The List Quick Helper Tridion extension gets an update

Back in October of last year I released the List Quick Helper, Tridion 2011 extension, which, in the unlikely case you’ve forgotten, looks like this:

The helper loads within the list view of the main Tridion 2011 GUI and shows additional information about the selected item in the list so there is no need to open a new dialog window just to see the schema being used by a Component or the directory name of a Structure Group just to name a couple of examples.

When I released it the first time I considered it to be a beta as it was a little rushed. Today Im happy to announce that the Helper is all grown up now and at version 1.0, boasting a host of new features and improvements.

New Features

1.

A new slide/push feature lets you make the helper slide down so only its top is showing above the fold, so most of the time the list items are not hidden by the helper. Hovering the cursor or clicking on the helper will make it show again until the cursor leaves the helper’s surface.

2.

Complete integration with the Extensions Manager lets both normal and administrator users control different aspects of the extension.

Here are the options exposed on the Extensions Manager:

• Administrators can determine which tool is available or not out of the existing set: Quick Folder/SG Create, Rename, Goto, Batch Publishing.
• Administrators can choose which groups of users in Tridion will the extension be available to.
• Per user option determining whether the Helper will be turned on or off by default.
• Per user option determining whether the Helper starts minimized.
• Per user option determining whether the Helper starts in slider mode.
• Per user option determining whether the publish batch will be cleared after sending items to be published.

By the way, the extension will work just fine if the EM isn’t available with all features enabled.

3.

With the first version I added the batch publish tool to the Helper which I understand people like allot. One of the things that bothered me about it though was that the Helper only supported a single item select which meant only being to able to add a single item to the batch each time. Well, no more! The Helper now supports multi-select and currently this is mainly for adding multiple items to the batch.
In next versions I will add more info about shared values and properties between the selected items.

4.

I have now modified the helper so it also responds to clicks on the tree view and not only in the list. This also fixes the issue where the Helper will continue to show  the info of a folder or Structure Group which isn’t actually selected anymore.

5.

Added the namespace and root element values to the Helper data when a component is selected.

6.

This one is not particularly ground-breaking but thought it would be a nice touch; I’ve replaced the basic javascript dialogs with jQuery-UI ones:

7.

Additionally I’ve fixed some minor bugs along the way and have made some major code restructuring for better efficiency and better modularity of the code. I’ve also made sure there are no longer any hardcoded resource URLs where there shouldn’t be.

Deployment & Configuration

The extension works much as it did in the previous version, however, the big re-work of the code I’ve done to the extension included changing the file names used by the extension. The extension configuration itself has changed a bit as well. If you have already used the Helper before I suggest removing all configuration and files and deploying the new files (available at the bottom).

For a step by step explanation on how to deploy an extension such as this please see my previous article: Setting up a Tridion 2011 GUI extension in 8 Steps.

Make sure you have copied over all files from the /client/generic and /client/dependencies folders so you have their latest versions.

Very important to note that if you have used an Editor name that is not “2011Extensions” you will need to modify a single line of code in the /client/generic/utils.js file. In line 14 change the value from “2011Extensions” to the Editor name you chose.

Download

download the List Quick  Helper 1.0.

Update: A newer version of the helper is available on this page.