April 21st, 2007 Brian Herzog
During Jessamyn’s Pimp My Firefox talk at cil2007, something occurred to me. So much of the code used on websites today was written by someone else - themes, rss feeds, widgets, etc.
I think this is great, as freeware/open source/creative commons all allow people to share good ideas - repacking them, repurposing them, resuing them.. you know, recycling.
(not to mention that this has been my style of coding ever since I started coding in 1996. I am almost exclusively self-taught, which means I learned from seeing something I liked on the web, viewing the code, and figuring it out. Often, this meant I grabbed the code and tweaked and modified it to do what I wanted. You can learn a lot through trial and error)
So, it was during that session that I got the idea for this new movement, the “made with recycled code” movement. By “movement,” of course all I mean is create a little icon and stick it on my webpage. And not being a graphic designer, it’s not even a very good icon, but I think it’s a catchy phrase.
If you like it, grab it from flickr or the psd file from my website (big [575x575px, 316kb]; small [130x130px, 119kb]).
cil2007, code, coding, freeware, jessamyn, jessamyn west, made with recycled code, open source, recycle, recycled, recycled code, rss, site made with recycled code, themes
Tags: cil2007, code, coding, freeware, jessamyn, jessamyn west, made with recycled code, open source, recycle, recycled, recycled code, rss, site made with recycled code, themes See Also
Posted under Random, Technology, Websites | 1 Comment »
March 8th, 2007 Brian Herzog
Late to the party as usual, I’m just now finding out how much fun coding with greasemonkey can be.
As I understand it, greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that lets you write code to modify how your Firefox browser displays other peoples’ web pages. So, if you would like a link from Google’s homepage to your own, you can write a greasemonkey script to do that. You’re not changing the Google homepage itself - only those Firefox browsers with your greasemonkey script installed will display the link.
But even that is great. There are a lot of scripts out there to play with, so I picked one and tried to modify it for my library’s use. It puts a button on Amazon book detail pages, so I can link right into my library’s catalog to see if we have the book (similar to our bookmarklet).
To use the script, you just click and install the file (after installing greasemonkey, of course). Then, view a book page on Amazon, and look for the Chelmsford/MVLC logo and link on the right (under the Ordering button).
Editing them is basically coding in javascript, with some differences. It’s fun, though, and powerful. The barrier will be creating something useful, and then getting patrons to install it on their own computers. I’m working on a few others, and will be adding them to the library’s Tech Tools page.
browsers, coding, firefox, firefox extension, firefox extensions, greasemonkey, javascript, libraries, library, public libraries, public library
Tags: browsers, coding, firefox, firefox extension, firefox extensions, greasemonkey, javascript, libraries, Library, public libraries, public library See Also
Posted under Library, Technology | 1 Comment »
