Microsummary Manager 0.5 Alpha

Microsummary Manager 0.5 Alpha is a preview release of the next version which includes numerous new features and moves all key features to a new XPCOM component for increased performance and easier interaction with other extensions. For extension authors interested in utilizing this component, the IDL is included in this release (more details to come later once the interface is stable).
New user features/fixes:

  • Last selected generator is persisted across sessions.
  • Performance loading and displaying large numbers of generators massively improved.
  • Generators installed globally are now managed.
  • Generators in subdirectories of the profile and global generator stores are now managed.

Generator author features:

  • Authors can now include metadata to be displayed in the manager UI. Anything included in the first comment block will be parsed for data including author name, author’s website, description and instructions for use of the generator. Metadata may be formatted in either of the forms below

JavaDoc style (example):

@author John Doe
@url http://www.example.com
@description Extracts handy information from foo.com's front page.
@usage Bookmark any foo.com/bar/quux page.

The first letter may be capitalized and a colon after the attributes is optional. Each attribute should only be on one line and within the first comment node of the document.

Standard form (example):

Author: John Doe
Url: http://www.example.com
Description: Extracts handy information from foo.com's front page.
Usage: Bookmark any foo.com/bar/quux page.

The first letter may be capitalized and a colon after the attributes is optional. Each attribute should only be on one line and within the first comment node of the document.

4 thoughts on “Microsummary Manager 0.5 Alpha”

  1. a concept/wish for a generic-site generator, if possible:
    1) finds dates (in various formats!)
    2) user chooses date-format to which to convert, and to append that to either lead or tail of title/bkmk.

    can two generators operate upon same url?
    if yes, then how to set generators’ sequence?

  2. MM0.5alpha doesn’t work with “MR Tech Local Install” and/or “All in one Sidebar” installed.

  3. Ryan,
    I guess I don’t know what your Microsummary Manager really does or how to make proper use of it.

    I don’t know how to really use a Microsummary or what it does for me. I know, you’re probably thinking that’s pretty lame, but I’ve never used one or if I did I didn’t know I was using one. Please enlighten me. I checked out the following page, but still feel pretty stupid about it:
    http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Creating_a_Microsummary

    I was a programmer while in undergrad (now work in network security and am mainly a manager using my MBA more than my BS), so no need to dumb it down too much, but when I ran across your add-on I found myself wondering, “WTF?”

    Thanks,
    JW

  4. Hi JW, sorry about the extreme delay in moderating/responding to your comment – I was off on vacation.

    In Firefox there are generally two unique (but sort of related) things lumped under the microsummary name: Live titles (which are regular bookmarks with titles that are updated via microsummaries) and microsummary generators (which allow site authors and anyone willing to construct a generator to extract text from any page via XSLT to be displayed as a live title).

    This extension mainly provides an interface for deleting microsummary generators (Firefox provides limited UI for installation, but none for uninstalling) and not much more at this point – though I hope to change that once I’ve got some free time! 😉

    As a user, microsummaries are exposed when you’re bookmarking a page. If a site offers microsummaries, you’ll see the name field turn into a drop down menu where can choose to use the site’s provided microsummary. If the site does not offer a microsummary, this is where the generators come in. http://userstyles.org/livetitle for example offers generators for sites which don’t provide microsummaries. If you were to install one of those and then bookmark a site which it operates on, you would see the same drop down menu and the new generated title offered.

    It’s a bit late so above probably isn’t as clear as it could be, but in short: microsummaries are pieces of web pages extracted at a regular interval (usually 30min) and displayed in the place of a regular bookmark’s title.

    http://wiki.mozilla.org/Microsummaries has a pretty good explanation as well.

    – Ryan

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