Operator 0.8 is now available from addons.mozilla.org.
One of the first things you’ll notice is that I changed the default view to be data formats instead of actions. I did this because I found this is what most people did anyway. If you disagree, you can go to Operator Options and switch back to options.
You’ll also notice that if you did any customizations, you lost them. Unfortunately I did some preference rewriting this time around and the migration was getting to be painful. It shouldn’t happen again.
Some of the new features in Operator 0.8 include:
- RDFa support (courtesy of Elias Torres)
- eRDF support (courtesy of Keith Alexander)
- New user interface elements, including an icon on the location bar as well as a sidebar
- New preferences including auto-hiding the toolbar
- The address microformats has been split out so that actions can be more granular
- Actions can now be associated with multiple types of data, so the Google Maps action, for instance, works with Addresses and Locations
- Much better support for frames and iframes
- Support for non HTML documents
- When debugging microformats, Operator connects to Brian Suda’s X2V behind the scenes so you can compare results
- Lots of bug fixes
I had to break user script compatibility with this release. Most user scripts have already been updated and can be found on the user script page. I also changed the location of user scripts, so old user scripts won’t conflict.
Finally, I’ve created a page specifically to talk about Operator. If I’ve missed anything, please let me know. And feel free to visit my weblog and take my poll about how you interact with Operator.
Have fun!
Special note to users of the 0.8 betas – you’ll need to go Options and delete “RDFa” and re add it as “RDF” to get RDF functionality back.
Nice! I’ll have to check this out in the weekend!
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Hi Mike, I’ve updated my operator script for chemistry [1]. Except for the RDFa->RDF script, there was little I had to do. Works great! I’ve put some screenshots in my blog on how to install the script, but was wondering if it would be fair to request automatic install of the script, just like Greasemonkey userscripts… say, using a file name scheme .operator.js, or so… is that something we can expect? Also, I have seen some comments on FF3… is that going to support things like RDFa natively, making Operator technology really part of FF itself?
1.http://chem-bla-ics.blogspot.com/2007/08/operator-08-released-new-sechemtic-user.html
PS. Had not read that interview mentioned on that Danish microformats.dk yet. Rather interesting read indeed. I like the side bar, and had the urge to remove the toolbar. But what I actually miss, is a keyboard shortcut to open/close the sidebar. Alternatively, a menu item on the popups for either or both the location and status bar called “Open Sidebar” would be nice.
I noticed your request to do more advanced things with this technology… and I am actually very much interested in that. One thing I would like to do, is do a query at a service, with more than one triple… but I just realized that with ‘geo’, one is already doing that. Integrating information from third-party resources, e.g. inserting a Google map as popup or inline, when a geo microformat is found, sounds more like Greasemonkey work, than Operator… how do you envision the future in that direction? Should Operator and Greasemonkey not merge?
very interesting extension! I was wondering if there is any possivility to embedd microformats in email?
My idea was e.g. that thunderbird would “read” appointments/dates sent to you by email and mark them in it’s own lightning calendar.
Also, you would be able to mark certain text areas as microformats and fill out a form that specifies the included information.
Where would one have to start to realise this idea?
Very nice!
I’m starting to integrate hCard and other microformats into my website, but can’t get operator to parse out a photo (and then export it to Address Book on the Mac).
Currently, I’m using:
…
That string is the base64-encoded PNG image.
Is this the preferred way to do it, or is there are better way? And does Operator pass this image along when exporting the contact?
- Colin
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Unfortunately I had to uninstall this (v0.8) as it slowed down my firefox to a crawl (scrolling was really slow).
I also use greasemonkey so maybe there is some strange interaction here ?
Luckily uninstalling fixed this
Unluckily I don’t have micrformat goodness now :-\
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Is Live Clipboard still supported? I can’t find it in the list of actions.
Matt:
I moved some less used functionality into installable user scripts.
Live Clipboard support can be found here:
http://www.kaply.com/weblog/operator-user-scripts
It seems that Operator 0.8 recognizes invalid microformats on pages that embeds the new type of easy embeddable Google maps:
https://vortex.uio.no/brukere/tommae/google-maps.xml
This does not happen with the old style embeddable maps: http://www.ingap.uio.no/about/map/
A simple explanation for this really: It seems that Google uses a div with class=”adr” in their new markup, with no sensible microformat content within.
Tomm: Yeah. Google Maps microformats are sadly lacking. No idea why. They are supposedly working on it.
I have been playing with Operator and I was wondering if there is any plans to open up this functionality in ThunderBird.
I rigged up DWR for remoteing to a Java app server.
http://theatlantis.net/blog/2007/09/dwr_thunderbird_email_20.html
With semantic support embedded into the browser/mail reader it would be awesome way to build custom work flows.
For background on the Google maps issue, see http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2007-August/010457.html
Aloha Mike,
When I have an hCard microformatted address with a pound sign in the address, such as:
1711 East-West Road, #723, Honolulu, HI 96842
The Google Maps mapping option in operator takes only the address up until the pound sign.
Even with I mark it up with the ASCII value for #, I get the error. Is there some way to handle this in Operator or is this a GOOG thang?
Cheers,
Jeff McNeill
jeff@jeffmcneill.com
Is it possible to change that to
Jeff:
I’ve fixed this in my latest Operator build. Thanks!
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