Controlling WebGUI from your Bookmarks

Have you ever worked on a WebGUI site that had no controls on it? I mean, like –no- controls. No Admin toggle, no login prompts, none of those nice little links in a style template that makes using WebGUI a little easier. Well I’ve been working onn a client project that has a style just like that, and considering how much time I’ve put into it I decided that I had to come up with a way to make my job a little easier.

That led me to a new line of thinking. Years ago, I had a Javascript bookmark in my FireFox toolbar that was pretty handy- it automatically resized the browser viewing window to an 800x600 resolution. It was great for checking out what your designs looked like in that very small amount of screen real-estate. So that got me thinking… if you can resize a browser window via javascript, could you manipulate the URL in the address bar?

I don’t think the average WebGUI user knows that by typing in a few commands to the end of a URL you can switch admin on and off, force a login prompt, get to the Asset Manager, edit an asset and more. Lo and behold, by putting javascript into a bookmark instead of a URL, you can accomplish all sorts of things… like these bookmarks.

These are compatible with IE 7, FireFox, Safari and Opera. Just download the attached zip file, extract the WebGUI Bookmarks.htm file from it, and then go to your browser and Import the file. If you go to Manage Bookmarks in FireFox or Import/Export in IE, you’ll be able to figure this out pretty quickly.

Once completed, you’ll have a set of WebGUI bookmarks in your Favorites/Bookmarks folder that looks something like this. These bookmarks will work in any WebGUI site, go ahead and give em a try!