An Update to the WebCenter Chrome Extension

So, Rich (@rmanalan) and Anthony (@anthonyslai) continue to experiment with Chrome extensions.

Earlier in the week, they released Twome, and now, they’ve updated the WebCenter Chrome extension.

I wish I could include a less sanitized version, but alas, you’ll have to use your imagination a bit to construct the conversations.

Just like the WebCenter bookmarklet, the extension includes the publisher and can share to your WebCenter connections or to any group space to which you belong. You can choose to include the link of the page you’re viewing, or remove the link to just share a random thought.

I mean share something important. This is serious enterprise stuff.

The latest version of the Chrome extension now shows your recent connections’ stream of activity, and as with Twome, it uses infinite scroll to load more activity as you scroll through.

Rich told me today that they plan to couple more sexy features. Apparently, they’re digging the Chrome extension framework, which is pushing back the Firefox add-on, but hey, happy developers write happy code.

Or something.

Stay tuned for more WebCenter goodness.

AboutJake

a.k.a.:jkuramot

7 comments

  1. These extensions and apps you guys are working on look great!
    So jealous you guys get to work on these kind of things.

    Small integrations but they make a world of difference – especially when we show the possibilities and what has been achieved.

    Next… a small AIR application integration would be great!! hint hint..
    Maybe also a gears to store /html5 data store offline data and resync and post to services to update when connected 😀

  2. Thanks. Glad you're enjoying them. We hope to share these outside the walls at some point, maybe at OOW if you're attending, maybe here. Stay tuned.

    As for AIR, there's no chance that's happening, sorry. None of us knows Flex or has time to learn it.

    By gears, do you mean Google Gears? Thought that was terminated. Ironically, it doesn't support Chrome on Mac, which would select us all out anyway 🙂

    Interesting idea about offline data though, not sure I've seen any implementations of this. Looks like the spec doesn't require a specific database, but SQLite is the implied reference for obvious reasons. That might cause us some issues, both politically and programmatically.

    If we insist (or assume) an Oracle or MySQL installation, the solution gets heavier . . . we'll noodle this.

    Thanks for the suggestion.

  3. Thanks @john. We're having fun building these out. We've got a few other neat things we're working on… will hopefully announce them here in a week or so. Re: AIR… I'm not a big fan of AIR apps… but since everything we're building uses the WebCenter REST API, it should be pretty easy to do. Re: Gears… Gears is dead… shot in the head with HTML5. When we get further into our extension, we'll likely add offline support through HTML5 local storage.

    Do you have any killer features you'd like us to consider?

  4. With AIR you wouldn't need flex you can write and deploy html/javascript desktop applications.
    Javascript works 50% faster on air and html 5/CSS3 is supported on webkit which AIR uses 😉

    I mentioned Google Gears as I didn't realise IE7 supported HTML 5 offline storage, but it seems it does so your right gears is now dead in my head. If you guys have some spare time for research and dev slot AIR into it..

    It would be fun to see mini webcenter cross platform desktop application. Maybe develop something with similar functionality to Digsby – http://www.digsby.com/msn then I wouldn't need to have webcenter open in a browser in the the background I could get my alerts that I want popup on the desktop whilst I work on other apps.

    I wish I had the time to do the fun things like this :'(

  5. That's news to me. Last year, I toyed around with the idea of an AIR app, and there wasn't any mention of avoiding Flex. My main quibble with AIR apps is their poor memory management.

    We all run Chrome so yeah, WebKit rules.

    For now, we're tied up with this extension. The guys are adding some sweet features. We don't usually plan very far out, so beyond the extension, who knows 🙂

    I'm doubting it'll be AIR though, sorry.

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