Lifehacker

This is the coolest! Mucho Mucho Kudos!

It would be cool if it would do a delicious lookup for the entire domain, not just the page. Don't know if that's possible though.

Thanks, Jeff!

Re: domain vs page - this is one of the possible improvements for the next version, to be able to specify whether each lookup should be site-specific or page-specific. Figured I'd code it up if there's a demand for it.

Maybe I am a little late for school, but when I select Open File and the xpi file from Firefox, nothing happens. I get no "Install" dialog -- nothing. I'm using Firefox 2. Maybe that's it.

@Ed: Huh, weird. I've tested it under Fx 2 and it worked. Windows or Mac?

Anyone else seeing the same thing?

An indispensable add-on for marketers. Dugg.

I had no problems with Firefox 2.0.0.1. Maybe your pop up blocker is on?

This add-on is awesome, it save my life for some school projects

cool extension, thanks for sharing

I'm getting a 404 file not found error when I try to get to the file.

I'm running WinXP and Firefox 2.0.

The link's working for me right now... temporary downage? Give it another try, Lolindrath.

No luck, here's what I see:

http://www.lolindrath.com/err.PNG

(Sorry I'm such a trouble-maker)

"The requested URL /assets/resources/lhcode/aboutsite_1.2.xpi was not found on this server."

mac osX firefox 2.0.0.1.

I get a 404...

Damn! Tech monkeys are on it now.

Should be fixed - a bum server needed a reset.

Still not working.

When I did the right click as per the instructions Gina, it opened up the Netscape browser?!
Just by clicking on the link, and hitting 'install now' worked fine (just like all other extensions)
FYI

When I right clicked and opened it (as per the instructions) Gina, it opened my Netscape browser (?!)
On clicking the link, install now and restarting Firefox (like all other extensions) it worked just fine. FYI
Love the extension!

Ok! The server is really fixed now - really - and the click to install (vs right-clicking) is also working. Yay for sysadmins!

That's really interesting. On a completely fresh reinstall of windows (reformat and the whole deal) and before I ran Firefox for the first time, I was prompted to install this add-on. Weird -- I hadn't even been to Lifehacker on the new computer yet.

Gina, have you seen this? http://www.scrutinizethis.com/url/

It does the same and you aren't confined to Firefox, should the situation arise.

awesome,
i found it to be a bit more usefull with tinyURL in too. Brilliant to allow the user to add more tools to it.

Big kudos.

Everything worked fine for me. Thanks for the tip.....I just hope that they continue to add site stats to the plugin....something cool could also be a phishing rating.

John
http://www.monomachines.com

The "page vs domain" feature would really be much appreciated. For example, the Google Cache and Wayback Machine links are really more useful for the page than for the domain. (In fact, for these two (at least), I see no reason to have them work on the domain at all.)

Page as well as site support has now been added into version 1.3, just released. Use the %p and %s variables in your lookup URLs.

If you're upgrading from version 1.2, hit the "Reset lookups to defaults..." button to see examples using page vs site lookups. Be careful though, when you do this you'll lose any custom lookups you already added.

The variables also allow for the site or page location to appear anywhere in the URL; so things like the Gmail This bookmarklet link work now. I threw that in to the default list of lookups just as proof of concept (even though it's not really a meta lookup.)

Gina

Link couldn't perchance be broken _yet again_ could it? Here's what I get (FF 1.5.0.9 - yeah, slack...) - "Invalid file hash (possible download corruption)". Same on save link as.

Sorry - first post but can't quite make the "interesting, substantial or highly amusing" cut for such trivia. Maybe next time huh?

Looks like it's working for me... THAT sounds familiar :)

This is a really good extension. I notice that StumbleUpon is not supported...yet. I would request a new feature that goes along with the %s/%p replacement tokens.

Something else that either grabs just the path of the URL or something that leaves off the http:// of the URL. For example, this URL is http://lifehacker.com/software/firefox/lifehacker-code--ab...
%s = lifehacker.com
%p = http://lifehacker.com/software/firefox/lifehacker-code--ab...
and my new token, %x for instance, would be
%x = software/firefox/lifehacker-code--about-this-site-addon-firefox-232375.php

Then you have full control of what you pass into About This Site. Thanks!

MrSlinkyman: Not a bad idea. I was considering another token, %t, which would be the page's title...

But, question: how would you use %x? StumbleUpon just takes the path, not the domain?

One other good addition to the menu is a digg search of the pages on a site with the most diggs:

http://digg.com/search?s=%s&submit=Search§ion=news&typ...

I'm delighted to see the options you added, the ability to add, or remove, sites from about this site!

However, I'm having troubles. I have to Windows XP machines, one my laptop running XP Home, the other my desktop running XP Pro. Both up to date on M$ patches, both running Firefox 2.0.0.1, both with About This Site 1.3. When I fire up About This Site on the desktop and tell it to "show all," I get 1 screen. I can open any of the sites About This Site uses manually, bit not automatically. The laptop is having no problems. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Mike

@mavery81230: Ah-ha! There is a bug with Show All... lemme look into it. Please hold.

Hey mavery, try this new version and tell me if it fixes your problem.

I've only just got round to trying this.

Really like it, I can throw away around a dozen bookmarklets now.

One small point though. I really don't like it when an extension puts things at the very bottom of the tools menu. IMHO that should always be where Firefox 'Options' is.

I know a loy of extensions put their menus there these days - but then I moan at them as well.

Sorry it's been so long... but I've got good news and bad news.

The good news - About this site again opens lots of tabs when show all is selected...

bad news - except when the tools | options | tabs | when I open a new link, switch to it immediately option is enabled.

When that option is enabled, only one new tab is created by the show all option.

My guess is that when switch to new tab is enabled, About This Site loses control as soon as the new tab is created and Firefox switches to it.

Thanks for looking into the problem,
Mike

When I loaded the add-on, most of my programs stopped working correctly. When I uninstalled About This Site, the other programs were still exhibiting the same behavior. When I shut down and reboot, the same thing still happens, but before I enabled About This Site, everything was working normally.
Any ideas?

Um, I like you guys and all, but not enough to let you install software on my computer. I need a bit more romancing before that happens.

@LonPhillips: Lon - most of your programs? As in desktop programs, or other Firefox extensions? What happened exactly?

I have several feature requests.

0. More bookmark variables
--------------------------

I would like to request more bookmark variables.
%r : prompt variable. this variable is a user input given from a runtime popup dialog box.
%l : clipboard text content.
%S : larger version of %s. such as http://lifehacker.com

The %S variable can be used to do Coral Cache thing :
%Snyud.net:8080%x

%r can be used to search a word (given by user input) on the current domain by using Google :
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3A%%s%20%%r

0. User-defined bookmark variables
----------------------------------

What about allowing users to create their own bookmark variables through javascript?
In fact, some of the above requested variables can be given by simple javascript.

For example, %r is given by :
function(){ return prompt('')};

And %S can be defined by :
function(){ var s = location.href;
var i = s.search(/\/[^\/]/);
return s.substring(0,i);
}

User might want to define %m as her e-mail address:
function(){ return 'abcdef@gmail.com';} // the user's mail address.

%i
function { return new Date();} // the current date

0. OR operator |
----------------

OR operator can allow something like Three-in-one Yubnub Bookmarklet in About-This-Site.
For example, %%h|%%p gives the highlighted text (%%h) if some text is highlighted (that is, if %%h is non-empty string) but otherwise it gives the full URL (%%p).

Generally %a|%b|%c|%d is the javascript equivalent of the expression (value1 || value2 || value3 || value4).
If value1 can convert to boolean value TRUE, it gives value1, otherwise it gives (value2 || value3 || value4).

Using this, we can make following bookmarks.

Google for keyword taken from highlighted text or the full url.
http://www.google.com/search?q=%%h|%%p

Google for keyword taken from highlighted text or the user input.
http://www.google.com/search?q=%%h|%%r

About-This-Site version of Three-in-one Yubnub
http://yubnub.org/parser/parse?command=%%r+%%h|%%r|%%p
This takes yubnub command(such as g, wp, tiny) from user input and then takes keyword from one of highlighted text, another user input or the full URL.

0. Integration with Firefox Bookmarks
-------------------------------------

What if all bookmarks in About-This-Site are actually part of Firefox bookmarks and vice versa?
If this strong integration is impossible, at least what about the import feature from or to Firefox bookmarks?
For example, the smart keyword http://www.google.com/search?q=%s
could be imported as http://www.google.com/search?q=%%h|%%p

0. Import and export of setting
-------------------------------

Import and export of all user-defined bookmarks and variables.
For example, Alice wish to share her part of About-This-Site setting.
Alice post the setting on her blog, for example, in the following format.

%r
function(){ return prompt('')};
%i
function { return new Date();} // the current date
Coral Cache
%Snyud.net:8080%x
Search this domain
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3A%%s%20%%r
Google
http://www.google.com/search?q=%%h|%%r

Then Bob read Alice's post and copies the above into clipboard and paste as whole to his About-This-Site setting.

0. variable names with more than one letter
-------------------------------------------

I prefer descriptive names (such as site, title and path) to one-letter names %s,%t and %x.
Here is a list of multi-letter names I can think of for built-in variables and other variables.
{site} - site domain, ie, google.com ( same as %s )
{url} - the full url, ie, http://lifehacker.com/example/thispage.php (same as %p)
{title} - Current page's title (same as %t)
{sel} - selected/highlighted text (same as %h)
{path} - The page's path, ie, /example/thispage.php (same as %x)
{prompt} - user input (same as the requested %r)
{mail} - abcdef@gmail.com (this is user set)
{clip} - clipboard (same as the requested %l)
{domain} - full domain, ie, http://www.lifehacker.com (same as the requested %S)

{site} should give site domain and %{site} give encoded site domain.

examples:

Archive Wayback
http://web.archive.org/web/*/%p (using one-letter names)
http://web.archive.org/web/*/{url} (using multi-letter names)

Google
http://www.google.com/search?q=%%h|%%r (using one-letter names)
http://www.google.com/search?q=%{sel}|%{prompt} (using multi-letter names)

By allowing multi-letter names, the paths can be more readable and it makes it easy to remember what each variable does.
Also it allows 0, 1, ..., 0, a, b, c, d, e, f to be variable names ( {0}, {1}, {a}).

0. option of how to open page
-----------------------------

option to make pages open in new tab / background tab / current tab.

@yoo: Whoah, yoo, some FANTASTIC ideas here. Some are more difficult to implement than others, but they're all on my list. Thank you!!

@Gina Trapani, Lifehacker Editor: Gina, sorry I haven't written sooner....things like Inbox.com, my main email program that wont work at all; Gmail, Wikipedia and TV Listings, which are only able to use basic HTML. I downloaded Netscape and use both it and Firefox,

@LonPhillips: Lon, did you try creating a new default Firefox profile? I can't fathom how AtS could have possibly caused this, even after uninstallation!

@Gina Trapani, Lifehacker Editor: Gina, what comes after profilemanager? My screen cuts off after the underscore character after profilemanager. Also, how do I set up a new profile once you have told me how to get to the manager?
Sorry I'm so dumb, but my command line experience was before Windows came out and before my stroke.

Up until now, there's been no way to show the Alexa rankings directly in Firefox… if you wanted to see them you had to either use the really great About This Site extension, or use the toolbar for Internet Explorer.

Feature request:
- option to disable AboutThisSite entry in the context menu. The context menu will become too large for those who install many extensions, so it would be great to let users have more controls on the context menu.

Thank you.