Saturday, September 27th, 2008 
As an Illinois student, I find myself constantly searching the Illinois Phonebook Gateway. Also known simply as the “PH” due to it’s URL (http://illinois.edu/ows/PH), the site will take a NetID (the user name that all Illinois students use for any computer/internet activity) or a name and display information (email address, phone number, postal address, major, etc.) about a student.
I have previously written a UIUC Firefox Search Engine Plugin that searches the Phonebook, but it just was not working for me because I always had to change the drop-down selection from Google to the PH and back again. There must be a better way.
So, I developed what I’m calling the NetID Lookup Extension. This is a simple Firefox extension that adds an item to your right-click toolbar. When text is selected, you can right-click on that text, click “Search NetID,” and a new Firefox tab will open with that text entered into the PH.
Right now it’s on the Mozilla Addons site, but is still classified as “experimental” – which means you have to log in (and set up a free account if you haven’t already) before installing it. If you install the extension and like what it does, please give it some feedback on the Mozilla page so that it can become a full-fledged extension. You can also find some more information on a page I created here (listed in the top tabs of this site).
Posted in Announcement, technology | No Comments »
Friday, September 5th, 2008 I’ve played with Google Chrome a little bit, it seems slightly faster than Firefox or Internet Explorer, but that could just be because it’s new and it seems fatster to the human mind.
My problem with Google Chrome, though, is that there are no add-ins (a.k.a extensions). I am a heavy user of Firefox add-ins. Without Adblock Plus, Googlepedia, Last Tab, Better Amazon, Download Statusbar, and Foxmarks, I would be totally lost!
They will come out with extensions eventually:
“We don’t have that in the beta today, but we definitely plan an extension API,” or application programming interface, Sundar Pichai, a Google vice president of product management, said at the Chrome launch event here Tuesday. “It is one of the things we will get to next.”
.. but until they do, I can’t stand to use it daily.
In other Chrome news, it’s interesting to see what browsers Chrome is actually hurting.
Posted in News, Opinion | 2 Comments »
