Released – Force.com Utility Belt for Salesforce.com
August 31st, 2010
The Force.com Utility Belt is a Google Chrome Extension that I wrote to make my life easier. While developing on the Force.com platform I consistently need access to Salesforce documents, message boards, code snippets, etc. and opening PDFs, searching documentation and looking up Visualforce component signatures becomes tedious. The extension evolved out my necessity to make myself more productive. I hope you find it useful as well. Please send me any ideas for enhancements that you have to make the tool better. Virtually anything you can do in Javascript is possible.
You can install the Force.com Utility Belt from the Google Chrome Extensions Gallery
Extension Interface
When first activated, the extension display the interface above with the following features and functions:
- Defaults to the Quick Reference Topics interface
- Displays links in the upper right for access to the main functionality of the extension (Quick Reference Topics, Search for Stuff and ID Converter)
- Displays links to open developer.force.com and the Force.com documentation page in a new tab
- Displays the latest feed content from the Force.com blog in the bottom
Quick Reference Topics
The following sections are loaded into the extension with short cuts to topics that I frequently use allowing me quick access to stuff that I typically forget. The sections include:
- Apex
- Visualforce
- Visualforce Components
- SOQL
- AJAX Toolkit
- Web Services API
Once you choose a section you can drill down into a specific topic, view it in the extension and even open the actual page in a new browser tab.
Search for Stuff
Since the Quick Reference Topics don’t include access to every topic in the Salesforce documentation, you need a convenient way to search for stuff. The search interface allows you to select a scope and perform a keyword search against the specific site. The results are displayed in a new browser tab. Due to popular demand, the following sites are searchable.
ID Converter
The ID Converter is from my original extension so I rolled it into this one for convenience. It allows you to quickly create an 18 digit Salesforce ID from a 15 digit ID. Based upon some feedback I made a small change so that the extension tries to find a 15 digit ID from the tab’s current URL and pre-populate the conversion form field.
Please send me your feedback and suggestions for improvements.
Categories: Google, Programming, Salesforce
I misunderstood your original intention Jeff when you asked for ideas for the utility belt. I see now what your plugin does and it is great! This is going to save me a lot of time. Thanks, you rock!
Great stuff Jeff. Thanks for creating this. I really like that the materials are QUICK at hand and easily opened in a new window. This is a huge timesaver for sure.
A time saver for sure, its fast too. Great stuff Jeff !
I can’t use this because Chrome is not officially supported by salesforce.com.
I love you man! This is awesome!
Very well done! This might be my new favorite tool.
Pretty good going with this belt, only one issue. It auto closes when I leave chrome. For ex. lets say I opened a help topic copied some sample code from belt, and switched to eclipse.
Can you make it stay open, and give a link to close, ESC works well already.
Great tool Jeff. It is going to save a lot of time. The only issue that I think is which Abhinav mentioned. When I leave the tab where the utility belt is open, it gets closed.
This is really a great tool…especially for quick reference
Great help Jeff, and it is very fast.
Thanks,
[...] My prayers were answered when Jeff Douglas created the Force.com Utility Belt for Google Chrome. [...]
Jeff, as usual, I have no words. We will catch up again soon I guess and I will try to find them in the meanwhile. One idea for the extension, would it be possible to include translated search and translation in this tool?
Thanks @Sebastiano. I’ll keep that idea in mind.
Jeff this is crazy helpful. Kudos!!