BrainKing Extensions

I am a big fan of Firefox and its system of add-ons (extensions) - by the way, Mozilla has released a new version of its page of Firefox Add-ons recently - and since the problematics of the add-on creation has been wandering through my brain cells for a long time, I have decided to give it a try and created my first Firefox extension for BrainKing.

Actually, there is nothing to celebrate yet - it is a really simple add-on with the least possible functionality, created in 10 minutes (while 8 minutes have been spent on reading a not-too-well-written documentation and setting up the environment), so do not expect any miracles. On the other hand, it might be a nice complement of the recently announced system of BrainKing Bookmarks at user Profile pages, even in its very pre-release version.

All right, if someone wants to try it out and uses Firefox 2.0 or higher, please follow the instructions:

• Go to http://brainking.com/BookmarkExtension page.
• Click Install BrainKing Bookmark extension for Firefox 2.0 or higher link.
• Since the extension package is not located at the official Firefox extension site yet, it is very likely that a warning message - Firefox prevented this site (brainking.com) from asking you to install software on your computer. - appears.
• Click the Edit Options ... button. A dialog window shows up.
• A text field with a label Address of web site: should contain brainking.com. Click the Allow button.
• After the dialog window is closed, please click the Install BrainKing Bookmark extension for Firefox 2.0 or higher link again. An add-on installation window should appear and after the process is completed, you will be asked to restart your Firefox.

Very well, the add-on is installed, so what to do now? If you open any web page and right-click somewhere on the page content, you should see that the standard context menu contains a new item called Bookmark at BrainKing ..., prefixed with a brainy icon:

What you click this item, a new Firefox tab will be opened. The tab would contain your Profile / Links page (if you are already logged in BrainKing, otherwise you are asked to log in first), and the Page URL and Page name fields are automatically pre-filled.

The conclusion: Using this simple add-on, you can save any web page to your BrainKing Profile without installing any HTML or JavaScript code to the particular page URL.

You might have noticed a small "brainy" button at the bottom-left of every article at this site. Its purpose is very simple - to make the process of bookmarking any page as quick and easy as possible. When it is clicked, you are instantly redirected to the Links section of your BrainKing Profile page (if you are already logged in BrainKing, otherwise you are asked to log in first), and the Page URL and Page name fields are automatically pre-filled. Submitting the new link form will store the new bookmark to your Profile and send you back to the original page, where the Bookmark at BrainKing Links button has been used.

Simple, huh? However, until this service is supported at other blog systems, the button is shown only here. On the other hand, it is very easy to integrate it to any page. If you want to test it, and give this "Bookmark at BrainKing Links" option to visitors of your own page(s), just add the following line to the chosen position of the HTML code of the page:

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://BrainKing.info/bklink.js"></script>

That's all! The script automatically finds the page URL and title, so it's not necessary to set it manually for every page. However, sometimes it cannot work as expected - for example, when the page contains more sections with different titles and permanent links, which is not possible to detect and handle by the script. In this case, it is possible to insert a direct hyperlink code of this pattern:

<a href="http://BrainKing.com/en/ProfileLinks?url=*PageURL*&title=*PageTitle*"><img src="http://BrainKing.info/uploads/bksmall.png" title="Bookmark at BrainKing Links" border="0"></a>

As I have said, the BrainKing Bookmarks system will contain many more features when enough links are stored at the database. Hopefully, the bookmark buttons and other small improvements could help it a little.

Actually, the application has been released a few days ago but not fully approved by Facebook staff. Which is what has happened at last and BrainKing can be found at the list of Facebook applications, as the following screenshot shows:

Well, if we are lucky, it could promote our site a little and maybe even recruit new players. Any kind of promotion is useful.

The second news of the day is a new sub-page at BrainKing profile pages - Profile / Links. It works as a simple bookmarking service, so every registered BrainKing user can store and organize links to his favorite web sites there (I've been using BrainKing's Notepad so far and it's been kind of inconvenient, so to say). Please take it as a beta version - no special functions are activated yet because I need to collect more data (i.e. links created by BrainKing users) to make some experiments and performance tests. Ergo, if you want to help, feel free to submit some web pages and if you add nice names and descriptions to them, it will be even better.
And since all links must be approved by BrainKing administrators before they are listed at the particular user's Profile / Links page, it is guaranteed that no bad content would appear there. Safety first.

Some BrainKing users already found out that a new field called Access code recently appeared at their Profile pages. Although there is a description of this feature just below the Access code line, I have already received several questions from people who don't understand its purpose at all, so I would post more information here.

First of all, the description at Profile page says:

"Access code is your unique identification string (generated by BrainKing). If you are using third party products to access BrainKing, you might be asked for this code to confirm your identity. This is NOT your BrainKing password, so there is no risk of accessing your private data if you provide this code to external programs."

And now, in details:

• There are popular community web sites (also known as social networking services) which allow users to create script-based mini-programs (also known as widgets) of various usage, in many cases to collect data from other web sites and present them is a customized form.
• Facebook is one of them (actually one of the most popular sites of this kind) and there is already a BrainKing Application being developed for it (not by me).
• Since the Facebook BrainKing Application can be used (or will be, more like) to display a list of your started games and similar BrainKing account related public information at your Facebook profile page (if you are a registered Facebook user), it is important to make sure that everyone can ask Facebook to displayed only information which belongs to his own account - that's why the access code is used here.
• As the short description says, providing your access code to third party services (like Facebook) is perfectly safe because it is not a substitution of your BrainKing password. The access code only helps Facebook to check that the BrainKing user ID (which is required to know which game list to download and process) is really your BrainKing user ID, because only you know your access code.
• By default, your access code is not set, because it makes no sense to BrainKing users who don't want to use any external services. If you want to set your access code, simply click the Reset button next to it, and BrainKing will generate a new unique access code for you. The button can be also used if you want to change current access code and generate a new one for any reason.

At this moment, the BrainKing Facebook Application is being tested with several volunteers and is not officially available yet. When it is finished and released, it will be properly announced at BrainKing Server News and here as well.