In Sitecore 6.2 it is possible to integrate FieldEditors. These are command which enables users edit item settings when they work in the page editor. Personally I think it is a great option when you want editors to only work within the Page Editor, and still let them edit settings. For the blog module that I created I implemented two FieldEditorCommands which let the user edit the blog and entry settings. When you use the default implementation as described in one of the cookbooks users can always click on the ribbon button regarding if the fields are on the currentitem. When those field don not exist on that item, they just get a empty popup. I decided to restrict the option only to items which are based on a certain template. You can do this the following way: You’ll need to override the Execute method in the your class (which overrides from Sitecore.Shell.Applications.WebEdit.Commands.FieldEditorCommand).
Then you isolate the function Context.ClientPage.Start in for instance an if statement.
Example:
if (context.Items[].TemplateID == new ID(Settings.Default.EntryTemplateID)) {
Context.ClientPage.Start(this, "StartFieldEditor", args);
} else {
Context.ClientPage.ClientResponse.Alert("Please select an entry first");
}
If anyone else has a better way to get the same results please let me know.