This is just a last moment idea inspired by the movie Starship Troopers which flashed in to my mind a couple of days ago as I was thinking about Jetpacks for the Jetpack for Learning Design Challenge. It is primarily a Microformat/Link Type proposal for rel-info with some ideas and prototypes demonstrating how it could be used.

Abstract

When you are reading something on the web there are usually pages which exist elsewhere on the web that would provide background information, and further reading if you desired to dig deeper into the subject(s) you are reading about. Sometimes some of those pages are linked to from the article you are on, but often the link wouldn't make sense in the context of the content, and using a link tag isn't very useful to a user, so the link is not made.

I propose a rel-info link type, even if just as a Microformat, for 'a' and 'link' tags to provide a link to context-sensitive information.

With rel-info a user can read more about the Movie that was discussed at Netflix or IMDB easily for example, because the publisher (or a script the user subscribes to, more on this later) provided a rel-info link which the user can easily find and follow with a Jetpack, Firefox extension, or some other browser extension.

Proposal

When rel-info links are provided on a page browser extensions can easily extract them from the page, which can lead to a large number of use cases, of which I am sure I have only just scratched the surface. There is another side to this coin however which is that there are a large number of ways that rel-info links might be added to a page.

Let's explore the latter case, first the person who published the page could add rel-info links, but then browser extensions could add rel-info links, they could also search for and remove rel-info links. A user could subscribe to a person's or institution's suggestion feed or script which adds and/or removes rel-info links to pages, along with using a AI based browser extensions to add rel-info links.

When the rel-info links are going to be consumed there are some other interesting possibilities, for example a browser extension could filter the links by a HTML 5 'data-topic' attribute by keeping a list of topics that the user dislikes or likes, the domain could also be used for filtering. A browser extension could allow the user to mark pages as read so that they are removed from pages in the future as another example.

Prototypes

To test this link type out with a Jetpack I first had to add it to some pages, so I decided to write a couple of UserScripts to do this demonstrating how they can be dynamically added to pages by anyone even users themselves. The first userscript was to add the rel-info link type to IMDB links, and another to add the rel-info link type to Wikipedia links.

If you install the above UserScripts then you should find rel="info" or rel="... info" on your IMDB and Wikipedia links. Once you have done that you can check out and install the "Would You Like To Know More?" Jetpack. This is a slidebar Jetpack, and when you open this slidebar the focused tab is then scanned for rel-info links, if any are found then they are displayed in a list for you to choose from, if you click one of the provided links a new tab will be opened for the new page.

These UserScripts and the Jetpack take advantage of HTML 5 'data-' attributes, by adding a 'data-source' attribute to the rel-info links added on the userscript side, which the jetpack was written to check for and display if found. This is an example of how HTML 5 'data-' attributes can be used with the rel-info link type which I propose to create more interesting results.

Tags are a new feature at https://addons.mozilla.org/, which are nice, but they are a bit painful to add currently.

The Unpleasantry:

Take a look at the current process to tag an addon:

1. Find and click the 'Add a tag' link.
2. Click on the input provided.
3. Type the tags you want to use.
4. Click the 'Add' button.

The Alleviation:

Once you install the "Mozilla Addons Tagging Greasemonkey Menu Command" UserScript you have a better option, which is:

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Today's userscript is for userscripts.org's groups.

The Unpleasantry:

Take a look at the current process to add a script to a group at userscripts.org:

1. Find and press the tiny "add script" link.
2. Click on the displayed input field and provide the exact id for the script you wish to add, and press enter.

The Alleviation:

Once you install the UserScript.org Group "Add Script" Greasemonkey Menu Command you have a better option, which is:

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Today I wrote a simple userscript for Google Reader to perform a People Search via Greasemonkey menu command which can be used with the greasemonkey Ubiquity command.

The Unpleasantry:

Take a look at the current process of searching for people on Google Reader:

1. First you have to find and click the well named linked "Browse for stuff".
2. Then you can look for and click the "Search" tab.
3. Then look for and use the "Find people sharing in Reader" form.

The Alleviation:

Once you install the "Google Reader People Search Command" UserScript you have a better option which is:

[More]

Another userscript for you Analytics Ninjas..

The Unpleasantry:

Take a look at the current process to change the start row of a Google Analytics report:

1. First you have to scroll down to the bottom of the page and find the little input field.
2. Then you can provide the desired start row and hit enter.

The Alleviation:

Once you install the "Google Analytics Row Start" UserScript you have a better option, which is:

[More]

This is a simple userscript for userscript authors who are as tired of using a mouse as I am.

The Unpleasantry:

Take a look at the current process to tag a userscript which you have authored:

1. First you have to find and click on the tag form.
2. Then you can type your tags and hit enter to save.

The Alleviation:

Once you install the "UserScript.org Tagging Greasemonkey Menu Command" UserScript you have a better option, which is:

[More]

Today I wrote a simple time saving UserScript for Google Reader. Often I find myself wanting to do a search of the Google Reader feed directory, but currently the process is brutal.

The Unpleasantry:

Take a look at the current process of searching the Google Reader feed directory:

1. First you have to find and click the well named linked "Browse for stuff".
2. Then you can look for and click the "Search" tab.
3. Then look for and use the "Search by keyword" form.

The Alleviation:

Once you install the "Google Reader Directory Search Command" UserScript you have a better option which is:

[More]

With today's UserScript switching pages on userscripts.org gets easier.

The Unpleasantry:

Take a look at the current process to switch pages on a userscripts.org page with pagination:

1. First you have to scroll to a part of the page with the pagination links.
2. Then if if you are lucky there will be a link to the page you want, if you want a page for which there is no link, you either have to digg for the page you want, or type it in the url manually by discovering the page url param.

Image: Screen shot of pagination on userscripts.org

The Alleviation:

Once you install the "UserScript.org Page Greasemonkey Menu Command" UserScript you have a better option, which is:

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With this userscript you will be able to quickly perform a content search for content containing the search string that you provide. There are two input methods, the first is to use the Greasemonkey menu commands; the second method is to use the greasemonkey Ubiquity command to execute this Greasemonkey menu command.

The Unpleasantry:

Take a look at the current process to perform a content search:

1. First, we have to go to the top content report.
2. Then we have to scroll to the bottom of the table.
3. We have to find the search box, and click it to start typing our input.
4. Finally we can hit enter when we have typed our search string.

The Alleviation:

Once you install the "Google Analytics Content Search Menu Command" UserScript you have a better option, which is:

[More]

This userscript allows you to go to a specific time on any YouTube video without need of the provide UI. This functionality is available through a Greasemonkey menu command or through the greasemonkey Ubiquity command.

The Unpleasantry:

Say you are watching a youtube video, and for whatever reason you want to skip directly to a specific point in the video. There are two options available to you currently, the first is to use your mouse and move the video's time slider, which is hardly specific. The other option is to add something like this "#t=0m56s" string to the url, which isn't that hard, but if you want to share the url later then you will have to remove string again, also you might have to clean the existing string first, and the finally problem here is that you get to the right part of the url to add the string properly.

The Alleviation:

Once you install the "YouTube 'Time' Menu Command" UserScript you have a better option, which is:

[More]