altctrl 0.7

Posted in javascript on April 29th, 2009 by gmunteanu

in this version [update: latest here], you can be on any page, and if you see the product model number, you can select it, right click, and click on the ALTCTRL item. it will search for the prices on the romanian stores.

also, now i have separated the data from the main code, and it is downloaded from my domain e-forum.ro, evaledinsandbox, and processed. this way, if i add another store, you won’t need to download the extension again. below you can see a screenshot of it in action.

also, some minor bug fixes, especially for esal. good, back to work.

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altctrl 0.6

Posted in javascript on April 24th, 2009 by gmunteanu

UPDATE: if you took it from mozilla website, updates won’t work, you should manually uninstall it and install it again from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11290.altctrl is still experimental addon, and it needs reviews on the mozilla website in order to go to public state. so if you like it, you can add some review there. [11 have 0.3, 8 have 0.4, 12 have 0.5] and now comes 0.6 version. so please mind this detail when installing.

version 0.6.

you can get the latest here [update: latest here], or you can wait to get it through the addons.mozzila.com website on monday i hope.

done:

  1. added esal.ro
  2. added newegg reviews

to do:
1. sort the rows so that cheapest is at the top, and the not found ones at the bottom
2. fix errors with escape url characters like space and others, especially for esal.
3. add sigmanet.ro
4. move from vbox to XHR, but i doubt it will work.
5. improve caching on the server.
6. make the anonymously cached product info available on a website.
7. move store specific data from client to server, and make it updatable in the xpi.

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altctrl detailed description

Posted in javascript on April 3rd, 2009 by gmunteanu

UPDATE: if you took it from mozilla website, updates won’t work, you should manually uninstall it and install it again from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11290.altctrl is still experimental addon, and it needs reviews on the mozilla website in order to go to public state. so if you like it, you can add some review there.

so, you want to get the best deal on products from romanian online stores. install the extension from the link shown in the previous post, and then the magic happens.

User guide: after you install it, there should be a statusItem at the right bottom of firefox , on the status bar. it should read altctrl. go to any of the 5 .ro online stores, and get to a product detailed page. then if you are not happy with the price, or you just want to check the other prices, click on the altctrl statusItem, and a popup will appear. it will go to the other stores and get the prices if it finds them. if not, “##” is shown. if an error occurs “**” occurs. The color of the row where each store is shown also has a meaning: green for “in stock” and red/brown for “out of stock”. if you wait too much for a store to show the price, you can cancel it from the right-most button.

Hacker guide: the internal of the extension is  simple. in a XUL iframe, i placed 5 browser objects with images and js disabled. upon click event, the product code on the page is taken , and a search is initiated on the other websites in the browsers we have already. the result pages is parsed with Sizzle and shown in the popup. in order not to stress the store web servers too much i also cache the results on my server at http://www.e-forum.ro:8080/altctrl . more info you can get by studying the code. it is released as gnu-gpl version 3. have fun!

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