Mikes Musings » microformats

Getting microformats working with web services

Mike Kaply — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 18:41:44 +0000

Hey Google, Yahoo! and 30 Boxes (and others).

PLEASE create places where I can simply POST vCards or iCals or microformats or JSON or something else to your services to add contacts and calendar entries. I'm not a web app, so I can't get an API key. And I shouldn't have to maintain login state when the browser is doing it for me. All I want is an easy way to add stuff to a logged in users account. Is that too much to ask?

With Yahoo! calendars and contact, as well as Google Calendar, I have to resort to undocumented URL syntax. Google Contacts I can't do anything. 30 Boxes requires that the ics file be physically located on a server, although they have a URL syntax that kind of works.

It doesn't even have to be a POST. If you could come up with some straightforward URL syntax, that would be great. Trying to figure out the stuff you guys have put together so far is incredibly painful.

So please. Help a guy out.

iDOO and Operator

Mike Kaply — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 22:03:52 +0000

The website iDOO added support for hCards and created an Operator user script to integrate with iDOO. The even plugged Operator in their announcement. Nice work!

You can get more information here.

Need Operator Usability Opinion

Mike Kaply — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 16:19:23 +0000

I need to make a change to how Ctrl (and maybe Shift) key works in Operator and I need some opinions.

Currently, holding down the Ctrl Key when clicking on an entry in
Operator displays the HTML source and holding down the shift key when
clicking displays the content as I store it in an internal structure.

Unfortunately, my choice of the Ctrl key was a bad one, since the Ctrl
key is used to affect tabbed browser behavior. I'd like to change
Operator so that when the Ctrl key is held down when clicking, it
opens the web page specific to the operator action in a background
tab.

My choice of Shift was also bad, since Shift forces links to open in new windows.

The only keyboard action I'm left with using is Ctrl+Shift at the same
time (alt isn't available).

So, here's the question.

Of the two actions I provide, which is the most useful to microformat
developers, seeing the source of the microformat or how I interpret
it?

Should I assign the Shift key to displaying the microformat and
Ctrl+Shift to displaying my internal representation (since I may be
the only one that uses it). This would mean I couldn't use the Shift
key to open a new window.

Alternatively, should I simply add menu items that correspond to these
two actions when Operator is in debug mode and get rid of the
keystrokes completely.

Or perhaps a menuitem to display the HTML, and the hidden action (Ctrl
key) displays the internal representation.

Or maybe have Ctrl and Shift do exactly what they do today only in debug mode?

Thanks in advance for offering your advice.