Current limitations of lipsumarium plugin

[Emmanuel Pire]

Hi,

I start this thread so I can tell you about the "Google Reader Share" plugin limitations and ongoing work, until we unite everything into sharebro.org.

I built it fast so basic things work.

Current limitations include:

- the need for a password and so a session that will die after some time (so you need to re-enter your password)

- long posts can appear shortened. (because I steal content from gReader when you share an item, through GET request which is limited to 2000 chars for safety.

- no comments

- no real friend list (follower, followed)

- ugly url for your public feed (which was already the case with gReader's original)

- public feed title is "My shared feed", need to rename in reader app.

- Share button is not exactly like before and do not show you already shared items.

I'm working on my own (but publicly at https://github.com/lipsumar/sharebro see greader-share/ or js/) on the client side optimization (working on getting the button back in its original place now) and others are working on the server-side to adapt my original php code and have all sort of great features.

I'll post updates to this list in this thread.

--
Emmanuel Pire
Web development
http://lipsumarium.com/

[Alex Chaffee]

Biggest limitation IMHO: the Share button must return to the action
bar below each item, not the top of the page.

On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 2:52 AM, Emmanuel Pire <pirem...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> I start this thread so I can tell you about the "Google Reader Share" plugin
> limitations and ongoing work, until we unite everything into sharebro.org.
> I built it fast so basic things work.

Like I said, it's a great hack, but it's time for your little baby to
grow up :-)

I hope you don't mind if I refactor it a bit, and also add some Jasmine tests.

> Current limitations include:
> - the need for a password and so a session that will die after some time (so
> you need to re-enter your password)

I'd like to try somehow piggybacking on the normal Sharebro login
which uses OAuth and a long-lived session. It might be possible to
make it work without an extra login if we use a sharebro.org URL to
post. I will build my own dummy userscript and experiment with this.

> - long posts can appear shortened. (because I steal content from gReader
> when you share an item,

In Reader API Land, each item has its own unique id. We will need to
grab this somehow anyway, for comments. Unfortunately it doesn't look
like New Reader puts the item id in the HTML anywhere.

I think it's very important to keep track of the original source(s) of
shares, in URL or id form if possible.

I looked on the page HTML and there's a few places where the original
item is referenced. I think the most promising place to look is a
combination of the
original entry
<a class="entry-original" target="_blank"
href="http://sfcoderetreat.wordpress.com/2011/11/05/test/"></a>
and feed url or id e.g.
<a class="entry-source-title" target="_blank"
href="/reader/view/feed/http%3A%2F%2Fsfcoderetreat.wordpress.com%2Ffeed%2F">sfcoderetreat</a>

See http://code.google.com/p/google-reader-api/wiki/ItemId

> through GET request which is limited to 2000 chars
> for safety.

Where did you get this limitation from? Most browsers don't have this
limit anymore. Also you could use POST.

> - no comments

We'll have to design a system for this.

> - no real friend list (follower, followed)

I know it breaks the "everything inside Reader" paradigm but I think
the best way to handle this is on pages on sharebro.org. Equivalent to
a "settings" page -- a "mange your friends" link that takes you to a
page.

> - ugly url for your public feed (which was already the case with gReader's original)

Let's fix that ASAP. How about
sharebro.org/feed/12345
where 12345 is your google user id.

Later we can have a different namespace like
sharebro.org/feed/sb67890 where "sb" means "sharebro id 67890"

> - public feed title is "My shared feed", need to rename in reader app.

Oddly enough, when I subscribe to a feed inside the "Shares" folder,
and give it a name, that name propagates to other places Reader sees
the same feed.

(Actually it's not so odd, since folders are labels and labels are
stored with the item.)

This gives the side effect of making some of the Ridllr feeds look prettier :-)

> - Share button is not exactly like before and do not show you already shared items.

I see this as a minor feature. Make it a button, not a checkbox, and
let it just say "ok" if you've shared it already.

> I'm working on my own (but publicly at https://github.com/lipsumar/sharebro
> see greader-share/ or js/) on the client side optimization (working on
> getting the button back in its original place now) and others are working on
> the server-side to adapt my original php code and have all sort of great
> features.

Others = me today :-)

--
Alex Chaffee - al...@stinky.com
http://alexchaffee.com
http://twitter.com/alexch

[Emmanuel Pire]

Getting the button where it was is a bit painful as gReader rebuild the item list very often. I don't understand this in a perf perspective...

I've got an idea and a draft is already in the code on GitHub (greader-share.js) but not finished yet. I'm working on it but feel free to fork !

[alex kessinger]

For hea.pe I am going to include a piece of code that can identify if
you are on google reader it will tell what story you are on, and it
will share that story.

Also my bookmarklet uses easyXDM to do cross domain POSTing, so it is
not hampered by the limitations of GET.

> --
> The Sharebro Google Group: for http://sharebro.org and related development
> http://groups.google.com/group/sharebro for archives and options

[Alex Chaffee]

Can the bookmarklet code pop up when we hit "Share" from inside Reader?

(Maybe "Shift-S Return" is a good compromise for one-click Share given
that we have more options now.)

[Alex Chaffee]

On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 6:45 AM, Alex Chaffee <al...@stinky.com> wrote:
> Biggest limitation IMHO: the Share button must return to the action
> bar below each item, not the top of the page.
>

Another big limitation: your items are showing up as if the sharer is
the author. We have to work on the metadata.

[Nick Chaffee]

It seems another limitation is that you can share an item, but it does not immediately display in your shared items feed. You can click on your shares feed and then the refresh button for it to appear, but otherwise it may not feel like a shared item was shared successfully by a user.

Or is this covered by "- Share button is not exactly like before and do not show you already shared items."

[alex kessinger]

@alex I think I could create a user script like share but emanuel has built, which is something I could do I am familiar with user scripts. Or, I could create browser extensions. I have created chrome extensions before, and I think Mozilla had a system now that is similar.

[Emmanuel Pire]

We could definitely use experience in browser plugins. I chose to load the script from lipsumarium.com so I can make changes without bothering users but I'm open to all good ideas ;)

Emmanuel

[Alex Chaffee]

Me too! Wanna pair?

[alex kessinger]

Hey guys,
I took some time to get the heap bookmarklet comfortable inside
google reader. Now, as you use google reader you can share individual
stories by clicking the bookmarklet. If you remember this is how the
google reader bookmarklet worked as well. By using easyXDM, we can
share the entire content of the article.

I also made it so that signup, and login can all happen inside the share iframe.

@chaffe I saw that you were talking about source, and author. I have
started sending that data to hea.pe from google reader when somone
shares from inside google reader, but I am not certain how to expose
that in the feed that hea.pe creates. Is there an example out there?

[alex kessinger]

Hey All,
I got in an author section on the hea.pe feeds. If you are in
google reader and you use the hea.pe bookmarklet it will automatically
pull the author, and feed details and create an author section in the
feed. It seems more appropriate to do that in an ATOM format then RSS.

So I let hea.pe produce both RSS, and ATOM based on the ending you
pass in. xml = atom, rss = rss

You can see the example here in the first entry of this feed.

https://hea.pe/rss/1/all.xml

I think next I am going to start work on a browser extension. I will
fully open source that extension so people can build on that.

[Alex Chaffee]

On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 5:02 PM, alex kessinger <void...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey All,>   I got in an author section on the hea.pe feeds. If you are in> google reader and you use the hea.pe bookmarklet it will automatically> pull the author, and feed details and create an author section in the> feed. It seems more appropriate to do that in an ATOM format then RSS.>> So I let hea.pe produce both RSS, and ATOM based on the ending you> pass in. xml = atom, rss = rss>> You can see the example here in the first entry of this feed.>> https://hea.pe/rss/1/all.xml

That link got an Internal Server Error (just now, ~4:56 am PST).

If you subscribe to it in Reader how do the author and source show up?

See also this:

http://activitystrea.ms/ -- aka JAS or JSON Activity Streams

"In its simplest form, an activity consists of an actor, a verb, an an
object, and a target. It tells the story of a person performing an
action on or with an object -- "Geraldine posted a photo to her album"
or "John shared a video". In most cases these components will be
explicit, but they may also be implied."

https://developers.google.com/+/api/latest/activities
-- the Google Plus API seem to be either tracking the JAS spec or
using it outright

We use(d) a similar schema in Cohuman; glad to see the world is catching up :-)

> I think next I am going to start work on a browser extension. I will
> fully open source that extension so people can build on that.

I was about to do the same thing. :-)

[alex kessinger]

I fixed the 500.

Here is a screenshot of what the atom feed looks like in google reader

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/133599/Screenshots/pbqb.png

You can see that the source is properly attributed to the blog that I
shared it from.

Activity streams actually look interesting. You might actually be able
to use them to aggregate conversations around items. I think I can
easily add an extra output format for activity streams.

Something like user has commented on, and user has shared item. I am
not sure what the official verbs are for that but I will look them up
and set it up.

I have been on the activity streams mailling list for over a year, one
of the leaders of the group is the official representative on the list
I think google is using activity streams straight up, it was there
plan all along as well I think. I know that Yahoo uses them at least
internally, and I think twitter has them as well.

[Galina Ovcharova]

Emmanuel,

You may wanna think how much functionality you'd like to put inside the plugin. Since I am not an IT professional, I can't really make any judgement about it, but I am upset each time when FF is updated, and a bunch of plugins stop working. I have (probably an amateurish) impression that the more complex the plugin, the more problems with it in the future. Please think about it.

[Alex Chaffee]

> On Sunday, November 13, 2011 12:55:13 PM UTC-6, piremmanuel wrote:
>> We could definitely use experience in browser plugins. I chose to load the
>> script from lipsumarium.com so I can make changes without bothering users
>> but I'm open to all good ideas ;)

That's a technical implementation detail. It's a valid way to get the
code onto the user's machine. It has pros and cons -- e.g. pro: rapid
updates, con: doesn't work in offline mode.

On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 3:29 PM, Galina Ovcharova
<galina.o...@gmail.com> wrote:> Emmanuel,> You may wanna think

how much functionality you'd like to put inside the> plugin. Since I
am not an IT professional, I can't really make> any judgement about
it, but I am upset each time when FF is updated, and a> bunch of
plugins stop working. I have (probably an amateurish) impression> that
the more complex the plugin, the more problems with it in the future.>
Please think about it.

I think the browser plugin should remain as simple as possible. It needs to

(a) work, and keep working with upgrades to GR (echoing Galina's point)

(b) have a "Share" button to add an item to the user's (default) Shares feed

(c) display comments inline (if and when we get that working)

Anything else should either be removed or punted to the server.

We could put some extra stuff in there that either open windows to
sharebro.org content, but I'm quite concerned about putting "real"
functionality in there.

For instance, if we want to integrate with HiveMined, the "find other
friends" feature may involve people who don't even *have* a Reader
account. That sounds server-side to me.

- A

[Emmanuel Pire]

Agree with the fact plugin should be minimal and all of the magic is done server-side.

i see plugins and bookmarklets as a connection to these server side features (api), nothing more.

well, the more is up to the one making the plugin. if he wants to add fancy animations in Reader, he may ! then we get a larger implementation choice set.

--
The Sharebro Google Group: for http://sharebro.org and related development
http://groups.google.com/group/sharebro for archives and options

--