Smartzilla
Robert de Bruin has applied the Tails interface to Smartzilla and extended it’s features to include support for hCalendar and some other Microformats too.
Smartzilla helps Firefox do useful things with Microformat data. Microformats are standard ways of including commonly used data (such as dates, contact information, content licenses, etc) semantically in XHTML pages. Smartzilla is my first Firefox extension so there are absolutely no guarantees on quality.
If you are running Firefox (ver. 0.7- ) you can Install the current stable version of Smartzilla
…or if you’re feeling adventurous try the lastest (unstable) version of Smartzilla
“How do I actually use this extension then?” Right click on an area of the page that you think contains an hCard (someone’s contact details) and then click ‘Add to Contacts’.
“I can’t any websites that support them hCard thingys” The Microformats people have a list of some examples.
Feature (hopefully it will be plural soon):
- Option to open hCard data as a vCard when the user right clicks on a hCard element (one with the a class attribute that contains "vcard" ) in an XHTML page.
Version 0.3
Smartzilla 0.3 adds status bar menu that allows you to access all of the Microformats within a page.
Version 0.3 is not fully working but you can still Install Smartzilla 0.3 if you want.
To do:
- Find an image for the status bar panel
- Extract a more meaningful summary of each Microformat element’s information to be displayed on the menu
- Extract email address from a hCard element to use in the definition of each menu item’s command
I am having difficulty with points 2 and 3 because as of Firefox 1.5 elements in document are hidden from extensions within XPCNativeWrapper objects to improve the security of interactions between the pages and Firefox and/or extensions.
Credits
This extension is just a combination of 3 clever ideas by people other than me:
- Microformats (the idea that makes the whole thing possible) were thought of by the people listed on the Microformats website.
- The XSL file that performs the transformation on the hCard data was written by Brian Suda and is available under a Creative Commons License.
- Eric Hamiter has tutorials on creating Firefox extension and a very usefull “Hello, world!” example on his website.
Further Reading
- Calvin Yu has a Firefox extension called Tails (found via Ian Kallen) that focuses on finding Microformat elements on a page.
- Robert de Bruin has used parts of Tails and Smartzilla to help create a version of Tails with the potential to export hCards and hCalendar
I have to enter a 2nd instance of the url attribute for it to show up in Outlook’s vCard (see below). I’ve tried dropping each one and it only works if they are both there. Is that an issue with hCard or Outlook or a Smartzilla issue? The following is what I use to get it to work with Smartzilla:
Library Sarah
http://www.stripytshirt.co.uk/features/firefox/smartzilla/#comment-1679Sarah Smith
http://librarysarah.com
I do get “Add to contacts” in the context menu everywhere and in all pages.
I’d prefer a right-click to pick up vCard info from the entire page, not only from the . And have the menu item disappear in pages without hCard markup. And have a viual cue in the status bar when hCards are present, like http://simile.mit.edu/piggy-bank/ has a cue for RDF data.
http://www.stripytshirt.co.uk/features/firefox/smartzilla/#comment-1183All good suggestions. I was actually thinking of having a sidebar (or similar) that picks out all the hCards lets the user do what they want with them but this was a quicker way to demonsrate the principle.
Kevin Yank of Sitepoint has written a very incitful article that not only covers lots of different ways people are extending with standards but also uses the impressively simple S5 presentation system.
http://www.stripytshirt.co.uk/features/firefox/smartzilla/#comment-1916Any chance of an upgarde for FF 1.5.0.1? Or hCalendar suport? Please!
http://www.stripytshirt.co.uk/features/firefox/smartzilla/#comment-2758Oops! Sorry for the dupes…
http://www.stripytshirt.co.uk/features/firefox/smartzilla/#comment-2759Andy- Yeah I am intending to do some more work on this. It wouldn’t take much work at all to add hCard support. I want to make the interface a bit more friendly without plagiarising Tails. All of the code in Smartzilla is under Creative Commons license so anyone would be free to use or improve it.
http://www.stripytshirt.co.uk/features/firefox/smartzilla/#comment-2802Hey Duncan,
Came about your blog through the Microformats site. We’re implementing MF right now at www.rrove.com - check it out.
Let me know if you like what we’re doing. There’s more to it than just locations; think del.icio.us for addresses.
You’ve got my email. Hope to hear from you.
David
http://www.stripytshirt.co.uk/features/firefox/smartzilla/#comment-3387[…] Smartzilla Para criar seu hCard facilmente acesse o link <http://tantek.com/microformats/hcard-creator.html> […]
http://www.stripytshirt.co.uk/features/firefox/smartzilla/#comment-3854Sarah - yes, correct, you have to put two URL’s and Outlook will pick up the second one. That’s a bug in Outlook itself. You can verify it by creating a VCF file manually and trying to import it into Outlook simply by double-clicking on the file in Windows Explorer. Outlook only imports the second URL, regardless of where the VCF came from.
http://www.stripytshirt.co.uk/features/firefox/smartzilla/#comment-3906Any update on the 1.5.0.1 support? Sounds like a great extension and I’d love to try it out but…
http://www.stripytshirt.co.uk/features/firefox/smartzilla/#comment-3914Are you still looking for a suitable icon for the status bar? How about this one from famfamfam.com…
http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/icons/vcard.png
http://www.stripytshirt.co.uk/features/firefox/smartzilla/#comment-3919I considered something like because I don’t think the Microformats logo is the right image for the status bar since users care more about the result than what technology is being used. The icon eddmun suggested would be perfect if the extension was never going to deal with any other Microformats but at the moment there are a few people taking the idea further and handling more Microformats and even other types of meta information. Something that implied the extraction of information hidden with-in the page would be best now.
http://www.stripytshirt.co.uk/features/firefox/smartzilla/#comment-3924Hay Duncan, thanks for letting me use your logo. I have no eye for graphics, functionality comes first, second and third with me. So I’m happy to lend from others
If I can have the original (photoshop) file that would be great. Now if only gimp can handle it …
Cheers,
Robert.
P.S. How is SmartZilla coming along? Are you still working on it?
http://www.stripytshirt.co.uk/features/firefox/smartzilla/#comment-3934[…] Smartzilla Para criar seu hCard facilmente acesse o link <http://tantek.com/microformats/hcard-creator.html>. Depois, copie o código gerado e insira na página do seu web site. […]
http://www.stripytshirt.co.uk/features/firefox/smartzilla/#comment-3966I’m having trouble installing version 0.2.2 on the lastest OS X version of Firefox–it seems Smartzilla reports as not compatible with Firefox version >1.5, including 1.5.0.3 any suggestions?
http://www.stripytshirt.co.uk/features/firefox/smartzilla/#comment-4342[…] Smartzilla (http://www.stripytshirt.co.uk/features/firefox/smartzilla) … does not provide tags within the page or a sidebar view. […]
http://www.stripytshirt.co.uk/features/firefox/smartzilla/#comment-4381[…] E eu também, e pronto, temos um formato padronizado. Posso agora fazer um programa, como uma extensão do Firefox, que leia desse formato e, por exemplo, crie um banco de dados para mim ou insira estes contatos no Outlook. Veja, por exemplo, esta aqui, que usa XSL para ler os dados. Curiosamente, quando comecei a ler sobre microformats, logo pensei em XSL. […]
http://www.stripytshirt.co.uk/features/firefox/smartzilla/#comment-4721Are you planning any further development of Smartzilla?
http://www.stripytshirt.co.uk/features/firefox/smartzilla/#comment-5497quero criar meu web show..
http://www.stripytshirt.co.uk/features/firefox/smartzilla/#comment-5502criar web show
http://www.stripytshirt.co.uk/features/firefox/smartzilla/#comment-5503I am writing a lot about microformats in my german blog: http://notizblog.org. My question is: can I use your Smartzilla-Logo for firefox/microformats posts? i love the idea of the logo!
greetings
http://www.stripytshirt.co.uk/features/firefox/smartzilla/#comment-5505Matthias