Tails Pre-0.3
(This page points to an old version of Tails. I’ve created a new page for the latest version of Tails, which is here.)
While there are quite a few Firefox extension/user scripts which handles microformats available out there, most of them just support exporting to their native formats and not adequately display just what microformats a site currently contains.
Tails is a Firefox extension that will display the presence of microformats on a webpage. Currently, this plugin has limited support for the following microformats:
- hCard
- hCalendar
- hReview
- xFolk
Unlike Smartzilla, my plugin doesn’t support exporting to their native formats – right now I’m more interested in seeing who is using microformats.
You can install Tails (v0.1.3) here (for Firefox 1.5+).
Flock Users: A Flock version of Tails is now available.
Update: Robert de Bruin has extended Tails and added some additional export functionality. You can get it here.
How It Works
An icon shows when microformats are available on the current page:
You can double-click on the icon to show the available microformats on the sidebar:
{ 1 trackback }
{ 37 comments… read them below or add one }
Very impressive. I like the interface too. I imagined future versions of Smartzilla would work in a similar way to this.
Calvin,
This is *very* cool. Please contact me at your convenience. I’d like to talk to you more about your Firefox extension and hopefully some opportunities to talk about it and demonstrate it.
Thanks,
Tantek
microformats passed its sell-by date long ago. interesting extension though.
Nice work Calvin, I’m a big fan of tools that expose the underlying structure and sematics of Web documents.
http://loadaveragezero.com/app/drx/Data_Formats/Metadata#microformats:tails
Doug
Just ran across microformats yesterday, and tweaked my news feed to include the hCalendar format.
Your tool picks it up nicely from the dynamic page, but not from a page including the feed in an IFRAME.
Should IFRAME content be supported in microformats, or am I out of luck?
The extension just isn’t smart enough to pick up IFRAME contents right now. Send me the link to you site and I’ll take a shot at fixing it when I have time.
Tails doesn’t seem to cope with the complex markup (table with “axis”, etc.) of http://we05.com/program.cfm
BTW, SmartZilla doesn’t work with FF 1.5.1
Thanks for pointing that out Andy, I’ve been a bit slow to upgrade Firefox. Smartzilla should work now though. You might want to have a look at https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=958&application=firefox
it is a Firefox extension that does quite a few useful things including forcing an extension to be marked as compatible with the version of Firefox that you’re using.
Just wanted to extend a vote of thanks to you guys for developing this – we’ve got a vested interest in seeing hReview become successful since we’re building our site, http://www.reevoo.com, around aggregating reviews in hReview format.
Calvin,
Good job. This makes it very easy to check microformat enablement. I hope it shows more properties of hCard. My rrove service now supports hCard.
Atomu
Hay Calvin,
I’ve been working on your code (including the SmartZilla code basicly) so I can export vcards and vevents. Are you OK for me to release this to a wider audience (under creative commons license) ?
Thanks,
R.
Just another “me too” in the “Thanks!” department… Keep up the good work.
Robert -
Yes, that’s fine. When its ready, point me to where it is so I can check it out.
Also, you might want to check out the Flock version of Tails I worked on last weekend:
http://codeeg.com/tails/flocktails-0-1-0.xpi
Calvin
Cool, thanks Calvin. And you are one step ahead of me
I was planning to make a version for Flock as well. Don’t quite know what to make of Flock tho.
Anyway, thanks again and I’ll send the link when I finalize the project. This weekend I hope to release a beta version. Still some bugs. But hope its currently in a workable state.
Cheers,
R.
Link to tails export version 0.1.4 and some comments: http://bordewolf.blogspot.com/2006/03/tails-export-extension.html
Enjoy, R.
Am I missing something? The status bar icon is not showing for me…
It’ll only show if there are microformats on the current page (Robert’s Tails Export extension does a better job by displaying a greyed-out version of the icon if there aren’t any).
If there are supposed to be microformats on the page and the icon doesn’t show, then there might be a problem with Tails finding the microformat. What URL are you hitting?
With this extension installed, hitting Ctrl-Tab cycles through two tabs at a time, rather than one. So with two tabs open, Ctrl-Tab appears to do nothing. With an even number of tabs open, only half are accessible using Ctrl-Tab.
I’m not seeing this problem with my installation and I’m having problems figuring out why such a thing would happen. What other extensions do you have installed? And are there errors in the Error Console (with chrome errors are turned on)? If you can send me that information, I might be able to figure out what’s going on.
Extensions are listed below. No chrome errors. Also, when hitting Ctrl-Tab, the URL of the next tab flashes in the address bar briefly before loading the second tab. This behavior started when I installed Tails, and goes away when I disable it. Let me know if any more info will help. I don’t have time to start disabling other extensions to run this down, but maybe next week. Very strange behavior.
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1
*** Extensions (enabled: 35, disabled: 5; total: 40)
All-In-One Sidebar 0.6.4
BetterSearch 1.10
Book Burro – Remixing the bookstore 0.23
Bookmarks Synchronizer SE 1.1.8
BugMeNot 1.3
ChromEdit 0.1.1.1 [disabled]
Classic Menus 1.1.0 [disabled]
CuteMenus 2 0.6.3
DOM Inspector 1.8.0.1
DevBoi (offline version) 0.5.1
DevBoi PHP Package 0.1.0
Disable Targets For Downloads 1.0.1
Download Statusbar 0.9.4
Fangs 1.0.0
Feedview 0.9.8
FireBug 0.2.3
Forecastfox 0.8.5.3
FxIF 0.2.2
Greasemonkey 0.6.4
Html Validator 0.7.9
InfoLister 0.9c
Live HTTP Headers 0.12
OutSidebar 0.9.1 [disabled]
Pearl Crescent Page Saver 1.0
Popup Count 0.3.2
Restart Firefox 0.3.1
Reveal 1.0.6
Sage 1.3.6
Stop-or-Reload Button 0.2
Tab Preview 0.3 [disabled]
Tails 0.1.3
Talkback 1.5.0.1
TargetAlert 0.8.9.7 [disabled]
User Agent Switcher 0.6.8
Viamatic foXpose 0.3
View Cookies 1.5
Web Developer 1.0.2
X-Ray 0.6
del.icio.us 1.1
undoclosetab 20051204
Cool extension, except there seems to be a bug where it doesn’t like nested Microformats (especially when included with custom code):
http://www.geocities.com/signpostmarv/oreilly-conference-roadmap.xoxo.html
Hay Marv,
I checked the link and the page it generates looks strange, there is no html, head or body tag present. Firefox doesn’t seem to mind, but tails does. I saved the file on my local disk and added the body tag and presto it worked.
Cheers,
Robert.
So, do you have a place for bug reports? Tails doesn’t seem to grok “adr” elements.
So, Flocktails seems to work better than Tails-for-firefox. It also has a way bosser name. Is there a way that I can contribute code, patches, or whatever?
Robert de Bruin has extended my Tails plugin and got it promoted to the Firefox Add-on site:
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=2240
I have added some more features to Flocktails that you won’t see on the original Tails plugin, and will probably continue enhancing that line in the future.
For now, if you email me the patch, I’ll take the time to apply them. Also, I’m open to any ideas you have about taking in patches.
Hey COOL! So, now with this plugin I was inspired enough to implement a microformat on my about page. Sweet deal man, great work!
So, with de Bruin’s extended Tails Export Extension, and your Flocktails Extension, will you still be updating Firefox Tails, or should I just use Tails Export from now on?
Yes, I recommend you use the Tails Export plugin instead. I’ve updated this page to reflect this.
Except Tails Export only works on windows…
Very, very late reply to Robert:
It’s a XOXO file, not an HTML page.
http://microformats.org/wiki/xoxo
Nice tool, I think will use hReview for our new site http://www.recensio.com Congrats!
Any chance of an update to Firefox version 2?
Not really. Any reason why you’re using this version and not v0.3.6?
http://blog.codeeg.com/tails-firefox-extension-03/
Very nice work
woow, great extension! wait for new versions
Very Nice…How about a video tutorial and explanation.