Next Steps for the Copy ShortURL Addon
The Copy ShortURL Add-on has been on AMO for a week now and was recently approved to be public, so now I have a user base to please 
I am inclined to drop the code onto github, where I’d get a proper version history along with a bug tracker. Update: It’s on github now!
For now though, here are a few ideas I have for the add-on, in no particular order and with no promise that I’m about to implement any of this right away:
- Allow other URL shortening services. tinyURL is all fun and games, and I chose it over bit.ly because it does not require an API key — but if you have one at hand, you should be able to use any service you like. Even if only by setting an about:config preference.
- Incorporate selected sites that support short URLs but do not publish them as a header. Zappos (zapp.me), for example. Others seem to have a short URL available (such as: NY Times (nyti.ms), Amazon (amzn.to), ESPN (es.pn)) but only use them on their twitter account and not on every webpage, so there might be nothing we can do
. - When shortening, need to make sure not to use the current URL but the canonical URL if such a header exists. (Fixed!)
Let me know what you think! I’d like to know if any other things come to your minds, or which of the above you’d find especially useful.
When can I expect the plugin to be compatible with my 4.0 beta? :-p
Actually I think it already is. I’ll need to check it out, and if I am right I can just bump the version.
That would be awesome.
I’d like to pitch in, so I hope you do host the extension of github =]
Also, don’t forget to check http headers for rev=canonical urls.
Please make it compatible with any instance of http://yourls.org/. Thanks!
Brian: If they don’t do anything crazy, that can probably be arranged
JP: Compatibility is updated!
Erik: Chipping in is just the convincing that I needed
I put it on github. Sadly, I don’t have the private key from the add-on builder, so let’s see how the whole ID business goes.
Fred: AMO still reads: “Not available for Firefox 4.0b1″.
Meh. For some reason it didn’t eat it. I tried again, should show up when the caches clear.
Support the bugzilla.mozilla.org short url!
Good one! It’s a shame this isn’t exposed as a header so far! Let me file a bug, I mean open an “issue” for that.
[...] I last blogged about the Copy Short URL add-on, I stumbled across another, very popular example of automatically [...]
Quick heads-up, y’all will be happy to hear that the next version of the add-on will use Jetpack SDK’s notification API to let you know what just happened. Magic!