Extending Opera, the web 2.0 way
Friday, 10. August 2007, 20:43:15
I am on a break from my work at Opera. This gives me a lot of time to do whatever I feel like. Currently, I am spending time understanding how it is to be on the other side of the fence, using and building web applications.
I have two web 2.0-like applications that I use, Bloglines and Delicious. It is not that I like them very much, but they solve two of my needs, keeping bookmarks and reading blogs.
One of the problems with web applications is that they do not feel like a part of the browser. To make them better, integration is needed in the browser.
With Bloglines and Delicious as a starting point, I will try to find the requirements needed for making the two web applications better integrated.
Posting links: I would like it to be easier to bookmark things to Delicious.
Subscribe to feeds: I would like it to be easier to subscribe to a feed in Bloglines. Most of the posting links items are valid, but it would also be nice to connect directly to the subscribe to feed icon in Opera.
Start page: I would like to be able to use Delicious as my start page. I can select start with home page in Opera, but that is not what I want. I would like to get the Delicious page every time I click on "New tab". Of course I can add a bookmark for it and make sure "Reuse current tab" is not selected, but using "New tab" would be much cleaner and feel much better integrated.
Installing extensions: Installing things like skins in Opera is very simple. Installing the Delicious bookmarklet was also simple, but only because the Delicious team had been nice enough to provide a bookmarklet and an instruction how to install it in Opera. I would like to install of the things listed in this blog post as easily as I install a new skin.
That is it for now. I will probably go back to the subject of extending Opera soon.
I have two web 2.0-like applications that I use, Bloglines and Delicious. It is not that I like them very much, but they solve two of my needs, keeping bookmarks and reading blogs.
One of the problems with web applications is that they do not feel like a part of the browser. To make them better, integration is needed in the browser.
With Bloglines and Delicious as a starting point, I will try to find the requirements needed for making the two web applications better integrated.
Posting links: I would like it to be easier to bookmark things to Delicious.
- Get the url of the current document, and the title, and post them to Delicious. This is already possible with a bookmarklet.
- Post the url and the title of the current document quietly to Delicious, without leaving the current document, like the native version of bookmarks in Opera. This is not possible with a bookmarklet.
- Add post to Delicious in the context menu for the page.
- Add post to Delicious in the context menu for links. (we may know that a page is interesting before we go to it)
Subscribe to feeds: I would like it to be easier to subscribe to a feed in Bloglines. Most of the posting links items are valid, but it would also be nice to connect directly to the subscribe to feed icon in Opera.
Start page: I would like to be able to use Delicious as my start page. I can select start with home page in Opera, but that is not what I want. I would like to get the Delicious page every time I click on "New tab". Of course I can add a bookmark for it and make sure "Reuse current tab" is not selected, but using "New tab" would be much cleaner and feel much better integrated.
Installing extensions: Installing things like skins in Opera is very simple. Installing the Delicious bookmarklet was also simple, but only because the Delicious team had been nice enough to provide a bookmarklet and an instruction how to install it in Opera. I would like to install of the things listed in this blog post as easily as I install a new skin.
That is it for now. I will probably go back to the subject of extending Opera soon.
WIDGETIZE