Microsummaries

in Firefox and on the Web

Myk Melez

Mozilla Corporation

Contents

• what microsummaries are
• integration into Firefox
• how to add a microsummary to your site
• how to add a microsummary to someone else's site
• future plans
• your questions (welcome anytime!)

What's a microsummary?

Example #1 - Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

Example #1 - Microsummary of It

Example #2 - eBay Auction Item

Example #2 - Microsummary of It

Microsummaries in Firefox

• Firefox 2.0: bookmark labels
• benefits for users
  • quick and simple access to useful information
  • regular updates (every half hour by default)
• advantages for web sites
  • keep users informed of the latest updates
  • entice them to revisit the site

Demo!

Adding a Microsummary to Your Site

• generate a microsummary and put it at some URL
• stick a <link rel="microsummary"> tag into your page
• point it at your microsummary

Example - woot.com

Example - woot.com Source

<html>

<head id="ctl00_Head1">
    ...
    <link rel='microsummary' ... href='DefaultMicrosummary.ashx' />
    ...
</head>
...
                    

Example - woot.com/DefaultMicrosummary.ashx

Adding a Microsummary to Someone Else's Site

• create a simple addon called a microsummary generator
• easier than extensions!
• search engine plugin installation model
• users install the generator
• generator builds microsummaries

Microsummary Generator

• instructions for extracting a microsummary from a page
• simple XML grammar
• single XML file
• XSLT stylesheet for extracting the microsummary
• regular expressions for matching URIs to summarize
• XPath expressions for determining update frequency

Outline of a Generator

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<generator xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/microsummaries/0.1" 
                  name="Firefox Download Count">

    <template>
        ...
    </template>
  
    <pages>
        ...
    </pages>
  
    <update>
        ...
    </update>

</generator>
            

<template> Element

<template>

    <transform xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" 
               version="1.0">

        <output method="text"/>

        <template match="/">

            <value-of select="id('download-count')"/>

            <text> Fx downloads</text>

        </template>

    </transform>

</template>
            

<pages> Element

• identifies URIs that can be summarized by the generator
• include/exclude list of regular expressions
• by default, all URIs are excluded
• <include> includes URIs, <exclude> excludes them
• a page can be summarized if its URI matches an <include> expression and doesn't match any <exclude> expressions
• example:

  
  <pages>
    <include>^http://(www\.)?spreadfirefox\.com/</include>
    <exclude>^http://(www\.)?spreadfirefox\.com/.*\?</exclude>
  </pages>
                      

<update> Element

• how often to update the microsummary
• default update interval is 30 minutes
• minimum interval is one minute
• can either specify an constant interval or a conditional one
• constant example:

  
  <update interval="30"/>
                      

• conditional example:

  
  <update>
      <condition expression="..." interval="15"/>
      <condition expression="..." interval="45"/>
  </update>
                      

• first matching conditional determines interval

Distributing a Generator

• put it somewhere on the web
• link to it from a web page
• call window.sidebar.addMicrosummaryGenerator() when a user clicks the link
• example:

  
  <a href="#" onclick="window.sidebar.addMicrosummaryGenerator(
                         'http://www.example.com/microsummary-generator.xml'
                       )">install</a>
                      

Demo!

The Future

• plaintext microsummaries in upcoming Firefox 2.0
• rich text microsummaries (HTML, images) in Firefox 3.0?
• other applications
  • simplifying pages for blind users
  • reordering pages for small devices
  • widgets?
• standardization (WHATWG, microformats.org, W3C?)
• user-defined microsummaries

Demo!

More Info

proposal:

http://wiki.mozilla.org/Microsummaries

Firefox 2.0 beta 1:

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bonecho/

sample generators:

http://people.mozilla.com/~myk/microsummaries/generators/

my email address:

myk@mozilla.org