Introducing: The Spurl bar

english, features

Spurl steps aside…

I just completed wrapping the core functionality of Spurl.net into a neat toolbar that sits on the side of your browser.

At the top of the bar is a search field, for searching your spurls (spurls are essentially “Bookmarks on steroids” for those of you that need a tagline).

Below the search field there are 4 tabs:

  • My most used: A list of the pages you have most frequently visited through Spurl. After using Spurl for a couple of days, this tab will hold more or less all the pages you visit on a regular basis. I have found this to be a personal favorite.
  • My spurls: A treeview holding all your spurls in categories.
  • Hot now: The pages that Spurl users have spurled the most in the last few days.
  • Just in:The freshest spurls from all users.

Note: The icon in front of a spurl ( ) is a link to your details on the spurl, and allows you to change them.

This new bar gives an extremely easy access to the spurl functionality with minimal interruption to your normal browsing behavior. I don’t know why I didn’t implement it like this from the beginning, but here it is.

Enjoy!

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The installation is as simple as it gets.

For Opera and Mozilla (etc.) users it is a single click of a link.

Explorer users must restart their systems for the full installation (why is Bill so difficult?), but they are in for an extra treat. The installation will also create two new buttons in the Navigation bar (next to the Back and Home links, etc.). One for toggling the Spurl bar on and off, the other one for spurling pages. So in that case you don’t even need the good old Spurl! link in the Links bar any more – the new button has all it’s functionality.

And don’t worry, no software is in fact installed on the computer, just a few registry changes and the install page holds a link to uninstall it as easily as it was installed.

To install the Spurl bar, go here. If you are a new user – go to the front page of Spurl.net and register. The last step of the registration shows you how to install the Spurl bar.

Note: If the buttons in the Navigation bar (Explorer only) don’t appear after you have restarted the computer, you have to go to View / Toolbars / Customize… and locate them there. This only happens for those that have previously customized their Toolbar somehow.

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Update Apr 14, 2004: Mozilla / Firefox / Firebird / Netscape support now completed as well – unfortunately Safari does not support sidebars, but a workaround is in the making.

7 comments

  1. Very cool additions you’ve been making, definitely increasing usability by leaps and bounds.

    As a Mozilla Firefox user, though, I of course am hoping to see these enhancements ported over for myself and other users.

    Presently, it’s easy enough to add the sidebar to Firefox–just add a new bookmark linking to the sidebar page (http://www.spurl.net/barused.php) and then select “Load this bookmark in the sidebar” in the bookmark’s properties. Clicking it will launch it as a sidebar . . . the only problem is that clicking on the tabs doesn’t switch in the sidebar, it opens them in the main window . . .

    Also, in both IE and Firefox I’ve received an error a few moments after selecting “myspurls” in the sidebar–it states “A script on this page is causing Internet Explorer to run slowly. If it continues to run, your computer may become unresponsibe. Do you want to abort the script?”

  2. Allen: Thanks for the kind words, I’m glad that Spurl’s most devoted users seem to agree on the merits of the latest upgrades.

    Regarding Firefox, I spent some time already on trying to get it to work correctly. The real problem there is that Firefox’s implementation of executing the javascript is quite a lot different from the other two browsers and I’ve had a hard time implementing it so that the javascript events are executed in the sidebar instead of the main frame (for those of you interested in technical details). I’m not sure if there is a workaround for this, or if it is a bug in Firefox, but I’ll keep on trying.

    As for the “A script on this page is causing Internet Explorer to run slowly…” warning, this can happen on the My Spurls tab for users that have thousands of Spurls. I must find some neat way of loading only what is needed, as it is also painfully slow to load so much content at once. I’ve been thinking on the lines of perhaps loading only the user’s 500 newest and most used spurls, with the option to load the entire list, but a more optimal solution would be to load a folder’s contents upon opening it. This requires a little fiddling around, but I will get there 🙂 So at the moment this is a problem only for a few users, but at the same time the users that I least want to experience problems.

    Rest assured it will be fixed.

  6. Nadeem: The most likely reason for your problem is that your browser is not accepting cookies. Spurl needs cookies to be able to deliver its functionality.

    If you have a recent version of Internet Explorer, you will find the cookie handling settings under: Tools > Internet Options > Privacy. There you can allow cookies for http://www.spurl.net specifically if you want to otherwise keep your privacy settings.

    If you have further problems or are using another type of browser, please contact us again for further information.

  7. I just installed the spurl bar today and I’m using Firefox. I am having the same problem as Allen is having above, where Firefox opens the spurl in the main window instead of in the sidebar. Has this been corrected and it’s user error, or is this still in the works?

    Thanks.

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