whats the plot

so i had a little bit of time before i depart on my journey for hajj, so i wanted to play around with the firefox jetpack extension a little bit. so without further adieu, this post is here to introduce a simple quran plugin for jetpack

what is it
this is a quran script for jetpack, a plugin for firefox which allows customizing the browser just through javascript.

when you are typing in a textarea (in wordpress, gmail, google talk, etc), if you highlight any text in the format of sura:ayah (ex 1:1) and right click on it, you will be given a menu that allows you to replace that with the actual verse (in arabic, transliteration, or translation).

this is very nifty for taking notes, chatting, sending emails, etc.

how does it look like?
here is a screenshot:

known issues
- sometimes, the server appears to take long to reply so it doesn’t return and you are forced to try again.
- the plugin doesn’t work on google docs and other sites that overwrite right click functionality.
- the plugin also doesn’t seem to be working on gmail when rich formatting is on.

how to install it
- install jetpack for firefox.
- go to this page. on the top right corner of the webpage, you will find a button that says, “Install…”. click it.
- scroll to the very bottom, click the “auto-update this feature” checkbox, and then click on “i know what i am doing, install it!”

source code
the source is also available as on github in this gist.

changelog
november 16th, 2009
- fixed a bug in which the appended (sura:ayah) to the text was put at the end of the textarea rather than right after the ayah.
- added a little favicon for the menu.

i’ve done a quick port of the quran ubiquity plugin to work under the new version of ubiquity (0.5). as you may know, ubiquity 0.5 and beyond use a new parser (parser 2) that isn’t compatible with the old parser (parser 1 for 0.1.x versions of ubiquity).

you can get it here. make sure to select “automatically update this feed” so that you get any updates i may get around to making.

this version is pretty much identical to the older one, except that now, you can use “get-ayah,” “get ayah,” or “ayah” to get an ayah, and “search-quran” or “search quran” to do a search. i hope to support some of the new stuff from the pre-alpha version of the quran api soon insha’Allah (other translations, etc).

updated and released the first version of the quran ubiquity plugin! you can go here to install it.

essentially, it contains two commands -
1. search-quran – takes a parameter of what to search for and will show the results that match that particular query. hitting enter will bring up the search results page.
2. get-ayah – takes a parameter of which ayah (ex 2:2) and an optional parameter of the language/translation you want the ayah in (in english – muhsin khan, for example – note that ubiquity will provide suggestions for these). hitting enter will insert the text into the selection space.

this is uber-useful for muslims imho :p perhaps i will try to provide a screencast later on that shows how to use this for those who are still afraid to try it

*update* – rather than make my own screencast, i’ve decided to record a set of audio instructions on how to use it.

by the way – if you haven’t used ubiquity before, i highly recommend that you watch this video first. it explains what ubiquity is and gives you an idea of what it is useful for. to put it quite simply, ubiquity is amazing. it’s an indispensable tool for your firefox. watch the video

and here is the audio tutorial on the quran plugin for ubiquity.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

enjoy!

today, i felt like playing some more with ubiquity, which i had installed for a while now but had not played around with sufficiently. i decided to try to write a simple plugin that will search the quran for a particular set of words. to do this, i felt obliged to expose an api for the alpha version of quranicrealm first, which was good because i needed to do it eventually anyway.

and here’s the mandatory screenshot:

it still needs a lot of work… things i still want to do if i get around to it:

• add a favicon (for the site and for the plugin)
• more options (ex, “search english,” or “search transliteration,” etc)
• replace the current text with a link (or translation). this would be useful in im conversations or while writing blog posts.
• a “get-ayah” command (to say, “get ayah 1 of sura fatiha in arabic,” for example).

anyway, i’ll post up the code when i’ve added some improvements insha’Allah. if you want it before then, post a comment.