Format your Bookmark comments with HTML

Recently on the linkaGoGo forum there have been some discussions around the ability to use HTML to format your comments. The formatted comments will then show with this format on your Bookmarks properties preview, the search results, your public directories and the linkaGoGo Society pages.

Coincidentally I ran into a cool Firefox addin called ‘Xinha Here!’ which changes any form text area into a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor. With this little gem installed, there is no need to know HTML to create nicely formatted comments.

After having installed the ‘Xinha Here’ addin, right-mouse click in the text-area for the Bookmark comments on a Add or Edit Bookmark page. From the popup click on the ‘Xinha Here’ menu and your comments appear in the ‘Xinha Here!’ editor. Edit/Format the comments and click OK, the changes are then copied back into your bookmark’s comments area. Note the HTML tags if you did some formatting.

Here a public directory showing some examples.

GoGolian

Tips & Tricks 3, GoGo Search

As expected from any self-respecting website linkaGoGo provides a search feature that in the linkaGoGo case allows you to search your bookmarks and folders.

You can access this Search feature from the LinkaGoGo Search menu, by adding the Search Toolbar to one of you linkaGoGo toolbars or by installing (see Add-ons page) it in your browser’s built-in Search feature.

This standard search feature follows the traditional “enter your keyword(s)”, hit enter or click a button and a new results page appears. GoGo Search is different in two ways: First it doesn’t require you to complete your keyword, but if you hesitate typing a little then without hitting an ‘Enter’ key or pressing a ‘Go’ button the results start appearing and if there are to many results you can continue to refine your search by continuing to type. Second the results do not appear on a new page but appear “inline” in your current linkaGoGo page and disappear when you clear the search query. This gives a much more immediate effect, hence the name GoGo Search.

GoGo Search does not have its own menu tab but it is available as a toolbar. And as GoGo Search is part of the Plus subscription it is not in your default linkaGoGo setup. You will need to add it to your Toolbars. You can do this through Options/Toolbars then from the list of Toolbars choose the ‘GoGo Search’ toolbar. In my setup I actually replaced the default linkaGoGo Search toolbar with the ‘GoGo Search’ toolbar. And once you do, you will never want to go back.

GoGolian

Ajax and linkaGoGo

There is a lot of buzz amongst people developing and using Internet applications. This started around the time Gmail came out last year and got even more buzz with Google maps this year. The buzz finally got a name when Jesse James Garret an Internet Advisor came up with a term to address the technologies behind these innovations. He called it Ajax, which stands for “Asynchronous Javascript and XML”. Jesse is now called the father of Ajax. Here a link to a good introductory read on Ajax.

So the question is does linkaGoGo apply Ajax technologies? And the answer is yes; actually linkaGoGo (and other websites) started applying these techniques even before the term Ajax was coined.

The first place where we apply these techniques was when wanted to show a progress-bar during the bookmark import process. Here we keep sending javascript commands to update the progressbar. This is really Synchronous Javascript (instead of Asynchronous, but it was a start)

The properties dialog that shows up when hovering over a link for a second is where we used true Ajax. Here we go back to the linkaGoGo server to retrieve the bookmark properties.

The other very obvious place is the linkaGoGo GoGo Search box where after having typed a couple of characters, search results start to appear in your linkaGoGo home page. Soon I’ll discuss this further in a Tips and Trick section.

So yes Ajax gives linkaGoGo mythical powers.

GoGolian

LinkaGoGo and REST API progress VII

This is already the 7th installment of the linkaGoGo and the REST API. In this issue we discuss some cool new APIs that were added over the weekend.

First of all you can now access the linkaGoGo dynamic contents known from the Toolbars and Channels. You can now access your favorites, last added, most visited, recent and reminder bookmarks. For example the link:

http://www.linkagogo.com/api/rest/private/recent

This link will return your mostly recently visited bookmarks.

Also added was a new search entry point. This allows you to search your folders and bookmarks on the name, url, description and keywords. It has syntax that allows: ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘-‘(not) and ‘exact phrase’ operations. For example the link:

http://www.linkagogo.com/api/rest/private/search?search=sports

The link will return all folders and a bookmark related to sports.

We updated the linkaGoGo browser showcase to demo these features. It now starts at the new root link:

http://www.linkagogo.com/api/rest/private/

This lists the system folders: Folders, Favorites, Last Added, Most Used, Recent and Reminders. It now also sports a new Home link and a Search box.

GoGolian

Yahoo! buys del.icio.us

So ran across this post on Slashdot quoting the developers from del.icio.us that it has been bought by Yahoo.

To be honest I’m a little en.vio.us of their success; their service has only been up for about a year (we are running strong for over 4 years). But I do want to congratulate them and wish them all the luck making the transition to the Yahoo organization. Or will they just retire? :-) Has anyone heard how much Yahoo paid?

For the del.icio.us users things probably won’t change much in the short term, but in the longer term it probably will. I hope the account transition is easier then with Flickr (also bought by Yahoo). I still don’t remember my Flickr account after the account merge Yahoo did.

For those del.icio.us users that want to try linkaGoGo, remember: keywords are tags. Also we support the del.icio.us format. And at linkaGoGo besides posting your bookmarks on linkaGoGo Society (publicly) you can also choose to keep them private.

GoGolian

Facelift for the linkaGoGo home page

When I was creating the linkaGoGo Browser sample I started playing with gradients to achieve a more professional look. Normally I would use an image editor to create a gradient. But most of these editors have so many features that they are hard to use and it takes (me) forever to create a simple gradient.

So after some searching (or maybe I found it on linkaGoGo Society) ran into a little gem called Gradient Image Maker. With this online tool you can create gradients in no time. Just select the type of gradient, the image dimensions and the gradient colors and voila a new gradient. I used this gradient tool to create the look on the linkaGoGo browser. (You will need to login into your account to see it) I used five gradient images on this page. Can you spot them?

This inspired me to add a gradient image on the linkaGoGo home page. On the home page I used a four-way gradient, which I think came out quite nicely. And while I was at it, did some more polishing. I centered the page, added a grayish background and reorganized the side tabs. Finishing touch was the “registered” symbol. It used to have the “trademark” symbol here, but since this summer have the linkaGoGo brand registered and never got around updating it.

So here it is the new Home page, let me know what you think.

GoGolian

LinkaGoGo and REST API progress VI

After I released the updated REST API last week with the new Digest authentication, both Internet Explorer and Opera didn’t like my implementation. It turned out my implementation was based on a deprecated version of the specification. Firefox and linkaGoGo Organizer had no problems. Today I updated the API and linkaGoGo Organizer to support the latest Digest specification. Both Internet Explorer and Opera work fine now.

LinkaGoGo Organizer also got an update to support the latest Digest implementation. There were some confirmed reports that the Organizer didn’t run in Opera. It turns out that Opera interferes with the communication from the Organizer Applet and the linkaGoGo WEB API. With the update it works better, people still get an additional login dialog, but from then on it should work fine.

Another addition on the API is that instead of using the ‘{username}’ in the url you can use ‘private’. For example http://www.linkagogo.com/api/rest/private/folderitems instead of the previous approach of hard-coding the username in the url.

I added another showcase for the REST API. This sample uses an xslt stylesheet to transform the raw API xml into html pages on the browser. I used the ITunes UI as the inspiration for the look of the pages. The outcome I called linkaGoGo browser. You can navigate through your folders and visit bookmarked websites. Have fun. If you created your own stylesheets, let us know and we’ll post them on the showcases page.

GoGolian