Labs: Twitter Add-on (extension) for Google Chrome, new version – new post.
So after a not of attention after my first release of the Twitter Add-on for Google Chrome I decided to rewrite the whole thing today.
This has resulted in some dramatic changes and improvements. But I’ve also got some things I would like to investigate further to improve the extension further.
Why doesn’t the extension (toolstrip) catch backspace key press but it does catches a normal key press like an enter key press or a simple letter?
Furthermore I’m considering letting an “enter” key press in the input field call the TwitterMe() function instead of letting the button (id=”submitMe”) doing so.
If you got some thoughts on this please comment this post.
Now for the changes and improvements of the new version of the extension. As Aaron suggested in my last post as a comment to the first and earlier version I let the Twitter-icon be a controller for toggling the visibility of the input and button. This works quite well after I decided to use jQuery as the JavaScript framework in this extension. I would have liked to expand the extension in the height but I couldn’t get Chrome to “dynamically” change the height of the toolstrip, only the width. I think the below quote should be rewritten if it’s only possible “dynamically” change the height of the toolstrip.
The toolbar automatically detects how much space a toolstrip needs and reflows. So you can resize your toolstrip dynamically if you need a little more room temporarily. - http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/extensions/toolstrips
Aaron also asked why I didn’t use a XHR call to the (brilliant) Twitter API instead of using the server-layer and that me research the possibilities of such a solution. After some investigation it’s now working fantastic.
Furthermore I decided to kick out the username and password fields since they were ruining the flow of extension. Your username and password is now to be entered in the “twitter-interface.html” which now also is XHTML Strict 1.0 valid (if that matters anyway).
Underneath I’ll include the download link to the new version as well as some new screenshots. Have fun and comment please! 
Download link: http://e-x-e.dk/labs/chrome-twitter/twitter-addon_v_0_2.zip
Did you enjoy this post? Have a look at the post before, in this post there are some more information about installing the add-on (extension): http://www.e-x-e.dk/2009/05/29/labs-twitter-add-on-extension-for-google-chrome/.