Toolbar Software

[GeXus]

Does anyone know of any good programs available for making toolbars/searchbars? similar to google (not as advanced of course)

[pmkpmk]

I did some research lately and found some "construction kits" which however barely deserve the name. There were two concepts:

1) Select functions from a website, give customization in an online form

2) Download a "rump program", create your toolbar in a very limited "pseudo" programming language, upload your "code" to the manufacturers website who finalizes the toolbar

The results of both concepts were rather poor: all you got was the search-engine-field of your choice, plus a more or less cascaded list of static webaddresses of yur choice, plus a custom logo. The price however was comparably high.

There was NO way I saw for doing REAL customization or adding REAL code of your own.

The best deal I got was a company from the Netherlands (name slips my mind right now) which specialized in custom toolbar programming. They could REALLY do customization and they have developed an XML interface via which the toolbar could communicate with your server to get updated information etc.

I discussed a tentative project with them and the charge would have been 2500 EUR for it. In my opinion it WAS worth the price (I would have negotiated them down to 1900 EUR) but back then my budget wasn't enough for it.

A fairly skilled c++ programmer with access to the MS Developer Network should be able to program a toolbar by himself, but it would take him some time. So if you're serious about it, I would suggest looking for a 3rd party company to program it for you.

[crucial]

I am in no means trying to advertise here, but our company offers this, and for a much lower price. You you are probably looking at 20-30% of that price just listed. This would also include dynamic updates, etc.