A couple of days ago, I Scop[ed] an OU Library Firefox Toolbar, so here's just a quick post to blog the upload of my first attempt:
Download the script then File Open it, or drag it directly into, Firefox and it should install itself (though you'll have to close all open Firefox windows and restart it to actually see the benefit, as is commom to all Firefox extension installations).
It's not pretty - and it's not that clever, more of a testbed and play around with the sorts of things that are described in Jonah Bishop's Firefox Toolbar Tutorial.
I need to do some thinking about just what sort of thing can sensibly be included on a toolbar - just having a surrogate bookmark list is not making best use of the space, I think (though it does give an organisation a continued presence in the presence even if they're not at your site). Tools like the Library Lookup, which can be applied to lots of pages, are arguably more useful; and I guess login helpers cut out login hassle...
Anyway - more on that another time. Here's a quick overview of v0.1 of my OUseful Library Toolbar:
Searching...
By default, if you type something in the search bar and hit return it will be treated as a keyword search on the Voyager catalogue. Hitting the Voyager Search button is an alternative to hitting Return. You can also use the term as a keyword search on ROUTES - just select the ROUTES option from the drop down list by the Searches button.
The searches actually employ OUseful redirects - I always knew they'd come in handy!
Shortcuts
To the left of the text box is a drop down menu that provides links to the OU Library, Voyager catalogue and ROUTES homepages.
The Librarians on Call button takes you through to that service (though I'm not sure if the URL is a persistent one...?),
If you click on the Library Lookup button when you are looking at a particular book in Amazon, you can see if it's in the OU Library catalogue...:-)
To Do
Very obvious things on the to do list are:
- rewrite the code so it's not so obviously ripped, cut and pasted from the tutorial...
- more (and neater!) graphics on the toolbar;
- better layout;
- fix the drop down history list in the search text box;
- preferences for My Library Record and MyOpenLibrary;
- preferences for additional libraries to Lookup;
- town/postcode search for local, OU affiliated libraries, with route planning info based on user preferences (e.g. home/work postcode);
- work out how to pull an RSS feed equivalent from a search into a Live Bookmark like menu;
- generate an RSS feed by scraping My Library Record, so it can be fed into a Live Bookmark.
Shame I have no time to play on this again now for at least a fortnight :-(
Posted by ajh59 at May 23, 2005 09:10 PM