Add a dynamic signature line to your email
Wouldn't it be neat to tell the people you email with what you're reading now? I saw this on emails from friends over at AbeBooks, and thought it would be cool to have it done dynamically, and from LibraryThing data.
Email clients don't allow scripts or for example RSS feeds, so I created a way to do it, based on images that many (but not all) email clients allow you to include in your signature.
Here's what I'm talking about, with the signature line called out in yellow:
To play with the feature, click here. (You have to be logged in.)
Some notes:
Email clients don't allow scripts or for example RSS feeds, so I created a way to do it, based on images that many (but not all) email clients allow you to include in your signature.
Here's what I'm talking about, with the signature line called out in yellow:
To play with the feature, click here. (You have to be logged in.)
Some notes:
- This feature will get a lot more useful when we have a proper "currently reading" collection feature (coming soon). You pretty much have to use tags now.
- No complaining about "fluff" features, please. Chris Gann first made this feature almost a year ago. I dusted it off and hacked together a user interface. It didn't distract us from making your favorite feature.
- We need your help! We're going to need to come up with directions for adding this to different email clients. Some just won't allow it. I've started a thread for discussing this.
Labels: email, new feature
posted by Tim at 6:28 PM
11 Comments:
I don't know that I'll use this, but your example made me laugh!
I'd really appreciate it if you stopped working on such fluffy items and worked on actual issues and concerns such as making the site lime green and bright pink or allowing smiley face icons in Talk threads.
*cowers*
Don't hurt me!
Hmmm. Sounds interesting but what about those of us who are reading four books at the same time? - avaland
I'm always happy to see new features added to librarything, whatever they are - fluffy or not. I've been consistently impressed with the site, and considering I only had to pay $25 for a lifetime account, I really doubt you'll ever get a complaint out of me :)
I get a PHP error in the PNG output. Hexdump:
00000000 3c 66 6f 6e 74 20 63 6f 6c 6f 72 3d 66 66 30 30 |<font color=ff00|
00000010 30 30 3e 0a 57 61 72 6e 69 6e 67 3a 20 65 78 74 |00>.Warning: ext|
00000020 72 61 63 74 28 29 3a 20 46 69 72 73 74 20 61 72 |ract(): First ar|
00000030 67 75 6d 65 6e 74 20 73 68 6f 75 6c 64 20 62 65 |gument should be|
00000040 20 61 6e 20 61 72 72 61 79 20 69 6e 20 2f 76 61 | an array in /va|
00000050 72 2f 77 77 77 2f 68 74 6d 6c 2f 74 61 67 6c 69 |r/www/html/tagli|
00000060 6e 65 2e 70 68 70 20 6f 6e 20 6c 69 6e 65 20 36 |ne.php on line 6|
00000070 37 0a 3c 2f 66 6f 6e 74 3e 89 50 4e 47 0d 0a 1a |7.</font>.PNG...|
00000080 0a 00 00 00 0d 49 48 44 52 00 00 02 8a 00 00 00 |.....IHDR.......|
00000090 28 08 02 00 00 00 f6 5d 4c 17 00 00 06 38 49 44 |(......]L....8ID|
000000a0 41 54 78 9c ed dc 5f 48 53 6d 1c 07 f0 df 4e 9e |ATx..._HSm....N.|
000000b0 ce b1 61 2e 97 fd 59 9a 8d 6d d4 30 43 6c 89 75 |..a...Y..m.0Cl.u|
Should be working now. Sorry if it wasn't before.
Tim,
Neat feature. I find the title of the book often runs into the other text, making it hard to see the title. It would be nice to put the title in italics, or be able to embed <i> and </i> into the text.
Yeah. I know what you mean. We're working on it.
T
I like the idea, but, well, I'm not a big fan of HTML e-mail.
Would it be possible for you to create a PHP page (or version of the existing one) which returns just the text instead of the image? (No HTML formatting; just something along the lines of echo($sigtext);.)
Since Thunderbird reads the signature from a text file, I can set up a Windows task to just grab & save the most recent version of that page once a day. The sig text would be kept updated, without breaking the Interwebs in the process. (I'd be willing to supply directions; it would require users to install an additional tool, wget, however.)
Mr. Timson's idea sounds best to me. The graphical signature feature seems like a solution in search of a problem, considering that it works on all of one mail clients (Thunderbird). Instead, a schedulable cross-platform application which fetches the name of the newest book in text form and overwrites a text signature file would be a better direction to go in. No mail client has a problem with text.
LOL
Post a Comment
<< Home