Delicious Post

A while ago, I came across del.icio.us post, a simple Firefox extension that lets you post a link or the current page to del.icio.us Delicious. It has just the basics you need to quickly create a del.icio.us   Delicious bookmark to the current page, and while it lacked some features from the official Post to Delicious bookmarklet, it was still quite useful.

The author doesn't appear to be maintaining it anymore; but since the code is licensed under a Creative Commons license which permits modification of the work, I decided to start my own fork of this extension -- which, as it turns out, two others already exist (Post to del.icio.us and Jaggnito).

My version is named "Delicious Post" -- not only to distinguish it from the original extension, but to (grudgingly) reflect the new name given to this popular social bookmarking service.

» Download: Delicious Post 0.7.3 (10.5 KB; English (United States); compatible with Firefox 3.0-3.0.*)

This release introduces compatibility with Firefox 3, and includes some behind-the-scenes code fixes to give it a stable foundation for future planned enhancements. There are no new features in this release. Full details of changes can be found in the changelog.

Why?

Because eventually, I want to add a few additional features that are missing in the original del.icio.us post -- such as allowing private bookmarks, tag name autocompletion, and automatically using the selected text in the web page as the bookmark notes. But most importantly, I want to be able to use it on Firefox 3.

But I like del.icio.us post the way it was!

I suppose that you, and many others, do. That is why the additional features I have planned will be configurable so that they can be disabled if you prefer the primitive UI.

Will Delicious Post be compatible with Firefox 2?

No. The Mozilla Corp. plans on ending support for Firefox 2 in December 2008 (that is next month), and there is no point in making it compatible with a version of Firefox that will be officially retired in a month. I also want to make use of some APIs and developer features that is only available in Firefox 3 and above.

If you are still using Firefox 2, you should install the original del.icio.us post extension.

I found a bug. How do I report it?

Send bug reports to the AE Creations mailing list; please mention Delicious Post in the subject line. If you have a Bugzilla account on Mozdev, you can file a bug here.

Classic del.icio.us Bookmark Viewer: for those of you who miss the old del.icio.us

I've been using and adjusting to the "new Delicious" user interface for the past two weeks (it was unveiled to the public on 31 July).

There are a few things I like about it. Minor improvements such as:

• Being able to switch between three different bookmark viewing modes (regular, title and full viewing modes)
• Having the option to sort my bookmarks alphabetically.
• Ability to navigate to specific pages in my bookmark list instead of having to hit the "earlier" or "later" links repeatedly.
• Drop-down list of matching tags and auto-completion of tags when entering them in the tag filter box at the top of the page.
  

The latter two are the most significant improvements that I find useful. But other than those minor improvements listed above, I hate it. How do I hate it? Let me count the ways:

• The new layout doesn't make efficient use of space; there is too much wasted white space in each bookmark item in the new UI while in the old version everything was neatly compact, yet readable. Also, the placement of the bookmark date stamp for all bookmarks created on the same date results in an unnecessary and useless blank margin on the left-hand side of the bookmarks page.
  
• Tab completion of tags in the Add Bookmark UI wasn't working at all (that problem has since been fixed).
• The '+' operator to filter bookmarks by combining two or more tags in the tag filter box is now treated as part of the tag name!
  
• Some of the subtle grey colours in the UI (like those on the background of tag names for each bookmark) are simply bad choices, as they barely show up on LCD screens.
  
• The Delicious team has done away with time stamps of, for example, "5 minutes ago" or "2 hours ago" on recently-added bookmarks.

Here is a screen shot of the "new Delicious" UI, taken on 15 August 2008. Compare this to the screen shot from a past posting.

The "new Delicious."

There was supposedly a "limited" preview of the new UI, but I don't believe that it is a sufficient means of gauging user reaction and feedback to the new UI if it's so limited (users have to sign up for it and hope to get an invite to join) and not well publicized (I knew nothing about the "limited" preview until the day before the "new Delicious" went live).

Introducing the Classic del.icio.us Bookmark Viewer

I dislike the new user interface so much that I felt compelled to do something. So I put together a simple tool that sort of resembles the look and feel of the old del.icio.us.

The "classic del.icio.us bookmark viewer" can be found at http://aecreations.mozdev.org/delicious/bookmarks.html. It was created by combining a linkroll and a tagroll into a single page, and using CSS styling to give it a somewhat familiar look and feel. Simply enter your del.icio.us user name, choose how many recent bookmarks and how many tags to display, then click Get Bookmarks.

The Classic del.icio.us Bookmarks Viewer

By no means is this tool meant to be a complete replacement for the "new Delicious." It is missing significant capabilities of the old del.icio.us site, like editing bookmarks and filtering by tags (the latter isn't working with linkrolls), but I hope that many people would find it useful.

Improvements to Panic Button

I've played with Panic Button a bit more since I released a beta version of it earlier this month. There are a few things I've observed with it; one of them is an annoyance, the other is something that seem out of place for an extension that fulfills a relatively narrow, specific purpose.

First off, minimizing all windows isn't exactly instant -- in fact, it's painfully slow, on Windows at least. When hitting the Panic Button, the windows animate one by one as they shrink themselves to the taskbar. If you have a lot of open Firefox windows, this can last a few seconds. And by then, the boss will have already noticed that, at which point he would then stop by your desk and demand to know what you're up to....

The shortcut keys for window operations (minimize, maximize, close all) don't fit in with Panic Button's sole purpose of hiding all browser windows and concealing your Web surfing. They are especially redundant when users could configure them using the handy Keyconfig extension.

What to do

The minimize window behaviour is platform-specific and cannot be changed from within the Mozilla environment. So that leaves me with the following options:

• Leave it the way it is
• Use the session API to save the state of each open browser window, and then close all of them. That means the browser windows will truly be hidden instead of merely being minimized to the system taskbar. Have a toolbar appear that allows the user to click on a button (after the boss walks by) to reopen the browser windows and restore the browser session.
• Give the user the option to configure the behaviour of the Panic Button: minimize all, hide all windows (with the toolbar appearing so that they can be reopened later), or exit Firefox entirely.
  

The redundant shortcut keys will be eliminated -- except for F9, which is a useful alternative to the Panic Button button. Another reason for eliminating them is that some of them may already be mapped to other system functions on the user's desktop environment -- in particular, ALT+F5 and ALT+F10 are system keys in Gnome which perform the same window actions as Panic Button.

And yes, I know... the Panic Button icon is ugly and needs improvement.

Looking ahead to 2008

The hours and minutes are ticking as the end of 2007 approaches. There are a couple of new year's resolutions that I hope to fulfill in 2008. Here's a list.

First off, writing more frequently on this blog about projects as I work on them. I find that writing about them helps to brainstorm ideas, contemplate solutions to problems, and solicit feedback on them.

Finish up Clippings 3.0 development, and make it work in Firefox 3.

Send Tab URLs needs an update. Since its first release, there have been new localizations created for it, thanks to the translators over at Babelzilla. The new update will include the new localizations.

Develop a few extensions that I've got on my idea list:

• Panic Button - minimizes all windows using a shortcut key or a toolbar button. Great for quickly concealing your Web surfing when the boss walks by your desk.
• Bookmark Keys - inspired by shortcut keys for Clippings and also by a coworker's annoyance, I want to extend Clipping's shortcut key concept to work with Firefox's bookmarks. That is, pressing a shortcut key like CTRL+ALT+B, and then a letter or digit, will point the browser to the bookmarked Web page. (The name "Bookmark Keys" has already been taken by another extension that does something similar, but only for bookmarks in the Bookmarks Toolbar.)
• Further development of XULicious, the del.icio.us tag browser. This isn't an extension - it's a stand-alone application that uses the XULRunner platform. The prototype that I introduced over a year ago is languishing, and its usefulness at present is rather trivial.

Finally, there is a Web 2.0-style application that I'm thinking about working on - but I'm still thinking about ideas on how to make it useful because as it is right now, it really isn't. Once I have my ideas clarified I'll write more about them in this blog.

Happy New Year!

A toolbar for Clippings

Many users have asked for a quicker, easier way to paste clippings as an alternative to right-clicking on a web page text box (or a new email message), pointing to Clippings in the context menu, and then picking from the submenu that appears. Shortcut keys, which was introduced in the first milestone release leading up to the eventual 3.0 release, is one answer to this request -- albeit for keyboard-savvy users.

There were several ideas that were suggested, all of which I considered:

• A new sidebar UI
• A new toolbar UI
  
• Double-clicking on a clipping in Clippings Manager to paste it
• Clippings "smart tags" -- like the Smart Tags in MS Office applications
• Make the Clippings menu detachable
  
• Placing the Clippings menu on the status bar icon. (This is actually the original placement of the Clippings menu in a very early, pre-1.0 release.)
  

A new sidebar UI seems like a sensible idea, but I don't like how it would narrow the viewable browser content area just so a user can paste a clipping from a list that's always visible (until the sidebar is closed). Obviously not a problem for people with large screens -- but remember that not everyone has the luxury of a large monitor (for example, I still use a 17" CRT at home). And if the user's collection of clippings in the "root" (a.k.a top level) folder is not that many, then all that empty space in the lower part of the list is just wasted screen real estate.

Smart tags are a great idea -- until you actually experience them. They can be annoying, especially when they follow you everywhere in its futile attempt to be overly helpful to you in every single use case scenario. I've turned off Smart Tags in Microsoft Word for that very reason.

While double-clicking on a clipping in the Clippings Manager tree list might seem convenient, the question is, if multiple browser windows/message compose windows are open at the same time, where does the double-clicked clipping go? Should a double-click action display a popup menu or a dialog box asking which window to paste the selected clipping into? Sure, let's suppose that by default the clipping will be pasted into the previously-focused host app window... but what if the user wanted it pasted in a different window?

That leaves the toolbar UI idea. The advantage of a toolbar is that it only needs to appear when when user wants it to, and that it can either be docked to the host app window, or floating (as a floating toolbar pallete). Not only can the user quickly access the Clippings menu with just one (left) click, but other commands (New, New From Clipboard, etc.) can be readily available. Here is what I have in mind:

Clippings toolbar, docked to the host app window.

Floating toolbar.

The toolbar idea seems to be the best option. It uses up only the screen space it needs (well, the floating toolbar at least), and the user can show or hide it as he pleases. And the floating toolbar can be moved anywhere on the screen -- where the user wants it to be -- so that its within easy reach, as opposed to a fixed sidebar UI, and without the annoyance of a "smart tag" that follows you everywhere. Now that I think about it more, is a docked toolbar really that necessary?

Edit: I just realized that my arguments against adding clipping pasting capabilities from the Clippings Manager are baseless. If one could insert a clipping into the current host app window from the toolbar, one should be able to do so from Clippings Manager, too. Silly me.

Yahoo! Mail APIs

Big news from Yahoo! - Web APIs (SOAP- and JSON-RPC-based) are now available for their Yahoo! Mail service. As a Yahoo! Mail user, I can see how useful it can be to give third-party developers the ability to create new apps that lets users access and compose emails through interesting and different ways.

A few ideas quickly came to mind:

• a mini email client implemented as a Firefox extension or a desktop app
• a mini email client implemented as an app/widget/module/flake/doohickey for web-based portals and desktop environments like Netvibes, Pageflakes, eyeOS and YouOS
• a mini-email client that would be available to users of my Send Tab URLs extension so that users can send a list of browser tab URLs via Yahoo! Mail (and thus overcoming the annoying limitation on Windows of not being able to support every email client)
  

Then I browsed through the Yahoo! Mail API documentation, and was disappointed to find that the most useful API calls can only be invoked if the end user of the app, plugin or widget is authenticated as a user of Yahoo's premium mail service. Users of the standard mail service will only be able to perform basic functions like listing messages, creating and managing folders and getting user information. Apparently, doing anything ridiculously basic as... oh, I dunno... composing an email message from within your own home-brewed app, plugin or widget requires that the logged-in end user be a paying "premium" customer.

Considering that I am not a Yahoo! Mail Plus user, and that such a limitation shuts out an entire class of end users that are happy with their basic Yahoo! Mail account and are not interested in paying for unneeded extras, perhaps the best that I can accomplish with this for the broadest range of users is a little desktop (web-based or otherwise) utility that tells the users how many unread messages he has.

And I'm not the least bit motivated by the $10 commission for referring users to Yahoo! Mail Plus - I'm a programmer, not a salesman.

Update - apparently, someone has already written a Yahoo! Mail notifier extension.

Idea scratch pad - Send Tab URLs

Ideas for the next release:

• Set a limit on the number of browser tabs whose URLs are listed, for security considerations. This limit will be configurable via a setting that can be changed in about:config, although the limit should be reasonably high enough to suit the most demanding power surfer: "24 browser tabs should be enough for everybody...."
  


• Simple formatting of the generated email. Each listed URL in the email could be numbered or bulleted. Formatting could be set every time Send Tab URLs is invoked, or only on demand, via an "Options" dialog box. Simple formatting should work regardless of whether the email is composed in plain text or rich text (HTML).


• Slice vegetables, bake muffins, and create the most amazing pineapple chicken chow mein dish... oops, wrong project.... =)
  

Ideas

Picture this common Web browsing scenario: You've got multiple browser tabs open in Firefox, and you want to email a friend a list of URLs of all the really cool, must-see Web pages in the browser tabs you've got open.

While there is a "Send Link" command in Firefox (and in most other Web browsers), it only creates an email message containing the URL of the tab that was focused at the time the Send Link command was invoked. If you wanted to include the URLs of the other tabs, you would have to switch to each tab and copy and paste the URL from the location bar into the email. And if there are a lot of open tabs, that can be a real chore.

I propose an extension that would eliminate this needless copying and pasting. Called "Send Tabs," it will open an email message composition window where it will populate the message body with a bulleted list of URLs of all the Web pages displayed in all open tabs.

I had actually started working on this a while back, and got as far as creating a prototype of it before the project was abandoned when other things came up. Now, with Clippings 2.5 done and me restlessly thinking of other things to keep me busy and out of trouble, the Send Tabs idea seems to be worth revisiting.

There is some preliminary research and studying for me to do before resuming work on Send Tabs, but for now, what do you think? Comments on this idea are welcome.

XULicious

Taking a short break from working on Clippings, I immersed myself in a small project: XULicious, a simple del.icio.us tag client written using the XULRunner run-time.

XULicious (pronounced "zool-icious") lists all your del.icio.us tags. After logging in using your del.icio.us username, it loads all of your del.icio.us tags asynchronously using XMLHttpRequest. Once loaded, you can copy the entire list of tags to the clipboard. You can reload the entire list in case a change was made outside of XULicious (i.e., in the del.icio.us site itself, or from other del.icio.us clients).

And... that's it. There's a lot of things missing here that would make it more complete. There's no tag cloud option available, no ability to sort tags by frequency, no way to list all bookmarks tagged with a given tag, or filtering bookmarks by a combination of two or more tags, and all the other nice things one would find in a full-fledged del.icio.us client, like managing tags and bookmarks, posting a new bookmark, and so on.

But it has a cute little throbber icon that animates when your tags are loaded! WOW!!

All silliness aside, XULicious was meant more to be a demo of XULRunner. It took about two hours one evening to have the bare minimum functionality working (e.g. with my username/password hard-coded); and a few more hours over a span of seven days up to today to add reload and copying functionality and other UI niceities like exception handling, the Log In dialog, and of course, the toolbar icons.

Those interested in giving it a spin can download it from http://downloads.mozdev.org/clippings/misc/xulicious.