Operator
What is Operator?
Operator is an extension for Firefox that adds the ability to interact with semantic data on web pages, including microformats, RDFa and eRDF. You can get a great introduction on Alex Faaborg’s blog. It is available from addons.mozilla.org.
What are the different display styles (views) of Operator?
Operator has two different views, actions and data formats.
When using the data format view, Operator displays buttons or menus that represent the data on the page like Contacts or Events. Submenus for the data displays the different pieces of the data on the page and then additional submenus provide actions that can be invoked on the data.
The action view provides buttons or menus that relate to the actions that can be invoked on the data. So for instance you might have an “Export Contact” action or a “Find with Google Maps” action. These actions are available when data is found on the page that can interact with the specific action.
The default display style can be changed in Options.
How do I interact with Operator?
My primary motivation for Operator was to create different ways of interacting with semantic data and then prototype them. Because of this, Operator provides a number of different ways to interact with data. Note that all of these methods except the sidebar provide access to the exact same data. Their view changes based on the display style set in options.
Operator Toolbar
The Operator Toolbar is the primary user interface for Operator. It can be toggled using View->Toolbars->Operator Toolbar. There is also checkbox in options that causes the toolbar to auto-hide when there is no data on the page.
Operator Toolbar Button
The Operator toolbar button can be added to any Firefox toolbar by selecting View->Toolbars->Customize…
Operator Status Bar Icon
The Operator status bar icon can be added to the Firefox status bar via the Operator options dialog. Check the box that says “Display icon in status bar.”
Operator Location Bar Icon
The Operator location bar icon can be added to the Firefox location bar via the Operator options dialog. Check the box that says “Display icon on location bar.”
Operator Sidebar
The Operator location bar icon can be displayed by selecting View->Sidebar->Operator. Note that the sidebar only provides a data formats view. It does not provide an action view.
Are there any other methods to interact with microformats?
If you know where a microformat is on a page, you can right click on the microformat and you will have actions available to you via the web browser context menu. This does not work with RDFa or eRDF.
How do I access Operator Options?
Operator options are available on every menu that is displayed as well as the toolbar. If you find yourself unable to access options via these traditional methods, you can select Tools->Add-ons and then right click on the entry for Operator and select Options.
How do I add or remove Data Formats
In the Operator options panel, there is an Data Formats tab. This tab has a listbox that contains all the data formats that will be displayed. You can use the New button to add data formats and the delete button to remove them. You can also change the order in which the data formats are displayed.
How do I add or remove Actions
In the Operator options panel, there is an Actions tab. This tab has a listbox that contains all the actions that will be displayed. You can use the New button to add actions and the delete button to remove them. You can also change the order in which the actions are displayed.
What are the different Operator Options?
- Use short descriptions
- Use descriptive names
- Debug mode
- Display icon in status bar
- Display icon on location bar
- Auto-hide the toolbar
- Highlight Microformats
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This preferences causes Operator to put a basic highlight around microformats when you mouse over them, as well as when you select them in the menus. This is a test features.
- Remove duplicates
- Observe all page changes
When you are using the actions display style, this option determines whether or not to try to shorten the action names to take up less room.
When you are using the data formats display style, this option determines whether to use descriptive names (like Contact) or the names of the data (like hCard).
This preference turns on debug mode. See below for more information.
This preference turns the Operator icon in the status bar on and off.
This preference turns the Operator icon on the location bar on and off.
This preferences causes the toolbar to hide when there is no semantic data on a web page.
This preference causes Operator to look through the microformats on a page and remove exact duplicates. Depending on the number of microformats on a page, this can impact performance.
By default, Operator listens for items being added or removed to a web page and updates the user interface. This option causes Operator to listen for all changes on a web page and update the UI. Using this preference can severely impact the performance of Firefox.
What is debug mode?
Debug mode provides a number of different options for people developing microformats as well as RDFa and eRDF. A new action is added called “Debug.” For microformat developers, this action provides access to the internal representation of the microformat, the HTML source that created the microformats, and for hCards and hCalendars, the vCard/iCalendar representation from both Operator and Brian Suda’s X2V. For RDF developers, the debug action provides a representation of the RDF triplets. RDF developers can also access the model when in debug mode.
Another feature of debug mode is that invalid microformats are displayed in the menus. When they are clicked on, they display the same information as standard debug, but provide an additional pane that gives the reason that the microformat was invalid.
What are user scripts?
A user script is a Javascript file that can be used to add new actions or new microformats to Operator. Users scripts as well as information about developing user scripts can be found here. Note that user scripts have very elevated security privileges, so you should treat installing a user script the same way you would treat installing an application - only install user scripts that you trust.
Where do I report problems?
You can report bugs in bugzilla.
How do I make an action open in a new tab?
Operator honors the same keystrokes you can use in Firefox to cause things to open in a new tab. That means that if you use the middle mouse button when you click or hold down the Ctrl key (Cmd on Mac), the action will open in a new tab.
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