Hello. I am Paul Kinlan.

I'm looking for a few web services that don't seem to exist yet. First, a way to save my Twitter favorites to Instapaper (or similar services). Second, a webhook that sends content to Instapaper, as I dislike relying on third-party app integrations. Finally, a service that sends full RSS feed content directly to my email inbox in near real-time using pubsubhubbub. Existing services only send partial archives. If I can't find these, I might build them as open-source projects.

This post concludes the "Buzz This" Chrome Extension series by demonstrating how to add context menus. Context menus provide a powerful way to interact with users, letting them "Buzz" specific content like images or selected text, rather than the entire page. This is achieved by adding "contextMenus" to the permissions in the manifest file and then using chrome.contextMenus.create() in the background.html file. The create() method takes an object that defines the context menu's title, contexts (e.g., "page", "selection", "image", "link"), and an onclick event handler. The click handler determines the context of the click (selected text, image, link) and constructs the Buzz API URL accordingly. The code for the extension is available on GitHub.

I'm super excited about the new classList API! It's like having jQuery's class manipulation, but built right into the browser. This means we can easily add, remove, toggle, and check for classes without messy string parsing. Currently supported in Firefox 3.6+ and Chrome 7+, the classList API uses the DOMTokenList interface and is way more convenient. I'll have a better demo up on the blog soon!

Styling file input elements has always been tricky due to browser inconsistencies. WebKit-based browsers offer a clever way to style these elements. You can style the text and color of the file input using standard CSS. Additionally, the ::-webkit-file-upload-button pseudo-element allows customization of the OS-specific button's appearance, like changing it from rounded to square, going beyond basic styling.

In this follow-up tutorial, we enhance the "Post to Buzz" Chrome Extension by adding a share count to the browser action button. This involves making cross-domain requests to the Buzz API's buzzCounter endpoint. We've updated the manifest file to include necessary permissions and added code to background.html to handle tab changes and URL updates. The code retrieves the Buzz count for the current URL and displays it on the browser action button, providing users with real-time feedback on share activity. This subtle update enhances the user experience and provides valuable context within the extension.

In a previous post, I discussed the lack of a direct method in JavaScript for deleting arbitrary elements from an array. I had attempted a solution, but misread the documentation for Array.prototype.splice. While I believe my solution is still useful for removing elements without needing to find their indices first, splice does allow removing arbitrary elements by index. To remove one element at a specific position, use values.splice(index, 1). This modifies the original array and returns an array of the removed elements. Thanks to @dezfowler for pointing this out!

This tutorial provides a step-by-step guide to building a basic Chrome extension for posting to Google Buzz. We start by setting up the manifest file with the extension's name, version, and browser action details like the icon and tooltip. Then, we introduce a background page to handle the extension's logic, adding an event listener to detect clicks on the browser action button. Initially, we demonstrate how to display the current URL, and then extend the functionality to open a new tab directed to Google Buzz, pre-filled with the current URL for posting. The tutorial concludes by adding the 'tabs' permission to the manifest for enabling tab creation. Future enhancements will include fetching Buzz stats for the current URL, demonstrating cross-domain requests and browser_action interaction.

I've created a simple Chrome extension that lets you post the current page to Google Buzz and see its popularity. In upcoming posts, I'll use this example to demonstrate how easy it is to build Chrome Extensions and add cool features, like using Browser Actions, the Tabs API, Cross Domain Requests, and the Context Menu API. Check out the extension and its code on the Chrome Web Store and Github.

This post explores the challenge of removing specific elements from JavaScript arrays. It critiques the inefficient string manipulation method and introduces the filter() method (available in ECMAScript 5 compliant browsers) as a more elegant solution for removing elements by value. The post acknowledges the lack of a simple way to remove elements by index and hints at further discussion on this topic in a future post.

Just got back from a whirlwind tour of Europe for the Google Developer Days! We hit Munich, Moscow, and Prague, and it was an amazing experience. I gave talks on Chrome Extensions and building great Web Apps (except in Munich, where a local engineer rocked it). The slides are online: Chrome Extensions (needs experimental mode in Chrome dev channel) and Web Apps. I'll post the code on GitHub soon. Met tons of enthusiastic developers working on incredible projects – everything from protein sequencers to automatic app builders. So much innovation happening! (Side note: bring business cards, folks!) Prague was a particular highlight. Check out some photos from my trip!