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Post details: Future features of MetaTags browser sidebar

12/21/05

Permalink 11:08:49 pm, Categories: MetaTags, 1303 words   English (US)

Future features of MetaTags browser sidebar

MetaTags Sidebar is a browser extension (currently is supported Firefox 1.5 browser) which displays Web page meta-information (keywords, description, size, modification time, etc.)

See the homepage of this browser extension for long list of features of this extension which, BTW, is integrated with search engine submission and keyword analysis services.

Below is (also long) list of features possibly planned for future versions of this browser extension plus bugs in the current version 2.3.

[More:]

Bugs

  • '#' in statusbar.
  • [Fixed?] It seems that relative <link href> do not work: http://www.wikinfo.org/wiki.php? was containing <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" />.
  • Windows backslash compatibility.
  • Several meta-tags with the same name are not supported.
  • Base vs. folder (and other?) wrongly deals with URLs like http://x.org/?q=a/b with slashes in parameters.

Possible future features

  • Restructure the source. Also clean up the Window namespace putting these functions inside objects. (However remember that OO approach is incompatible with IE with which I have made some efforts to be compatible.
  • When extensions.metatags.watch is false should indeed watch and visually mark it as needing update (i.e. highlight the update button).
  • Carefully consider what to show in statusbar and tooltips for every link in the HTML widget. Should tooltips be changed when there are no statusbar?
  • Accept D&amp;D of URLs (only non-sidebar).
  • Support page RDF metadata, reqv:title?
  • Save (optionally?) context menu searches to search history.
  • Make evident to the user that keywords links are not for clicking but for context menu.
  • In the update button drop-down menu option to reload the document (and then update the sidebar). This could be also called by button click with some modifier key.
  • Update button should look pressed when autoupdate is on. However I would not like to load prefbroadcaster.js only for this...
  • Special case of no commas in keywords.
  • Detached panel (not sidebar) (should have additional "Windows" menu) and pref whether can be open more than one metatags panel.
  • Validate XML option (pref either always or on-demand).
  • Shouldn't Web search open with MetaTags sidebar removed?
  • Can title of <link> elements be shown in some more presentatious form that tooltip?
  • Support for several <meta name="Keyword"> tags (as generated by OpenOffice).
  • Make use of gBrowser.showMessage() in place of alert().
  • Spellcheck (See Google Toolbar). Rationale: spell check is often grouped with SEO.
  • Enable context menu when over selection (with Copy and Select all items).
  • html_source_mode should go to the functions of XUL UI (as popup).
  • Manually retrieve xmlns(:*)? attr for non-XML (HTML) documents.
  • Display some notice while the sidebar loads.
  • Switch to XHTML format help files.
  • documentElement.version is HTML version?
  • The most right way anyway would be first generate XML and then use XSLT for output. This would also allows users to change presentation.
  • Hierarchical <link>s? Integration with links extension.
  • More help.
  • Icons for prefs dialog.
  • Firefox 1.0 and Mozilla compatibility.

More to display

  • Show whether is used lang or xml:lang attribute.
  • Info about XML stylesheets and other PIs (only toplevel and direct childs?).
  • When the page expires (see builtin info for how to do).
  • get or post. (How?)
  • Show scripts? (Only in <head> or all?).
  • ? Show ltr/rtl direction (described_document.dir).

Preferences

  • Remove MetaTags from main browser window (Tools menu). It can be done with dynamic overlays.
  • Order of information.
  • Should we have option whether to switch to opened tab a. for links; b. for bookmarklets; c. for search? (if in Open in New Tab mode)
  • Option what to do when clicking on keywords. The simples variant is to repeat last action. (How to show it to the user, by statusbar? by long tooltip? And if statusbar is missing?)
  • Option to wrap or highlight (like Windows HTML Help) with a tooltip title etc.
  • Whether to show abs. or relative "Link" URL in statusbar/tooltips.
  • Mode to copy to clipboard on link click.
  • Pref option whether to show info about missing optional elts (e.g. that there are no DTD).
  • Save several preferences profiles.
  • Colors and fonts.
  • Keyboard keys.
  • At least point user URLs (to call text editor) of the RDF files).

Performance

It is slow now!

  • In metatags.js I use a?a:b instead of a||b trying to reach compatibility with IE. Better is to define function or(a,b){return a?a:b;}. Is it significant performance penalty?
  • Optimize concat() (which I have been using trying to be compatible with IE).
  • Remove not strictly necessary scripts from the browser core (e.g. implement D&amp;D of links ourselves). Can we load scripts on-demand? See metatags-sidebar.xul.
  • Separate overlay for keyword popup menu?
  • Load submit.js dynamically.
  • debug_mode getter is probably slow.
  • Use XBL instead of plain JavaScript may (at least in principle) increase performance of objects.
  • Shorten metatags.css.
  • It seems that JavaScript getters/setters significantly slow Firefox 1.5RC3. Or slowdown was my hallucination?

  • frame.js: Context menu (that which is copied from the main browser content area) showing performance can be improved by using either (or both) of the following newer DOM features:

    • ranges;.
    • DOMSubtreeModified event hasFeature("MutationEvents") == "2.0" with idle time menu filling on timer.

    Also, shouldn't we emptify the context menu in idle time instead of just after it is hidden?

  • Can we hide (rather than remove) the sidebar? Can we load it in the background?
  • Preload overlays in background.
  • Do not load common parts it two times, in main window and sidebar, use shared objects.

Keyword Editor

Interactive editor of keywords and other meta information.

In simplest we could just allow to copy edited keywords to clipboard or save to a separate file (in several formats), instead of saving the document, because saving it we have troubles with some situations, see below.

When doing k/w editor, remember that we can't edit e.g. file:///dir/. What to do if user requests to edit keywords in e.g. an XSLT transformed page? In any case we must not save any modification of DOM. So is k/w editor at all possible for dynamic pages? Well, we can load the original file (e.g. with HttpRequest), check that its keywords are not changed, then modify and save it... Better we could keep a copy of the original document (we could do this with onload capture, but this does not solve problems with code executed in scripts before onload, what is possible in HTML docs). Or better we would observe EndDocumentLoad. However the format of the XML source is unknown... As a hack we can just grep it for comma separated keywords, but in XML keywords are not necessarily comma separated.

Submission and services

  • Option to remove http:// prefix from the URL HTTP param.
  • Option to gray out menu items based on URL regexp. (To implement this creating an filtered RDF source is required.)
  • Option to send keywords (not phrases), with duplicates removed.
  • Log (and probably window to display it) of submitted Web pages. Should also contain dates.
  • Parameters of maxlength of HTTP params. If exceeded, show a dialog and offer to edit the strings. Such a dialog is not a bad idea in any case.
  • Display last applied item of Submit or Services menu in top-level menu item and as a button in sidebar. (Problem: menu items from different submenus may have the same name. How to distinguish? Showing all levels would be tool long. Maybe tooltip for the menu item? Also it may be resolved using package option, and distinguishable names.)
  • Make addService() function (just like addSearchEngine()). Make public Web archive of services. Then it should provide security by not allowing chrome: URLs.
  • Package option for web services (several subvariants of one service).
  • Can we integrate our RDF DB with Bookmarks service?

Support more document formats

  • PDF.
  • RSS channels?
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