The Google Toolbar Button
Posted under: Ok so you’re meant to have a break from work over Christmas, but a community site like Loquax does require at least some input even over the festive break. Forums need to be managed, users want new content, and we always like to keep things ticking over as users don’t suddenly stop being online. Also, there’s an influx of sales offers, program closures and other affiliate/network related issues that don’t just vanish because Santa’s popping down the chimney.
However, all that aside one the most useful things that we’ve implemented over the holiday is a Google Toolbar Button. Surprisingly, it was easy to set up and with one click our users can now search, get latest updates and link direct to specific parts of the site via their toolbar.
Initial response to this little button gizmo has been good – with few techincal issues for users (a blessing in itself) – it’s easy to update from our side and there’s also the added benefit of not having to offer users our own branded toolbar, whilst providing a useful option to a toolbar they happily use.
A similar button was also developed for MSN Live Toolbar. This is easy to set up initially, but a real faff when it comes to trying to change things at a later stage (without redoing the whole thing), mainly because of the way MSN likes to combine files together in a .btn file as opposed to a simpler .xml edittable version.