite.com"/>
- Site Activation
The plug-in makes sure that your toolbar will be always shown when visiting "special" sites. Even if a user has hidden it: as soon as he goes to the "special" URL (e.g. your site), the toolbar is automatically shown.
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Toolbar Studio Distribution Tools
- Exe Installer:
Create .exe installer for your toolbar. ToolbarStudio removes all the installed files and the cached files and also cleans the registry.
- Cab Web/ActiveX Installer:
Once you are ready to publish your toolbar on the web, you should create an .exe installer or web ActiveX installer for your toolbar. These two options are available in the Tools menu of ToolbarStudio.
- Automatic Updates Publishing:
There's no need to check for new Toolbar versions manually. Updates are installed automatically, so you will always have the latest and the greatest version.
