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For code, configuration samples and advanced documentation please visit Developers corner
How can I ...
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>
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:
<BANNER width="100" url="http://www.yourserver.com/news.html" expire="60"/>
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.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:
<WEBJUMP name="newcommand1" post="var(1)=%combo1&var(2)=%domain"/>
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?
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.How can I have news, short jokes or ads scroll across the toolbar?
A. Use the <BANNER>. The below will create a 200 pixel wide HTML banner inside the toolbar that is downloaded from your site (jokes.html).
<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>
<body bgcolor="#D5D2CD" leftMargin=0 topMargin=0 marginWidth=0 marginHeight=0>
<marquee scrollamount=3 direction=left onMouseOver="if (started) { this.stop() }" onMouseOut="if (started) {
this.start() }" onClick="if (started) {started=false; this.stop();} else {started=true; this.start();}">
<table cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 border=0>
<tr>
<!-- TICKER TEXT 1 -->
<td width=12><img src="ticker_icon.gif" border=0></td>
<td width=200><a href=http://www.yoursite.com/jokes1.html class="ticker">A funny joke</a></td>
<!-- TICKER TEXT 2 -->
<td width=12><img src="ticker_icon.gif" border=0></td>
<td width=200><a href=http://www. yoursite.com/jokes2.html class="ticker">A very funny joke</a></td>
<!-- TICKER TEXT 3 -->
<td width=12><img src="ticker_icon.gif" border=0></td>
<td width=200><a href=http://www. yoursite.com/jokes3.html class="ticker">Another funny joke</a></td>
<!-- TICKER TEXT 4 -->
<td width=12><img src="ticker_icon.gif" border=0></td>
<td width=200><a href=http://www. yoursite.com/jokes4.html class="ticker">And yet one more funny joke</a></td>
</tr>
</table>
</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
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:
<WEBJUMP name="newcommand1" href=”http://www.somesite.com/somepage.html” newbrowserwindow="true"/>
<WEBJUMP name="newcommand2" href=”http://www.somesite.com/somepage.html” newbrowserwindow="modaldialog" options="status:no;help:no;dialogHeight:600px;dialogWidth:600px;dialogHide:yes;scroll:auto;" />
'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.
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 toolbar, and let users choose to "Accept" or "Do not Accept" before they continue installation ?
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, but doesn't remove the folder.
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 from ToolbarStudio that allows to send messages to all of toolbar users.
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?
A. Sites are often enabled with search options. Users can also search using one or more search engines. When a user submits a search on another website, the Toolbar can send this query also to your server for further parsing/analysis, and your server side scripts can respond to the toolbar with new advertising. So as soon as the user searches "shoes" you can immediately display special offers and advertisements for shoes.
Visual elements (MENUs, BUTTONs, BANNERs, etc)
Q. How can I make some buttons or menu items disabled by default?
A. The BUTTON and ITEM tags have the visibility attribute. Setting visibility= to 0 makes a button or menu item invisible until it is enabled in the options page.
<BUTTON id="btclrcnt" caption="CLEARCOUNT" img="4" command="clearcount" visibility="0" />
Q. How can I reload the content of a BANNER tag only in case the user is on my site and there is a state changing which is shown in the BANNER tag. Is there a way to reload the content using javascript?
A.Sure you can have a local.html page that you will display in the banner to contain IFRAME referencing your site. Please also pass the URL visited by the user to that local.html file:
<BANNER name="Ticker" url="local.html?curl=%url" width="200" id="tb_bnr_uxfYdZMb"/>
The Javascript inside local.html can extract the URL from the string and depending on the contents can referesh the HTML from your server in IFRAME.
Q.
Can I set up to rotate multiple banners ( banner1.htm banner2.htm banner3.htm) in the same space on the toolbar?
A. You can use a local HTML file that you mention in your BANNER, which has to contain JavaScript used to redirect to different files.
Q.
I'm trying to edit the basis.xml file to contain a list box. Clicking each list item has to redirect to a different site. What are the attributes for the VALUE tag that I can use?
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.
I know that the Option page use id=".." to control the buttons, what will happen if I set 2 or more button with the same id? Will this mean that the chick box for this id will be controlling all the button with the same id?
A. The id has to be unique. But you can use the JavaScript inside your options.html to link 2 checkboxes together (and clicking one should trigger another). You can even hide these checkboxes on the html page but JavaScript to switch them on/off.
Q. Please tell me whether everyone who installs the same toolbar will be given a unique toolbar id or is there a chance of two or more installations getting the same toolbar id.
A. ToolbarID is unique per installation and will remain the same if the toolbar is updated.
Q. How can I change the icon used for "word-find" toolbar buttons
A. Word find buttons always use the icon number 1 from icons.bmp file. So if you wish to change this icon, just change the icon number 1.
Questions connected with INCLUDE_XML and INCLUDE_CUSTOM_XML tags
Q. How will the INCLUDE_XML feature behave when users go offline?
A. Our toolbar uses cache to store the retrieved .XML files. And if for whatever reason the connection fails it will use cached .XML file. You can turn caching off using nocache=" 1" attribute of INCLUDE_XML. If no cached version exists the .XML file specified by local= attribute of the INLCUDE_XML tag will be used.
Q. I'm trying the Include_XML Tag. But I am afraid to put much traffic on the servers when the toolbar will be used by many people.
A. Please use expire = attribute this attribute defines the frequence of connections to your server. Setting this to greater values will minimize the load put on your server.
Q. Is there a way to have the toolbar send the 'OnDocumentComplete' request to our server only if the user is viewing a URL that starts with http://. In other words, we do not want the toolbar to send a request to us when the url is like https://, ftp://, or a local drive C:\, D:\, etc.
A. Please use the attribute called urltemplate for INCLUDE_XML tag:
<INCLUDE_XML filename="http://www.softomate.net/tbuilder/custom/elancer/get_toolbar.php" expire="0" sync="OnDocumentComplete" urltemplate="http://"/>
Popup blocker related questions Q. How can I reset pop-up blocker counter?
A. There is a dedicated command <CLEARCOUNT> designed for this purpose.
<COMMANDS>
<CLEARCOUNT name="clearcount"/>
</COMMANDS>
You can assign a menu item or button with this command.
<BUTTON id="bt_id" caption="Clear pop-up blocker cound" img="4" command="clearcount"/>
Q. Is there an easy way to the pop-up blocker to work exactly as pop-up blocker in Google toolbar?
A.To achieve this, please do the following:
1) Add the following commands in between <COMMANDS> </COMMANDS>
<BLOCKPOPUPS name="blockPopups" default="1"/>
<ALLOWPOPUPS name="popupAllow"/>
The first tells that the pop-up blocking is on by default the second command tells that the command named "popupAllow" will be used to add the current site to the white list.
2) Please associate the menu item or button with this command like below:
<BUTTON caption="Allow Popups for this site" captionp="pop-ups are allowed for this site" hint="" id="tb_btn_V" img="83" imgp="84" command="popupAllow"/>
When pressing on that button the pop-ups will be allowed for that site and the site itself will be added to the white list. If the site is already in the white list clicking on that button will remove it.
Also you can add some of the sites into the white list by default: (achieved using the below lines instead of <ALLOWPOPUPS name="popupAllow"/>)
<ALLOWPOPUPS name="popupAllow">
<SITE>aimexpress.aol.com</SITE>
<SITE>www.aimexpress.aol.com</SITE>
<SITE>www.aim.com</SITE>
<SITE>webmail.aol.com</SITE>
<SITE>www.webmail.aol.com</SITE>
</ALLOWPOPUPS>
Q. How can I indicate pop-up blocking by changing the button icon?
A. There is a BUTTON attribute imgf, which sets the icon that will appear on the pop-up blocker button while pop-up window is blocked:
<BUTTON img="8" imgf="9" imgp="10" caption="Popups Allowed" captionp="#cnt# blocked" id="tb_block" command="block"/>
Update/upgrade questions
Q. How do I release a new version of the toolbar to my clients?
A. First you need to change the version number. Please provide increasing numbers: if you had 1.0 you should use 1.1, 1.2 ... or 2.0, 3.0, 3.1 ...
As result, you will have a webinstall folder with several files. You have to upload it to your website and provide a link to your users to download it.
When the users clicks on "update" button in the toolbar, a new version you made will be downloaded and installed from your website. If auto-update feature is enabled, the toolbar will be updated automatically.
Q. How do I know if the update feature is working?
A. Normally you need to verify that your serverpath and updateurl inside the <SETTINGS> </SETTINGS> are correctly configured like below:
<URL id="serverpath" default="http://yoursite.com/toolbar/"/>
<URL id="updateUrl" default="http://yoursite.com/toolbar/toolbar.cab"/>
Please make sure that they point to an existing folder on your website and the toolbar.cab file is there. Make sure that the version.txt file is there. It should be accessible as http://yoursite.com/toolbar/version.txt
The toolbar will upgrade itself either manually (when UPDATE command is triggered by button or menu item) or automatically (see automtic update).
It will update only if the .txt file version on your server has a greater version number then the present one.
Q. Does the toolbar update automatically or will I be prompted?
A. It will prompt for updates if you use:
<RADIO id="UpdateAutomatically" default="1"/>
Or will update silently if you have:
<RADIO id="UpdateAutomatically" default="2"/>
Or will update only when user clicks update.
<RADIO id="UpdateAutomatically" default="0"/>
Q. How does the Toolbar know in general to update?
A. When automatic updates are turned on, the toolbar pulls version.txt file from the server each X hours (where X is defined using the scope attribute of the SETTINGS tag). And if it find that the version number has changed it performs an upgrade.
Q. How to use Automatic Upgrade feature?
A. From time to time you may want to distribute new Toolbar versions to your toolbar users. If you enable auto updates, you will just need to upload the new version.txt and .cab file on your site and all your users' toolbars will be upgraded automatically.
Q. We would like to have silent updates. Is it possible?
A. Silent updates are possible by choosing 'Toolbar->Settings->Features->Silent updating' option or by setting:
<CHECKBOX id="UpdateAutomatically" default="2"/>
Scripting related questions
Q. How can I view the source code of the currently visited page by clicking one button?
A. You should associate the following JavaScript command for button command 'URL Redirection':
<BUTTON id="any_bnt_id" caption="View Source" img="4" command="redirect" visibility="1" href="JavaScript: var hhh=window.location='view-source:' + location;"/>
Q. How can I acces toolbar objects from inside the toolbar banner or bubble scripts?
A. The function inside BANNER or BUBBLE has different name -- DocumentComplete(tool):
var IExplorer;
// This function will be called after a page is loaded into the browser
function DocumentComplete(tool)
{
IExplorer=tool.explorer;
}
After that you can address an HTML page opened in the browser. You can change colors on the page, highlight specific words, make the page analysis and many other useful tricks. The below example will change the page background color.
IExplorer.body.style.backgroundColor="#ff0000";
Q. I want to use the %affiliateId feature, and I am aware that I need to create an affid.dat file where the first line is the affiliate ID.
You can include this file into .cab file and then reassemble the toolbar for your affiliates. You can even automate this process if you will use cabarc.exe utility (See the documentation here:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/WindowsServ/2003/all/techref/en-us/Default.asp? url=/Resources/Documentation/windowsserv/2003/all/techref/en-us/cabarc.asp ).
This utility allows you to pack a file. The .cab archive can be converted into .EXE using our utilities, such as CAB2NSIS (download from http://www.besttoolbars.net/downloads/cab2NSIS.zip)
Q. I would like to put a piece of JavaScript code on the button. Could you please tell me how to do it correctly?
A. You can associate JavaScript directly with a button like it is below:
<BUTTON id="btn_01" caption="Test button" href="javascript:location.href='http://www.furl.net/';" >
Or like this:
<WEBJUMP href="javascript: var WN7z=open('http://softomate.com','','width=400,height=200,scrollbars,resizable,menubar');/>
Command line tool questions:
Q.
When installing the toolbar, it shows the error message: "Could not extract the current file.The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process." And the only way to fix it is to restart the computer. What can I do to fix it?
A. Normally the toolbar.DLL file is placed into C:/Program Files/IEtoolbar/ folder. This file is being used (and locked) by Internet Explorer and can not be replaced unless you restart the computer.
The most simplistic way to install the toolbar is to provide a different path during the installation. (When the message with C:/Program Files/IEtoolbar/ as path will come up) please enter something like:
C:/Program Files/IEtoolbar_1/ and then it will work .
Q.
I have some problem to run this program: when I try to build a toolbar an error occurs. Error message is "Unable to locate file .dll" but I can see toolbar.dll same directory so. How can I fix this problem?
A. That is because something is wrong with your XML file. Please try to open it in your browser (just by double clicking on basis.xml) and your browser will point out the place in your XML that contains the error. Also you can use any other program which points to errors in XML files.
Q. Is it possible to change the default install directory in the .exe installer?
Yes, that is possible. You need to get into ToolbarStudio install directory [e.g. c:/Program Files/Softomate/ToolbarStudio/] and edit templ.txt file in the folder .../ToolbarStudio/bin/cab2nsis/. In particular, you need to change the line:
!define ZIP2EXE_INSTALLDIR `$PROGRAMFILES\IEToolbar' to e.g.
!define ZIP2EXE_INSTALLDIR `$PROGRAMFILES\YourToolbarName'
While you are there, you can also change the name of the software which is being installed. It is defined in a following line:
!define ZIP2EXE_NAME `Toolbar`
Q. Is there any ways to add or edit something in the installer? I want to add "Terms of use" of the toolbar, and let users choose to "Accept" or "Do not Accept" before they continue installation.
A. Yes, that is possible using CAB2NSIS utility we have. 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.
As an alternative (if you do not have time to do this yourself), you can explain to us what exactly you are looking for. And we'll have one of our support guys to do this for you.
Q. I have some problems: when I try to run toolbar_builder.bat an error occurs.
A. Most likely, that is because something is wrong with your XML file. Please try to open it in your browser (just by double clicking on basis.xml) and your browser will point out the place in your XML that is wrong. Also you can use any FREE XML editor like the one in downloads section of our website to ensure that your .XML is valid.
Q. When I'll create the EXE file and someone will double clicks on it, it'll brings up a little installation window. Is there anyway to modify the text in that first Install window? If yes, how ?
A. Sure. If you use ToolbarStudio you can modify texts in the dialog for .EXE installer creation. If you are using CAB2NSIS utility to create your .exe file please modify text strings in toolbar .nsi/.nsh files (The manuals for nsi/nsh files are found here: http://nsis.sourceforge.net/home/)
Q. How to change the default install directory ?
A. If you use CAB2NSIS please modify ZIP2EXE_INSTALLDIR setting in CAB2NSIS configuration file.
Mozilla/Firefox conversion:
Q. I have a little gripe regarding the Mozilla Conversion. It works fine, HOWEVER, the toolbar privacy function does not work. Functions such as clear cache, cookeis do not appear to work.
A. Only limited feature set is supported for Mozilla. We suggest that you design a lightweight version of your toolbar specially for Mozilla. We are constantly adding new features to our converter utility, but it still lacks some features. (Please see the version history in the Readme file for converter.)
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