Kevin Williams .NET and Stuff

Once I discovered how helpful it was to present thumbnails to content authors in the Page Editor, I started adding them to all of the templates and renderings that I created.  Very quickly, I started to get frustrated with the process (see my part 1 post for the details)...  I don’t like to leave standard fields visible all of the time, so having to turn those on and off and having to dig through them to find the Thumbnail field got old fast.  So I had an idea – add a custom button to the ribbon that would let me choose a thumbnail quickly without all of that hassle. 

The process of building a custom ribbon button, making it pop open the media browser dialog, handling the result, and updating the item’s thumbnail was rather complex and involved a bit of a learning curve for me.  So I’ve decided to leave the in-depth discussion for another blog post and just give the final solution here.

So, may I present - ThumbnailButtonModule-1.zip

The zip file contains a ready-to-go Sitecore package ZIP that you can install using Sitecore’s package installation wizard as well as the source code if you want to see how it was done.  If you compile the source yourself, you will need to update the namespace, class, and assembly name in the config file before placing it in your site’s App_Config\Include directory.  Also, if you don’t install the package then you will need to add the button to the ribbon in the Core database yourself.

I’m already working on another post for later today detailing how I built this module, so if you’re interested in the gory details - I'll have something for you soon!  And if you have any questions or comments or critiques, please let me know either in comments here or via Twitter @williamsk000.