Update: checkout bookburro.org!
Ever look at a product on a website and wonder if you could find it cheaper elsewhere? Ever read books? If you answered yes to both of those questions you are in luck my friend!
This script adds links & prices from other sites (Amazon, Buy, BN, Powell, Half) to the current book site you are at!
When Book Burro senses you are viewing a book, it will add a small panel to the upper right corner.
While that is pretty, it is what happens when you kick (click) the burro that makes it exciting:
As you see in the images, you are now one click away from the book at another online shoppe!
This process does cause a little harm to come to the donkey, so don't kick him unless you need to (as this is causing web-pages to be downloaded in the background, and if millions of people do it, the feds may come after me for mistreating defenseless animals.)
How much does it cost you ask?
You have to obtain a recent (1.0 or above) copy of FireFox, and the wonderful Greasemonkey extension (I recommend version 0.2.6). When you click Install, it FireFox will block it since it isn't coming from Mozilla's main site, but you can click "allow this site to install", then it reclick the install link. You will need to restart your browser after installing the GreaseMonkey extension.
Now that you have the prerequisites, you need to install the burro. It sounds complicated, but it isn't. Install the userscript (the javascript that does the work) by opening it in your webbrowser, which fills you screen with a bunch of gobble-gook (javascript). Then in your menu bar, choosing Tool->Install User Script. Then you are done! Ready to go play with your burro. (perhaps after a stop by the contribute button?)
Important: For your sanity only handle one Burro at a time, thus before you install a new burro, please take the time to properly destroy your old one (uninstall the previous version first using Tools->Manage Userscripts then select the old and choose uninstall)
Complete Version History & Todo
Advanced Version (Powered by AJAX):
Uses Ajax to pull prices from other sites.- Current Version: Book Burro Advanced v0.11 - improved skin & add link to message if no results
LITE Version (non-AJAX):
If you need a version is available that does not use XMLHttprequest to go to the versions page and install version 0.02.
Who did this?
In case the authorities or amazon want to know:- Jesse Andrews - Me - hacker extraordinaire ( which means I learned javascript )
- Britt Selvitelle - showed up for Mac&Cheese, I made him hack until 6am! haha!
- Johannes la Poutre - he was unknowingly involved, as we based our interface off snippets of his RSS Reader for GreaseMonkey
What? It Doesn't Work?
Ideas, problems, improvements, patches??? Use the comment form, and email! (There is a million things we want to add, but we want to sleep some first)- the Greasemonkeyed
ps. Licensed under open source, so additional code/sites are welcome!
pps. We were careful to minimize the number of AJAX requests performed. It only does a request when you click on bar, and it only requests once on this page. We didn't impliment Powell's books, since we didn't know if they would want the queries. . .
