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Make your own Google Toolbar Buttons

4/09/2008 09:10:00 AM
I'm using an older version of Google Toolbar. For some reason, I don't like the Version 5.0 toolbar. In this example, we tested it on MS IE 7.0, but I think the same will work on Firefox (not sure about Opera or any of the Linux browsers).

Here's an example to make a Google toolbar button that links to a page that I like on Yahoo Finance's site. The example generally follows the instructions on the Getting Started with the Google Toolbar API website.

The button that I'm creating will link to Yahoo Finance 'Today's Market'. (It's an old school Yahoo design, back when Yahoo was in it's prime).

First, I created a button as instructed on Google's Toolbar API site. It's basically a XML file that I named yahoo-finance.xml. It's here: http://www.kentahrens.net/google-buttons/yahoo-finance.xml if you'd like to look at the file.

Lastly, we can Link to the custom button on our website. You can create a special link that will enable people to install your custom button in their Google Toolbar just by clicking on it. For example, you could create a link on your website and call it "Add a Yahoo Finance Today's Market" button to my Google Toolbar" and link it to this URL:http://toolbar.google.com/buttons/add?url=http://www..com/yahoo-finance.xml

Here's my example: Add a Yahoo Finance Today's Market button to my Google Toolbar.

Please see Getting Started with the Google Toolbar API for better and more indepth instructions! Also, if you're wondering how to make icons for the toolbar, the trick is to convert your graphics file to base64 -- it's relatively easy to do using this base64 encoder/decoder site.

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