In the last month a new trend appeared on the internet, instant (ne Google Instant, iTunes Instant, AppOfTheDay Instant). It wasn’t just good enough to have an AJAX-y interface (where contents of the page are loaded asynchronously) but now they had to be loaded on every keystroke. However I’m late to the game I have my own contribution, Wikipedia Instant for Chrome.
Rationale.
I’m often at websites reading about a topic and think, “Hey, it would be great to be able to have Wikipedia right here without leaving this page!” And so, as a Chrome extension, it works as advertised.
Use.
Once installed (Mac, Windows, and Linux versions of Chrome; this is written in Javascript and is portable) you just click the ‘W’ icon, between the omni-box and the wrench icon, and Wikipedia pops-up. When you type a phrase it will check to see that an article exists and offer suggestions, then loads the article you select. All internal Wikilinks (to other articles) will load inside itself.
Features.
- This extension offers 1-click access to Wikipedia
- Instant-ized access to Wikipedia and OpenSearch suggestions
- Uses the mobile version of Wikipedia as it’s already formatted for a small window.
- Is cross-platform, written in Javascript and CSS.
- Preserves Wiki-formatting, layout, and section links (#ash links)
Future.
As of now, version 0.5, Wikipedia Instant:
- …doesn’t open external links. These links when clicked don’t do anything.
- …doesn’t have a 404 for not finding articles or suggestions from Wikipedia. This isn’t a huge issue if you’re close to a spelling or topic, but could cause some problems.
- …doesn’t remember your history, state (currently open page), or offer any options.
- …is semi-slow. The algorithm I’m using to convert Wikilinks isn’t very efficient (it’s a giant nested loop = gross). Additionally there is a lot of loaded code every time you open it (click the ‘W’ icon) — the whole jQuery library, and for the suggestions where the box is auto-filled on mouse-over is a nasty ‘onMouseOver’ event which could perform poorly on slow systems.
- …doesn’t show progress for loading articles.
- …doesn’t sanitize input.
- …uses not-so-elegant links (anchored Javascript); this shouldn’t be a problem as Chrome is the only target for this (duh) but it could work better.
- …doesn’t preserve the collapsable sub-headings found on the Wikipedia mobile site. This makes for a lot of scrolling.
- …has a bug where some pages will scroll on the x-axis (although only an issue if this is enabled on your computer)
As logic follows, these shortcomings will be morphed into features. Additionally, functionality will be added to chose to use Wikipedia Simple and other languages.
Installation.
I thought you’d never ask. You can click this link and it will download (49KB) and prompt you to install. If you wish to disable or uninstall this, you go under the wrench menu > Tools > Extensions and click uninstall on this extension.
