Professional SharePoint® 2007 Web Content Management Development: Building Publishing Sites with Office SharePoint Server 2007

14.6. Customizing the Page Editing Toolbar

All Publishing sites utilize the Page Editing Toolbar (PET). The PET provides content authors and owners with all the functionality needed to manage a page — from creating and editing pages to managing workflow, page settings, and more. The PET is divided into three sections:

• Page Status Bar — This is the top portion of the PET. It provides informational messages about the page, such as version, state, status, and when is it scheduled to start publication.

• Page Editing Menu — This is the lower-left portion of the PET. It includes menus of all the different actions that can be undertaken on the current page. If an action is not available (such as checking a page out because it is already checked out), then it is disabled.

• Quick Access Buttons — This is the lower-right portion of the PET. It includes buttons similar to the actions found in the Page Editing Menu section, but only actions that are available in the current context are shown.

The PET is very functional and essentially complete OOTB, with all the necessary tasks needed to create and manage a piece of content in a Publishing site, but it does provide a way for developers to create custom menus, menu items, and buttons. The process involves creating a class that will do the work and then modifying an XML file to make the PET aware of the new menus, items, and buttons. Luckily, the code for both new menu items and buttons is identical. The following sections demonstrate how to create ...