Sunday, November 20, 2005

SelectThing Firefox extension for LibraryThing

Bibliophile web geek Peter Harkins (LibraryThing: Malaprop) has created a sweet Firefox extension called SelectThing. SelectThing allows you to search LibraryThing from any web page. Peter writes:

"I'm a big fan of cataloging books I want to read on LibraryThing and often run across mentions of interesting books while browing the web. But it always distracted me to copy the book's name, open a new tab, pull up LT, go to the add page, paste in the text, hit search... So, like a good geek, I wrote a Firefox extension to simplify it."

Here's how it goes: You're reading a book review on the New York Times or your favorite blog and you want to add the book to your LibraryThing catalog (soon wish list too). You just select some text—maybe the title of the book, the author or an ISBN—right click and choose "Search on LibraryThing." It opens a new tab with LibraryThing's "Add Books" screen, and does the search too. It's super quick and easy.



The extension is online at http://selectthing.mozdev.org (see more screenshots). The install process is standard (and easy). There's a mailing list there, but Peter will also be monitoring this blog for feedback.

Let me be the first to offer mine: what a cool idea, and nicely done!

27 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I’m using FF1.5RC3, and they’re not supporting any of the 1.5 until it is officially released. Which is a pity, as 1.5RC3 is where “it” is at...

11/21/2005 3:25 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'll have to try this - will it work with Microsoft Internet Explorer? I suppose the proof of the pudding is in the eating - I will try it out and let Malaprop know ...

11/21/2005 3:37 AM  
Blogger Dave said...

A Firefox extention is an extention to Firefox. In this case it adds funtionality to the context (right-click) menu.
By definition it will not work in IE.
There are extentions for IE, but I think it's a lot harder to write them.

11/21/2005 7:42 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

OK - that answers my question, thanks. I did say I wasn't very technically minded! I wasn't entirely sure what Firefox was.

11/21/2005 8:09 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Andrew Cory: I wasn't planning on 1.5 until it was released because it's my understanding that it changed a bunch of stuff in the extensions architecture, and because I figured it's not more than a month away. If you have a page about what's changed, I'm happy to start on 1.5 support early.

11/21/2005 9:11 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Thanks Peter....

I installed the extension on my firefox browser, then, reloaded that browser. Surfed to a website on Edward Teller. Marked a book that was published before his death. Right clicked to get the menu. It loaded the LT Site in a seperate tab.
Added the book, and, in your honor, gave it the tag: firefox_extension.

Thanks a million!

11/21/2005 10:27 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Works great. tested it from Powell's (best bookstore in the world) in FF 1.0.7. Thanks for this awesome extension. My only wish: that the little javascript window that pops up from the Amazon bookmarklet to add tags were present in the SelectThing extension...

11/21/2005 11:38 AM  
Blogger Ed said...

I tried it last night. Worked great. Very convenient!

11/21/2005 11:45 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The reason SelectThing doesn't offer a tag popup is because the text you select (say, an author) may return multiple books and you don't neccessarily want all of them added. Or maybe you don't even find any books at all.

SelectThing and the Amazon bookmarklet are actually fairly different: SelectThing is for searching and adding, the bookmarklet is for adding a single book.

Hm. Maybe a second option in the popup menu labeled "Add to LibraryThing" that would add the first book matched to your catalog and open the edit page in a new tab? I welcome opinions.

11/21/2005 11:50 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mr Harkins:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Getting_started_with_extension_development
Try that. It tells you how to create an extension from scratch, which is not quite the same thing, I admit...

Actually, the first thing you might want to try is to simply bump the “compatibility” version number on the extension. It may be that no changes are necessary...

11/21/2005 12:06 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I've seen that page, and it prominently warns "Again, this will work only in Firefox 1.5, not 1.0.x! Not 1.0.6, 1.0.7 or anything like that. Only 1.5 or later."

I'll ask in some Firefox IRC channels after work today and try to get a developer to give me a hand. I think you're right with your first message, I definitely should be supporting 1.5 already.

11/21/2005 12:17 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great idea, indeed! Just downloaded the extension, it's working well...

Now to start adding titles to a 'want' list...

11/21/2005 3:28 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is great! Since I catalog books I read from the library, not just owned, I can log in to my library account, look at what I have checked out, and click it in! Perfect. Less likely I'll 'forget' to add it after the book goes back.

11/21/2005 7:09 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

If you’ve not made the switch to FF1.5Beta, I recommend doing so. Well, first I would look to see if all your “critical” extensions are 1.5 compatible. But there are some nice features in 1.5 that I miss when I go off-beta at school...

11/21/2005 10:34 PM  
Blogger Ed said...

How do you check that extensions are compatible?

11/22/2005 12:01 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hello, the gormless hamster again.

I have downloaded the Mozilla suite, and am impressed with it.. looks good, easy to use etc. However, I do seem to be experiencing a problem with Selectthing (which I have fed back on Malaprop's Blog) - has anyone experienced problems at the download stage? I keep getting a message: "install script not found" - does this mean anything to the more technically abled out there?

11/25/2005 7:18 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Testing how it is working..

12/07/2005 6:48 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

mac version?

12/26/2005 12:24 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

will you post here to let us know when it's available for Firefox 1.5?

please.

5/16/2006 2:59 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Hi Peter,

I don't know when the above comments were added because they don't show the date.

I would very much like to know if you will be upgrading the extension for FF 1.5 which has been out for some time now.

5/25/2006 1:19 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Terrific addition. I love it's ease of use. I have an online bookgroup and we have 10 years worth of books listed--I'M WORKING MY WAY THROUGH THEM LOL.

One problem--it's not comaptible with the most recent versions of Firefox, so Ive stayed with an old version (I like it that much)

Are you planning to update SelectThing?

Thanks

8/15/2006 9:17 PM  
Blogger Tim said...

I'm not going to update it. I didn't build it and I haven't seen the code. I know there was some talk on the Google Group about asking the guy to update it. I'm not sure what came of it.

If you want to do title-based lookups, check out thingISBN

http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2006/08/introducing-thingtitle-api.php

8/16/2006 12:25 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

For what it's worth, it works on FF 1.5.0.7, if you override the maxversion check (as of 2006.10.06)

10/06/2006 7:52 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Just confirmed it also works with Firefox 2.0.0.2 if the maxversion in the install.rdf file is changed. (13 March 2007)

3/13/2007 8:10 AM  
Blogger none said...

Firefox 2.0.0.2 if the maxversion in the install.rdf file is changed.....Need help on knowing the steps to do the task.........thanks

3/25/2008 8:00 AM  
Blogger Tammi said...

Anyone know if this works with Firefox 3? I did not see it among the Add-ons list of the Mozilla site

8/24/2008 3:00 AM  
Blogger AbbotOfUnreason said...

I've made a little widget that lets you just search your own library using the searchbox in the upper right corner. It's not as slick as the in-line search, but I mostly want to search my own library when I'm writing a post, so it works for me, and it's easy for others to do it as well:

http://theabbotofunreason.blogspot.com/2008/12/librarything-searching-for-lazy-people.html

1/17/2009 9:36 AM  

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