Get Firefox + Get Smarter Here = Get Firefive

Firevine — A Firefox Extension for Newsvine

Install at your own risk. However, there really isn’t that much of a risk. If for whatever reason it does crash your browser, just start it up in safe mode and uninstall the extension. No real permanent damage will be done.

Apparently Macs suck, so if you have one, don’t install this extension yet.

Now that the scary disclaimer is over:

Installation

Click to Install Firevine 0.4

The installation will probably be blocked by Firefox. In the message bar that appears at the top of your browser, click ‘Edit Options’ In the window that appears, click ‘Allow’ and then close. Click to Install again.

In the Software Installation window that appears, wait for the install to activate and then click “Install Now”. After the extension has installed, you will need to restart Firefox.

Settings

An Options window should appear automatically on first run. Please fill in your newsvine domain. You can also choose how many items you would like to display in your watchlist and how often you would like it to update.* Restart your browser once more for all of the settings to take affect and to allow Firevine to build its toolbar buttons.

Please update your feeds and make sure that your watchlist feed is accessible. It will be needed to provide your watchlist for Firevine.

*Your watchlist won’t continually update. It will only update when you view it. This delay just prevents the watchlist from updating too often.

New Features and Use

Even if a feature is not new, it will now be accessed from a new location.

Newsvine Menu

At top in your Firevine menu, there is now a Newsvine menu, filled a whole bunch of new and useful tools. From this menu you can seed the current page, navigate to newsvine or your newsvine column. You will also have quick access to an array of tools to manage your seeds and articles, or even your groups, friends and earnings.

The Newsvine menu will also provide you with easy access to the Code of Honor. If you come upon a CoH violation, just select the violation from this menu and a warning message will be automatically generated in the open comment box. This feature is based largely on the Code of Honor Bookmarklet created by finalcut.

A quick access to your top watchlisted items will also be available from the Newsvine menu.

Finally, you can access help and further information for Firevine as well as its options or about dialogs.

Toolbar Buttons

You should have two new toolbar buttons for quick access to both newsvine and your newsvine column. If you do not see these buttons, try restarting your browser.

Context Menu

Want to seed a page fast? Just select some text, right click and WHAM! A Seed This Page… link right there for you. Even better, see a link that you want to seed? Right click over it and seed the link straight.

If you are on newsvine at a comment box, you will also have access to that quick Code of Honor auto-generator as well. Just right click in a comment box, and select the violation.

Removed Features

The Toolbar!

It seems that many of you didn’t care so much for the giant toolbar. It took up a bit too much space for your needs. Fair enough, the toolbar is gone and everything is further embedded into Firefox itself.

Seed Status Notification

If you had a previously installed version of Firevine, you may have noticed that the button that would notify you whether an article was already seeded to newsvine pretty much stopped working. It seems that some backend stuff was changed by newsvine themselves, rendering that method I used worthless. Why have a feature that doesn’t work?

Known Issues

None so far. Please let me know if you find any and then check back here in a day or two for updates.

Upcoming Features

I’m working on integrating a newsvine search directly into the URL bar. So far so good.

Wishlist

A proper newsvine API would be nice.

If any of you can find a way to screen scrape the watchlist from newsvine using only javascript, a big Firevine contributer credit will come your way ;-)

Previous Versions

These are previous versions for a reason and contain known bugs. Install at your own risk.