Lunchtime Thoughts: Portable Toolbar
I’ve been struggling to find the time to post recently, not having an internet connection at home at the moment (don’t even get me started on that) and being busy with work and other projects it’s been hard to squeeze any blogging.
So I’m trying to get back into the habit during my lunchtime, posting a quick thought about current news, an idea or something I’ve stumbled across in my daily surfings.
Portable Web Toolbar
Yesterday I was working on a little tool for myself, with some simple html, I showed it to a few people and they said they would find it really useful too.
Basically it’s a bookmark toolbar but within a webpage rather than installed in a browser you can access it anywhere. You’ve probably seen something just like it on the top of iGoogle and many of googles services once your logged in.
The difference is that it this will be customizable and it will move around with you rather than only appearing at the top of certain websites. Basically it’s a list of bookmarks and an iframe that fits the whole page, with a simple rails application that allows you to add and edit the bookmarks that appear at the top.
The benefit of this is that it required no installation, works on every computer and browser straight away and can be a lot more dynamic than a static installed toolbar, perfect for if you drop into the Apple store and want to access your 6 favorite sites, just hit the site and they will stay with you as you browse around.
The negatives? I can’t get gmail to work with what I have build so far, due to it not liking being in a frame and using javascript to jump out of it, so I’ve gone for a low tech solution for that one by opening gmail in a new tab/window instead. There may be other sites that don’t like it either.
I’ve called it portabletoolbar.com, no website there at the moment, just purchased the domain. I thought I’d gauge what people thought of the idea.
Some other things to grow on:
- It could have delicious/stumbleupon integration quite easily
- It could be powered by a central Rails website to store and manage the bookmarks or be an open source download that you host yourself.
- It could integrate with a service like Passpack to remember you login details and automatically log you in too
See you tomorrow
My lunch today was a Turkey and Bacon Club Bagel
Very interesting. Will bookmarklets load into it?
I’d like to see how this works, sounds pretty cool. Shoot me an email when you get the chance.
Cheers,
Tara
(PassPack Founding Partner)
Tara Kelly on February 6, 2008 5:38 pm
Great ideas Nez. Natural progression would be to allow people to create their own toolbar widgets and upload them to a gallery on the website.
Another disadvantage is that the browser address bar becomes sort of obsolete because upon typing a new URL in there you’ll lose the portable toolbar. Also the URL in the browser address bar will remain at portabletoolbar.com. A system which uses anchors like the new Gmail interface might work well.
Maybe an address bar (in the form of a text box) on the toolbar itself could be an idea too.
Bon on February 6, 2008 5:45 pm
Yep there would definely have to be an address bar and an search bar built into it so that you can move around the web without loosing the bar.
It started out as just scratching my own itch, i loved the google bar and the 37signals openbar(http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/479-basecamp-gets-openid-and-open-bar) but I wanted them to be more customisable and on every website.
Andrew on February 6, 2008 6:14 pm
Very good sir!
A clever little idea that might just work!…
Tao on February 7, 2008 12:56 am
why not employ some sort of greasemonkey script (if not primarily, alongside it perhaps) so people could simply mantain the bar and such.
stabani on February 7, 2008 3:27 pm
Well the whole idea is that you don’t need to install anything and it should work on any computer or browser without having to install anything or setup anything.
Greasemonkey obviously needs to be installed and only works on firefox so it’s not really what I was going for.
Andrew on February 7, 2008 4:07 pm
I’ve added some concept html to http://portabletoolbar.com/ so everyone can see what I was writing about here.
Andrew on February 7, 2008 5:03 pm
Great idea! If this goes somewhere, I’ll definitely be taking a look.. Or maybe make some sort of package to install on personal servers, etc..
Good luck.
Derek Reiff on February 20, 2008 3:07 pm