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Title: Add-Art Plugin development

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See also: 
* [[Development History]]
* [[How to build and release a new version of AddArt]]
* [[Version History]]

==Roadmap==

-*v.5* Self contained plugin - keeps images in the plugin, images are updated when the plugin is updated.  The add-art site doesn't automatically interact with the plugin. Changing the swapped images contained in the plugin happens manually.- DONE

-*IMMEDIATE* - get add-on working in Firefox 3-

*v1.0* Add-on updates images from a feed on the drupal site.

==How it works==
Add-Art works with "AdBlockPlus":http://adblockplus.org

# In artbanners.js our code makes a request for the AdBlockPlus object, then we parasite on it by substituting our  function "shouldLoad" for ABP's old "shouldLoad" function.  
# Our new function first calls the old ABP "shouldLoad", which does the heavy lifting of finding out if an object is an ad or not.  
# If the object is an ad we then kick into our art substitution code.
## We generate a random number.
*** This happens once per object rather than once per page.  Moving this to the page level is key to fixing Ticket [#22].
## We find images in our stuff that matches the dimensions of the object.
## We pick a random image from the best-dimension-matching images using the random number we picked earlier.
# Code returns and firefox functions as normal.

==Problems==

1. -The fixing of this bug could make it very difficult to replace images that have been blocked in Firefox 3-

-bug (now fixed): https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=337246-

-feature request to re-add this functionality (please add your comments): https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=384778-

2. -Rhizome Commission celebration is at the New Museum on May 22nd.-

See "ticket system":http://dev.eyebeam.org/projects/add-art/tickets

==What we need to do==
* "get the plugin released on mozilla add-ons":http://dev.eyebeam.org/projects/add-art/ticket/42 - [[AOM nomination text]]
* -"get the site ready for the public":http://dev.eyebeam.org/projects/add-art/tickets?milestone=11-
* -"get xml file, parse it, and store images locally":http://dev.eyebeam.org/projects/add-art/ticket/44- CODED

===Greasemonkey code for harnessing Mozilla preferences===

"prefmanager.js":http://greasemonkey.devjavu.com/browser/trunk/src/chrome/chromeFiles/content/prefmanager.js

This would be useful for choosing a new artist on each page load, sequentially instead of randomly. Also it would be useful for keeping track of when you last checked the server for new images.

===Helpful Links===
* "Building an Extension":http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Building_an_Extension#Test
* "Setting up extension development environment":http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Setting_up_extension_development_environment

==Useful Files==

=== Extension building ===
Put this file in the main extension folder, and make sure that the name of the main folder is "extension-name". It generates the extension with only one mouse click.
http://www.tobi-x.com/temp/build.bat (win/pc)

=== Artbanners.js ===

\trunk\artbanners\components\artbanners.js

This is the file that provides the hook into ad block plus.  We replace one of their hooks with one of ours.  I suspect we may be able to grab a different page level hook on  abp to roll the dice for a single gallery source per page.

=== addart.xml ===

\trunk\artbanners\chrome\content\addart.xml

Provides the current actual function to load one of our images instead of the ad image.

=== scripts.xml and script_wrapper.js ===

These provide hooks to replace text only ads like google ad-sense with pictures.

==mistakes==
* released on mozilla addons sandbox and didn't know I could update. User base went up, then down.  
* freaked out over the changes in FF3 and so far... there's been no problems. (fingers crossed)
* ok that was wrong.  FF3 was a problem.  We should have put it on rent-a-coder sooner.
* Hired the wrong developers.  3 developers have tried to start the project but don't get very far because of other jobs. 
** Too generous giving time to work without results. In the future, ask for some measurable amount of progress within 1 week.  Anyone agreeing to work on the project should be able to accomplish something on it within that amount of time.
** Didn't look for developers outside network of friends.  Friends have jobs and are more likely to say yes because they want to help, even though they may not have enough time.
* didn't break tasks into easier to accomplish parts, such as "fix this script" or make this 1 improvement. Instead explained the whole project.
** related with above, made a dumb mistake.  Tried to accomplish the end result from the beginning instead of scaling up.  For example, wanted first version of the plugin to load images from a server instead of starting smaller by having images load locally.

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