InfinityCMS Button for Google Toolbar
I'm just finished another small website project and it should be launched within a matter of days:
But that's not the reason I'm posting this. Yesterday, I was searching for something completely different when I came across some pages on Google's site describing how to add your own custom buttons to the new Google BETA toolbar.
My imagination was captured (=all real work ceased 
). An hour later (OK to be honest, about 3 hours later) and I had my very own icon for our own InfinityCMS Content Management System. Check it out:
Installation: I added a page to our CMS system where the user can click a link to install this button in his/her Google Toolbar.
What Happens? Once clicked, the button sends the current URL to infinitycms.digital-crew.com. A ColdFusion page there checks the URL and performs a test to see if InfinityCMS is installed on that website.
If it isn't, the user gets a quick message displayed and is returned to where he/she was with history.back().
But if InfinityCMS is detected, a new window launches InfinityCMS and in the old window the user is again returned to where he was with history.back().
The Cool Bit: InfinityCMS is passed the URL of the page you were on when you clicked the icon... There are a series of regular expressions in the database (which can easily be updated in InfinityCMS by an administrator) that handle the request in a smart way...
For example, if the user was on the home page and clicks the icon, a window will appear allowing the user to quickly edit just the home page without all the other elements of the CMS solution:
And if there are several corresponding 'Quick Edit' options for a page, then the user will get a list of options. For example, on the following Quick Edit of the "Contact Us" page, the user can choose to edit the page or review messages from the contact form which have been logged in the database:
Now that I've been using it for a bit, I find this little icon invaluable for making quick changes here and there. Of course if the user isn't logged into the CMS system, the login page appears first. I must add on the ability for the user to switch from Quick Edit more to full edit mode which looks like this:
Would love to know what you think of this little hack?
Update
I was giving a demo of this to Cormac and his popup blocker (Google Toobar - haha - the irony) was preventing the Quick Edit window from opening.
I remembered when the other day, GMail popped up a message for me saying that a popup blocker was blocking a window from opening so I knew it was possible to detect this. I did a bit of googling and it turns out it's pretty easy to detect:
<script language='JavaScript'>
<!-- <![CDATA[
function userHasPopupBlocker() {
var oWin = window.open('','child','width=50,height=50,status=no,resizable=yes');
if( oWin==null || typeof(oWin)=="undefined" ) return true;
else oWin.close();
return false;
}
// ]]> -->
</script>
So now my script displays a friendly message asking to user to disable the popup blocker for the redirect site and "click here to try again". All working as it should again.
Tags:
Comments [3]
Peter Coppinger aka Topper is a neurotic web monster who spends most of his chaotic life developing ColdFusion web applications when not drinking himself into a stupor and scheming his plans for world dominance.
