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Dawn Foster

Clearfox: Firefox Plugin for Clearspace

Posted by Dawn Foster on Oct 2, 2007 9:48:01 PM

Learn more from Aaron Johnson about creating Firefox plugins that access Clearspace information using the Clearfox plugin as an example.

 

 

 

or download the Quicktime version (caution: 144MB file)

1,705 Views Tags: plugin, podcast, podcast, video, clearspace, firefox


Comments (8)
Oct 5, 2007 1:29 AM John Järpe John Järpe  

Hi, I think this looks really interesting, but I failed to see the advantages of using this plugin instead of using RSS. Isn't this the same thing as a RSS feed but using a plugin instead of an RSS reader?
Oct 5, 2007 9:13 AM Aaron Johnson Aaron Johnson  

hi johjar,

 

The biggest difference is that this plugin brings Clearspace front and center to the my Firefox experience. I'm a big user of feeds (I subscribe to about 300 right now, you can see them here: http://www.bloglines.com/public/ajohnson1200), but I built the Clearfox plugin because it puts our intranet, called Brewspace, in my face. I'll go and check my RSS feeds once or twice a day but having Clearfox installed means I never have to check bloglines or switch to a desktop feed reader, it's always there as I'm working in my browser.

 

Isn't this the same thing as a RSS feed

Maybe another way of thinking about Clearfox is this: is there one feed that's more important than any of the others? During the day when I'm work, the intranet / Clearspace feed is probably the single easiest way to keep up with what's happening at the company. Most RSS readers I've seen don't give you the ability to elevate one feed over another. Clearfox is a way of saying "this feed is really important to me", and elevates it to a prime position in my computing experience, which for me is Firefox.

 

Cheers,

 

AJ
Oct 8, 2007 12:25 AM John Järpe John Järpe  

Hi Aaron, thanks for the explanation.

 

I can understand how a user friendly Firefox plugin is easier to introduce to the users on a corporate intranet than a third party RSS-reader. I only hope that it isn't on the expense of the RSS-features, and improvement of those.

 

Cheers,

 

/John
Oct 8, 2007 9:29 AM Aaron Johnson Aaron Johnson  

I only hope that it isn't on the expense of the RSS-features, and improvement of those.

Absolutely not, Clearfox was and is a plugin, an experiment at making Clearspace as easy to use and read and keep up with as possible.  All the RSS / Atom / feed features will continue to be improved in the core product.

 

Cheers,

 

AJ
Oct 31, 2007 6:33 AM drgoochmobile drgoochmobile  

This is all well and good, but WHERE IS the Firefox plugin.  I don't see a link anywhere.  It's not in the list of popular plugins.  When I do a search I appear to get content that talks about the plugin and this blog post is the only item with the Firefox tag.
Oct 31, 2007 7:13 AM Dawn Foster Dawn Foster  

Here's the link.  I'll also add it to the popular plugins area. http://clearspace.jivesoftware.com/docs/DOC-1200
Oct 31, 2007 8:33 AM drgoochmobile drgoochmobile  

Thanks -- I've got the plugin installed and see the other file that I would need to use, but for the sake of my other users, what is the "Webwork action" page referred to in the video?
Nov 1, 2007 1:54 PM Aaron Johnson Aaron Johnson  

hi drgooch,

 

You should point your users to something like this:

 

http://example.com/clearspace/cf-about.jspa

 

When I made it available on our intranet, I created a blog post about it, but you might also consider creating an announcement on the homepage or something like that.

 

Cheers,

 

AJ

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