Talis Developer Network - Amazon@Libraries - Firefox Extension - Comments

Updated Version!

Richard Wallis — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 10:58:26 +0000

You can now select your own subset of libraries, in addition to seeing all libraries that hold a copy.
Amazon@Libraries has now become a personalised library lookup tool for Amazon.co.uk.

Richard Wallis
Technology Evangelist - Talis

All the identifiers should

Ian Davis — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 10:41:00 +0100

All the identifiers should be lowercase, this one slipped through somehow and we'll change it and any others that we can find.

That sounds like a bug to

Ian Davis — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 21:57:14 +0100

That sounds like a bug to me. I'll investigate and see what's going on there.

Ian

identifier capitalization.

Tim Hodson — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 21:19:45 +0100

Hi,
I looked up a signalong book on amazon (1902317017), then saw Herefordshire appear in the list...

But, although I know that herefordshire has a collection it is not being identified by the directory when I click on it. The identifier embedded within the greasemonkey output is u116.inst while the identifer as it appears on the directory page is U116.inst the only difference being the capitalisation.

I ammended the amazonlibraries.user.js script with the following changes and all worked fine!

replace -->
d.setAttribute('instCode',rows[i].getAttribute('identity'));

with -->
txt = rows[i].getAttribute('identity');
regexp = /\./
txt = txt.split(regexp);
id = txt[0].toUpperCase() + "." + txt[1];
d.setAttribute('instCode',id);

Your thoughts?

Tim

Tim Hodson
Herefordshire Libraries

www.timhodson.com
informationtakesover.co.uk (blog)

Actually, even logged in,

jswiders — Fri, 7 Jul 2006 02:40:15 +0100

Actually, even logged in, the first 'Greasemonkey' link still only goes to the logged-in user's info page. . . .

Greasemonkey ...

sharon_jamieson — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 15:50:29 +0100

Hi Richard. I've just installed Greasemonkey and the Amazon plug in - just for fun, so that I can look for books in our own catalogues and others! It's not software that I'm familiar with, but I've had fun searching for books in Amazon and seeing the libraries come up at the side ... time to finish for the day I think! Sharon, Aberdeenshire Libraries

Amazon/Libraries Greasmonkey Plug-in variations

Richard Wallis — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 15:48:02 +0100

Hi Steve,

The reason it took you to that page was so that if you came in cold to this page you would be able to find out about Greasemonkey and how we use it. It is from that page you then get a link to the Greasemonkey site.

Reading it again, I already give a link to that page at the start of the text, so I agree with you about where the link in question should take you. I will change it.

There is a general answer to your "Could you get this to work on other sites - can you change the A9 link to point at Amazon.co.uk?" questions. It is: Because Greasemonkey gives you access to the HTML that makes up the page you are viewing, and external access to Web Services, you could make it do almost anything.

On the Greasemonkey site you will find URL checking examples which would give you a clue of how to scan a page and change any href that point at amazon.com to point at amazon.co.uk.

Similarly, you could use my amazon.co.uk plug-in as an example to build your own version. It already scans the page looking for ISBNs, the bit that is amazon.co.uk specific is how it inserts the @Libraries panel in the page.

If you or anyone else produces variations on the plug-in for other sites which use library Web Services to add value of those sites let me know and we will publish them for others to see and use. Better still you could enter them in to The Mashing Up The Library Competition.

Richard Wallis
Technology Evangelist - Talis

Greasemonkey links not working, but...

Steve Newman — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 14:46:10 +0100

The Greasemonkey links in this post (e.g. "[from within Firefox when you have loaded Greasemonkey]") take you to a TDN login page rather than to the Greasemonkey site. . .

That said, once you've installed Greasemonkey, and your script, it's great fun looking up books on Amazon UK. Could you get this to work from A9? The default Amazon site in A9 is Amazon.com. Can this be changed to point to Amazon.co.uk?

Steve

Steve Newman
University of Brighton

Amazon@Libraries - Firefox Extension

Richard Wallis — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 09:25:23 +0000

Amazon.co.uk Library Holdings Lookup - Firefox Extension

This Firefox Extension/Greasemonkey plug-in script inserts a panel on to the book details page of Amazon.co.uk if the book, identified by ISBN, is held by libraries which have contributed their holdings data to the Talis Platform.

Updated Version!
You can now select your own subset of libraries, in addition to seeing all libraries that hold a copy.
Amazon@Libraries has now become a personalised library lookup tool for Amazon.co.uk.