Creating a Custom Button Using the Gallery Web Site 

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You can use the Windows Live Gallery Web site to quickly create your own buttons. You can build shortcut buttons, search buttons, and buttons with menus of links and Web feeds (RSS 2.0 or Atom 1.0).

Note   To create buttons that support multiple locales, button windows, options, or URL encodings other than UTF-8, you must manually edit the button.xml file. For more information, see Using Advanced Features of Custom Buttons.

To create a basic custom button

1.      To go to the Make a button page, on the Windows Live Gallery page, click Make a button.

2.      Fill out the basic button information. This step creates a button that functions as a shortcut.

·         Text label. Text that will show on the button (if the button user chooses to show text for buttons).

·         Name. Identifier that becomes the file name of the button package. Consider using topical names such as “weather” or “news” for the button type.

·         Button keyword. Identifier for all of the buttons you create. Consider using unique information such as your Live ID, a nickname, or your company name.

·         Tooltip. Text that appears when a user hovers over the button. Use text that briefly explains the purpose of the button.

·         Shortcut(s). URLs of the button’s target Web site or sites. You can define up to five URLs. When the user clicks on the button, the target Web site opens in the user’s browser. If the button has multiple shortcut links, the target Web sites open in browser tabs (if the user’s browser has tabs enabled; otherwise, the browser displays the first target Web site).

·         Icon. Graphic that appears on the button. You can use any 16X16-pixel in .bmp format. Many such files are available on the Web. Regardless of where you get the icon, ensure that you have the right to use it.

3.      To add search functionality to the button, add the URL of a Web site to search in the Search settings box. You can build a search URL easily by using the following process:

1.      Navigate to the home page of the Web site you are interested in, type a search for the term query in that Web site’s Search box, and perform the search.

2.      After the search is done, copy the URL of the search result page from the browser’s address bar.

3.      Paste the URL into the Search settings box of the Make a button form.

4.      In the search URL, locate the word query, and then bracket that word. For example,

https://www.msnbc.msn.com/?search=MSNBC\&q=query\&id=11881780\&FORM=AE\&os=0\&gs=1\&p=1

becomes the following:

https://www.msnbc.msn.com/?search=MSNBC\&q={query}\&id=11881780\&FORM=AE\&os=0\&gs=1\&p=1

5.      If you want the button to search up to five URLs and display the results in browser tabs, add the desired URLs.

4.      To add a menu to the button, add URLs to the Menu settings box of the Make a button form. You can use two types of URLs:

·         To create static links to Web site content, use link URLs (the addresses of the content).

·         To create dynamic links to a Web site’s content based on its RSS feed, use RSS feed URLs. Toolbar updates the menu items based on the current content of the RSS feed. Custom buttons support RSS 2.0, Atom .3, and Atom 1.0 feeds. Most popular Web sites provide a link labeled RSS or XML to their RSS feeds.

See Also

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