Your own custom IE toolbar hack!

[mvigod]

I'm working with a developer now to make a custom IE toolbar that will have a tie in to vb. What I was thinking was to have a toolbar that the user can configure by pulling down a list of available forums and selecting only those they want (or maybe just those that they are subscribed to.

I have my toolbar installed now which has all the functionality where you can enter the VB search box (like google or Yahoo's bar but it searches your very own site) and also buttons for your discussion forums or classifieds. Right now I just enter the ones I want manually but the plan is to make it with hooks into VB so the user can totally customize it from a webpage

If you want to see my toolbar in action check out a screenshot and thread on it here. There is also a link to download it if you want to test it out. I think they setup a toolbar demo for you to play with on the developers site ( www.customtoolbar.com ) for those who want to get an idea of where this cool hack can go.

Click here for screenshot or install link to test


I think this hack is going to be a great way to get more promotion and exposure for your forum. So far it has been accepted very favorably by members of my own site.

If anybody has suggestions on how this hack should be implemented or user interface suggestions let me know and I'll forward it to the developer so he can include it in the bar but I'll be coding the interface hack to post on vbulletin.org for the customization.

[Dean C]

This looks pretty neat !

[Erwin]

Good idea.

[mvigod]

Thanks. They tell me that they can even stream data or headlines into the bar. I'm thinking for my site which also has classifieds to stream the latest posts of ads through the bar. I think the way to implement is to do a query of all new posts in the specified forums (my classifieds) and then write the posts out to a text file or just the titles. The bar will pull from the server this text file automatically and put the new ads on a ticker. This might also be cool just to show news or something like that. Also I want to somehow hack in a PM notification to the bar so even if they are surfing another site and PM comes in they will be notified somehow on this bar. Cool stuff. Just need to be efficient for the larger sites on how often the bar queries the server for updates so the strain is manageable. Maybe once every 30 or 60 minutes if the user is online. The bandwidth is negligible since it only needs to check the date stamp modification and compare it.

I looked around for all sorts of developers who make these things only to learn there are very few...most seem to charge $500-$2500 but this one is easy to make online in 10 minutes for under $100 and it actually works. The tie ins to VB are almost endless An uber hack!

[grace819]

I was seriously thinking about getting this tollbar tool but after they increased the cost from a stand-alone fee of $99.00 to $99.00 per year then it got me to think twice. I think I'll skip it until a cheaper alternative comes along.

[flup]

Nice

[Mike11212]

yeah 99 bucks is a lot

[mvigod]

It isn't alot compared to what you can pay to get this...$2500 from others....99 bucks was a steal since they now raised it to $399 or something like that. If you have a big site the branding is priceless that this provides.

[Mike11212]

that may be true but their site has a bunch of 404's i never trust a site full of 404's especially when its the pages that describe the product

[7alem]

it's looks a great toolbar
i have an Q?
How can I enter a query in the address bar to perform a search in my vb forum? could you the query ?