I've been working on a project to implement support for microsummaries
in Firefox.  Last month I hacked together a prototype extension
demonstrating basic support for user-defined microsummaries.  Since then
I've prototyped more robust support, including addons users can install
to add microsummary support to more pages and a microsummary builder
that lets users build their own summaries via drag-and-drop.

I put together a walkthrough
<http://www.melez.com/mozilla/microsummaries/walkthrough.html> with
screenshots and code snippets hitting the main points of the proposal
<http://wiki.mozilla.org/Microsummaries>.

I'd appreciate any feedback on the technical directions and proposed
feature set.  Also, given that mconnor and beltzner have indicated
they'd like to see microsummary support in Firefox 2.0, and implementing
everything in the proposal is a lot of work, I'd like to prioritize the
feature set to make sure I'm working on the most important features
first, so any feedback on prioritization is also welcome.

-myk

It would be nice if an XML Processing Instruction was added as a way of
associating a micro-summary with an XML resource. Furthermore, a content
type for the format should be established.

   <?micro-summary type="application/micro-summary+xml"
                   href="/summary.xml"?>

The best part of using a processing instruction is that it works in all
XML languages without breaking anything if the client application
doesn't support the feature.

Cheers and good luck,
Daniel Schierbeck

I hadn't yet considered how to associate a microsummary with an XML
document, and this sounds like a good way to do it.  Thanks for the tip!

-myk

Myk, this feature looks awesome. I am very excited about it.

Along Daniel's lines, pages might also have <link> tags that define
them, similar to how feeds are connected.

When the user adds a bookmark to the page, the microsummary could be
offered.

Here are some additional questions:
- how do people get and install them?
- how are these things updated?
- do you have any notes/docs about the implementation of your extension
(integration hooks, etc).

-Ben

And when the day comes that I learn to read, rather than just look at
pretty pictures, I'll see that you've already specified that!

-_-

-Ben

Yeah, that sounds like the right approach.  Then <link
rel="microsummary"> or the like can serve the same purpose that the
processing instruction serves in XML.  The target of that link could be
either a simple RSS/Atom feed or an XML file containing a microsummary
definition.

Indeed, and shaver has pointed out that several microsummaries might be
available for a given page, so the user should be able to choose between
them.  I'm not sure the best way to expose that in the UI.  At the
moment the prototype uses a Display drop-down menu in the Bookmark
Properties dialog with an entry for each microsummary plus an entry for
the title of the page (for when the user doesn't want to display any
microsummary), i.e.:

http://www.melez.com/mozilla/microsummaries/add-bookmark.png

The extension manager rearchitecture (both front- and back-end) seems
well-suited to adding additional types of addons.  My thoughts are that
we would create a new type, something like "microsummary support pack"
(naming suggestions welcome), for a kind of addon that installs
additional microsummary definitions into the browser to support
summarizing more pages.

Dan Veditz has suggested that it's in our interest to minimize the
number of addons, since users who get used to installing them might be
easier to fool into installing a malicious one, and thus we should
instead institute a simpler install mechanism like the one for
installing search engines.

But in this case I think a new addon type is justified because (unlike
with search engines) microsummary definitions are likely to change
regularly as page layouts change, so we need an update mechanism for them.

I haven't produced much technical documentation so far besides comments
in my prototype (which has evolved significantly since I released it as
an extension last month), but I'll put a technical overview together
soon, and I'll also release an updated extension to help folks evaluate
the feature.

-myk

BTW, Myk, I would urge you to go to microformats.org and see if you can
get some sort of vendor-neutral agreement on a syntax for this idea, if
you want people to include things in their pages. (I think it makes
perfect sense for it to be a Firefox-only feature, but in that case the
page itself shouldn't include any mention of them -- if the page is going
to mention this, then we should have a vendor-neutral format for them.)

Cheers,
--
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

I think that's an excellent idea.  I'll approach microformats.org about
standardizing the way pages specify their microsummaries.

Incidentally, I looked at microformats a few months ago, as I was
developing the idea, and what I was doing with microsummaries didn't
seem to gel with existing microformats, which all embed meta-data into
HTML content displayed to human.

But perhaps the microformats folks just haven't considered such a use
case yet.  It does seem like the most sensible group for standardizing
something like this.

-myk

I think that's an excellent idea.  I'll approach microformats.org about
standardizing the way pages specify their microsummaries.

Incidentally, I looked at microformats a few months ago, as I was
developing the idea, and what I was doing with microsummaries didn't
seem to gel with existing microformats, which all embed meta-data into
HTML content displayed to human.

But perhaps the microformats folks just haven't considered such a use
case yet.  It does seem like the most sensible group for standardizing
something like this.

-myk