gleeBox started out as a weekend hack project for me and Sameer. But, we ended up spending a lot more time working on it. Not that I’m complaining, I think we managed to build a tool that is really useful once you get used to it. We made our last major release (1.0) a couple of weeks back. From now on, gleeBox development will be carried out at ease (and not the 20 commits/day rate at which it was being carried out earlier ^^ )

If you’re not familiar with gleeBox, you should take a look at this screencast or read the user manual.

After continually using gleeBox for some time, I’ve discovered several ways in which it makes browsing and doing stuff on the web quicker and more fun. Here are some of them:

ESP Visions:

This is my favorite feature of gleeBox. What this means is, you can specify jQuery selectors for specific URLs and when you visit that particular page and open gleeBox, that selector will automatically be executed and all the matching elements will be highlighted on the page. You can TAB through them and press enter to execute a link.

This is especially useful on pages like the Google search results page, where all you would ever want to do is to go through the results. You don’t need to scroll using the mouse. This makes searching a lot more fun and less tiresome for the fingers.

This is also really useful for automating stuff, especially for pages where you have to click the same link everytime you visit them.

Several useful ESP Visions are listed on TipJar.

Default Link Search:

You start typing something and gleeBox highlights all the links on the page that match the text. This means you don’t need to take your hands off the keyboard to navigate the web.

Page commands and bookmarklet execution:

You can execute any bookmarklet by typing in !bookmarklet-name. There are also some inbuilt-commands. A couple of examples are:

!rss – opens the RSS feed of the current page in Google Reader so that you can easily subscribe to it.
!share m/g/fb/t/.. – share current page through mail, gmail, facebook, twitter, etc.

All of them are listed in the user manual.

Bookmark Search:

If turned on, gleeBox searches browser bookmarks if no links are found matching the entered text. This is useful, instead of manually going through a long list of sites in the bookmarks menu.

Yubnub commands:

You can execute yubnub commands preceded by :. Some of the ones that I use a lot are

:tw gleebox – Search twitter for gleeBox
:imdb avatar – search imdb for avatar

I haven’t really explored these in detail yet.

Scraper commands:

With these you can select headings (?h), linked images (?img), etc. You can also define custom scrapers. An example of a custom scraper  is:

?t - a.web will select all shared links on twitter.com

If you’re an advanced gleeBox user, you should go ahead and share tips on Tipjar. You can login using your Twitter/Facebook/other accounts and start posting right away from the main page.

Many of you already know that I created the “Front End Editor” aka “Enhanced Front End Editing” extension for Joomla! as part of Google Summer of Code 2009. The extension only works in 1.5.x right now. Even though I tried to make it easy to adopt the extension by making it easy to setup, the extension does rely on the template quite a bit. I thought if I explain the installation process, all the hacks the extension makes and the underlying dependencies in a blogpost, it should help in getting rid of confusion to some degree.

You can download the extension from JED.

Installation

1. Install ‘com_frontendeditor’, ‘plg_frontendeditor’ and ‘plg_articleeditor’ from here.
2. Enable the plugins “System – Frontend Editor” and “Content – Frontend Article Editor”.
3. Go to “Components->Enhanced Frontend Editor” at the backend and click on “Apply Changes”. You can modify the settings there to suit your template and needs.

Hacks ( applied when you click on “Apply Changes”)

1. Adds the module chrome “modChromefreditor” to the “html/modules.php” file of the current template. Before doing this, it creates a backup file ‘html/modules.php.backup’.
2. After creating a backup of “index.php” as “index.php.backup”, it modifies the following statements in the “index.php” of the current template:
   • All the jdoc statements get the style “freditor”. Eg.:
     <jdoc:include type="modules" name="top">

     gets changed into

     <jdoc:include type="modules" name="top" style="freditor" />
   • Surrounds the jdoc statements with a DIV that has class in the format
     frpos.position-name

     Eg.:

     <jdoc:include type="modules" name="user3" style=" freditor" >

     gets changed into

     <div class="frpos.user3">
     <jdoc:include type="modules" name="user3" style=" freditor" />
     </div>
3. Replaces the existing “/html/com_content/article/form.php” file with a custom “form.php” ( after creating a backup file i.e. “form.php.backup”)

The backup files are created so that you can undo the changes anytime by clicking on “Revert Changes”. You would probably want to revert the hack if you choose to uninstall the extension.

You’ll also need to apply the hack separately for each template you want to use.

Dependencies & Limitations

1. Mootools 1.2
   Perhaps the biggest limitation of this extension is that it uses mootools 1.2 instead of 1.1 which is used in Joomla! 1.5. Consequently, some of your javascript that uses mootools 1.1 may not work properly when you’re logged in. Mootools 1.2 will only replace 1.1 when you’re logged in at the front-end and have the plugins enabled. The reason I chose 1.2 is that Joomla! 1.6 will use mootools 1.2.
2. Menu-item title editing
   The menu-item titles must be enclosed in LI elements with the class in format item<menu-id> Eg.:
   <li class="item13">
   <span>Joomla! Documentation</span>
   </li>

   If your template uses a different layout, you may want to modify it a little to support menu-item title editing. In case you don’t, you need not worry as each of these features degrade gracefully, without affecting the functionality or presentation of your site.

3. Default article edit icons are hidden
   The default edit icons are hidden and the extension displays its own edit icons. You can specify their selector in the admin component. In case your template uses a different selector than the default one and you don’t specify it, a pair of edit icons can appear for each article which will lead to confusion.
4. Selectors for article and page titles
   If they are not the default, you can modify them in the admin so that editing of article and page titles works.

Future Versions

You can report any bugs here. Since my college semester has now begun, any updates to the extension will probably come slowly. I plan to remove any trivial withstanding bugs, add new features with time and improve the extension in general. I would love to spend any free time in fixing bugs of the overall Joomla! project as well.

As far as Joomla! 1.6 is concerned, I did create a patch for 1.6 but due to time constraints, it wasn’t included in the feature-set for 1.6. So, when a stable version of 1.6 is released, I’ll port this extension to support 1.6.

I will love to know if the extension worked for you and any suggestions or feedback you want to give. You can either contact me via the Contact page or send me an @reply on twitter.

Update:

This is a common recurring problem for version 0.3.7 of the extension. If you’re getting the following error:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘&’, expecting T_VARIABLE or ‘$’
in your-install/administrator/components/com_frontendeditor/controller.php
on line 99

it means you’re probably using a version of PHP earlier than 5. Unfortunately, this piece of code only works in PHP 5. You’ll either need to update to PHP 5 or get the patch from here. You’ll need to apply the patch to your-install/administrator/components/com_frontendeditor/controller.php

In case you’re not familiar with applying a patch, you’ll have to execute the following command from the shell:

Update 2:
If you would like to promote the development of this extension and make a contribution, please go to the project page.

I’ve been working on the next version of Twitkut in whatever little free time I’ve had in the past couple weeks ( mostly weekends ). The next version of Twitkut will feature a number of new and exciting features, the most major one being support for OAuth. Some of the features have already been deployed on Orkut:

1. Displaying user tweets in the Orkut profile page (deployed): I had to rewrite the whole code for this due the new server-side templates and data-pipelining standards enforced by Orkut. It has certain limitations in that you cannot click on any link that links to any external source. Clicking on the user’s pic or username leads you to the application page.

2. OAuth Support: Twitkut will now enable you to authorize it with your Twitter account via OAuth. Doing this will enable you to post updates from Twitkut, add your Orkut friends as your Twitter friends and many more things (listed as separate features). I chose OAuth since then you won’t have to worry about me storing your Twitter passwords.

3. Post updates from Twitkut: If you enable OAuth, you’ll be able to post updates to your Twitter account from within Twitkut.

4. Follow your Orkut friends on Twitter: Enabling OAuth will enable you to follow your Orkut friends on Twitter from within Twitkut.

5. Selective Updates: This will be similar to the “Selective Twitter Updater” Facebook app. You will able to selectively display updates on Twitkut by adding a hashtag to the end of updates similar to “#orktw” or “#orkut”. I’ve still to decide upon the hashtag. Only the updates containing the hashtag will be displayed on Twitkut.

Unfortunately, the popular demand for automatic updates to the user’s activity stream ( without the user having to visit the application page ) won’t be possible due to the limitations enforced by Orkut. If Orkut ever allows it, it’ll be the first feature I’ll add.

I cannot promise if and when I’ll add all these features. There are too many variables, time being the biggest one. You can keep abreast with the latest updates to Twitkut by following @twitkut.

You can also suggest features that you’ll like to be added to Twitkut as comments to this blogpost or as @replies to @twitkut.

Enabling Twitkut with OAuth has been/will be a complicated task. I’ll probably write a separate blog on writing an Opensocial OAuth Gadget.

Yes, I’m in (yay!) and I will be participating in Google Summer of Code this year with Joomla! For those of you who don’t know what Joomla! is, it is a Content Management System ( CMS ) used widely to create and manage websites. I will be working on an Enhanced front-end editor for Joomla! Ashwin will be mentoring me for the summer.

I am thankful to Sameer for inspiring me to take part in GSoC. I also thank Elin, Sam, Toni and all the other mentors and community of Joomla! for helping me better my application into something practical and at the same time useful. It has been a great experience interacting with the Joomla! community for the past 1 – 2 months and that is something that has really inspired me to work on the project.

Things have been moving very quickly since I got to know that I got selected on 21st April at 12:30 am. But, the journey has just begun. I will be coding this coming summer to complete my project and to validate my selection. At present, I have been getting myself familier with the Joomla! framework, finalizing the implementation details of my project as well as sorting out a few issues in my mind. I plan to give my best effort to the project so that it becomes a useful feature for all Joomla! users.

I see this as a terrific opportunity to work in collaboration with talented people from all over the world. I see now why people love open source so much. It feels great to be a part of the Joomla! as well as the opensource community and to contribute to a project that is used by so many users.

My heartiest congratulations to everyone who got selected for Summer of Code. You can have a look at the list of students who got selected for Joomla! here: http://socghop.appspot.com/org/home/google/gsoc2009/joomla

This post’s title makes my obsession with use of hash-tags in twitter updates pretty clear ;)

My college wanted us to do a project as part of a “Bridge Course” this semester. In a way, I liked the concept as it was at least trying to convince some people to do something besides curriculum. Personally, it’s always good when you are working towards some objective like completing a project you have to submit. An example is last summer, when I had to create a project for the summer and I ended up doing a lot of fun stuff.

So, I thought, why not build a solution for a problem I have been facing for quite some time now. Those of you who know me personally or follow me on twitter, know that I am particularly unhappy about my college’s attendance criteria. It’s always been a headache for me trying to keep track of when I went to college and when I didn’t. I tried using Google Calendar but I thought it was pretty cumbersome to use for this particular purpose.

So, I thought, why not create a simple, easy-to-use and nice-looking webapp for exactly this purpose. That’s when ProxyCal was born. Even at the beginning, I had the idea in my mind of a calendar which used colors like green, red and yellow to denote the status for the day i.e. whether you went to college, took a leave or college was off. One more thing I wanted to do was to avoid anyone from creating a new account for using ProxyCal. So, I decided that I was going to store all the data regarding the attendance in a separate calendar ‘ProxyCal’ in the user’s Google Calendars.

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