Modifying the WebEdit Menu

The Rev. 070531 release of the starter kit improved the WebEdit floating menu. The changes, as described by the Release Notes, are as follows:

• Unnecessary commands (such as Workbox, Publish, and Switch to Preview) removed from the WebEdit Floating Menu.
   
• Change Password command added to the WebEdit Floating Menu.
   
  

Making such changes to the WebEdit menu is very simple. You don't need to work behind the scenes at Sitecore to make similar changes to your own site. This post describes how it was done.

1. You need to start by logging into the Desktop user interface.
    
   
2. Next switch to the Core database (this is where the Sitecore user interfaces are defined).
    
   
    
3. Now open the Content Editor, locate the /sitecore/content/Applications/WebEdit/Toolbar item, and open it to reveal its children.
    
4. To remove commands from the menu, simply delete them.
    
   Or, if you want to be more sophisticated, you can use security settings to decide which roles or users should be able to "Read" the command. Sitecore already does this by assigning Read access for Delete command to the Sitecore Client Authoring role.
    
5. To add your own command, copy one of the other commands or create a new item based on the /sitecore/templates/Toolbars/Toolbutton template.
    
   To create the Change Password field, we set the following values:
   • Click: security:changepassword
   • Header: Change Password
   • Icon: Network/16x16/key1.png
   • ID: Change Password
   • Tool tip: Open the Change Password wizard.

"Right! OK, that seems very simple," I hear you say, "but I want to create a command to do something else, like offering sorting commands or calling my own method."

Good point. Knowing how to create one specific command is just a bit of trivia. What you really want to know is how to create any command, right? Teach a man to fish, and all that.

Creating General Commands

In order to create general commands, you need to know how Sitecore interprets the various field values and how you can choose appropriate values for what you want to achieve. Let's take them one at a time, shall we?

• Click
  To find an appropriate value to place here, it helps to be a bit of an explorer, especially if you want to provide a command that already exists elsewhere in the user interface.
   
  A good approach is to locate the functionality you want to mimic. This will provide clues for how to implement the functionality in the WebEdit menu (or anywhere else, for that matter).
   
  For the Change Password feature, for example, we know that this functionality already exists in the Control Panel, on the Preferences page, and sure enough, under the /sitecore/content/Applications/Control Panel/Preferences item, we find a Change Password item with a Click field. We just copied the values for this field into the Click field in our new WebEdit Toolbutton.
   
  If you want to call your own code when someone clicks on the method, rather than some code that Sitecore has provided, then you'll want to add a command element to the [SitecoreRoot]/Website/App_Config/Commands.config. This is how the security:changepassword value works. In fact, if we have a look in the commands.config file, we'll find this line:
   
  <command name="security:changepassword" type="Sitecore.Shell.Framework.Commands.ChangePassword,Sitecore.Kernel"></command>
   
  This tells Sitecore to call a the Execute method of the Sitecore.Shell.Framework.Commands.ChangePassword class, which has been built into the Sitecore.Kernel.dll. If you wanted to call your own class, say MyCompany.MyNamespace.MyClass, you'd create an Execute method in that class that accepted a single parameter (here's an example method signature):
   
  public void Execute(Sitecore.Shell.Framework.Commands.CommandContext CommandContext)
   
  Then add whatever code you like. Most likely, of course, whatever code you like is most likely out of the scope of this post.
   
• Header The header field holds the text displayed for the button. No magic here. Just type whatever you like.
   
• Icon
  Sitecore provides thousands of "themed" icons. By "themed" I mean that we provide them in multiple standard sizes, such as 16x16, 24x24, 32x32 and so on.
   
  When I want to find an icon, I use the Windows File Manager to view the [SitecoreRoot]/Website/sitecore/shell/Themes/Standard folder and its subfolders. The icon files are grouped into various sub-folders, like Business and Network, which roughly describe the kind of images you'll find. Under each sub-folder is an additional set of sub-folders which correspond to the size of the icons it contains. I use 32x32 and turn on View Thumbnails when searching for useful icons.
   
  
   
  By default, whenever Sitecore requests an icon, you can provide a relative path, like networks/32x32/key1.png, rather than typing the full path starting at /sitecore.
   
• ID
  Just provide something unique here.
   
  
• Tool tip
  This is optional. It just provides flyover help for the command.

There are other fields as well, but most of them are self-explanatory. If you're not sure what one does, though, just experiment a little. If you change one field at a time, you can usually work out on your own what a field does just by looking at its effects on the WebEdit menu.

But then, you may be wondering, how do I "publish" my changes? No need, as soon as you save your changes, you will have updated the WebEdit menu. You can even run WebEdit while viewing the Core database, you don't have to switch back to the Master database every time you want to test something.

Of course, don't forget to switch back to the Master database once you are done!

That's it for this post. I hope you found it informative!