To those who have installed and/or have been using Plurkybar, thank you! You might have noticed the automatic upgrade that happened … from 0.01 to 0.02. Some features added/corrected for 0.02 are the following:

• In-sidebar response read and reply capability, including back navigation
• Avatars
• Better interface with header elements in free flow
• Better icon menu with tooltips
• Links in posts now open in a new window and not in the sidebar itself

I am thinking whether allowing detaching of the sidebar would prove to be useful. Targetted link opening is on the way. Also, are you guys happy with the keyboard shortcut? Or should it be changed to something else? Please let me know.

You can install Plurkybar 0.02 from here or through the Mozilla Add-ons site.

Thank you once again!

I can perhaps blame trace my affinity to Plurk to my nephew as well as blogger friends. Having been a twitter (is that what you call someone who uses Twitter?), I instantly fell in love with the ease, community and features of Plurk. What got me hooked were two features: a) the timeline, and b) the threaded discussions. But there was one thing missing. When I twit, I more often than not use a self-hacked version of TwitKit, a Firefox sidebar, to access Twitter posts as well as to post quick twits (redundant!). I was hoping to find a similar, if not better, that works with Plurk. Much to my dismay, I only found this one! And, I do mean one (1)! The implementation was relatively simple. It basically just opens Plurk Mobile in the sidebar and that’s it. The idea was good — it was there — but I thought, perhaps I could try my hand on this. Long story short, I came up with …

Plurkybar is “an immensely simple Plurk sidebar for Firefox.” Just download it and you’ll be able to plurk within Firefox without having to have a dedicated window or tab. It automatically refreshes every minute so that you’re assured that you get the hottest, freshest, latest plurks available in your timeline.

Plurkybar log-in. Authentication is done on the Plurk servers and no data is stored on the Plurkybar site.

The Plurkybar interface. Go ahead and plurk!

I sincerely hope you like what you see. If you do, you can

Instructions

1. To install, you’d need to click on the download link above. You will be asked to either open the file with Firefox (or another program), or save the file. Select “Open with Firefox” if you want to install it there and then, or “Save File” to install it later. I personally suggest doing the former.

   

   If you selected the former, after downloading, Plurkybar would fire-up the install procedure. If you selected the latter, you’d need to kick-start the install. To start the install manually, locate where the plurkybar.xpi file has been downloaded and double click on the file.

   

   Once you see the Software Installation dialog box, click on Install Now.

2. If you have Firefox running, Firefox might ask you to restart your browser for the install to complete. Please restart.
3. Once Firefox has restarted, you can go to View > Sidebar > Plurkybar to fire it up. Else, you can hit Ctrl + Shift + P to have a Plurkybar day!

   

More notes …

Please understand that Plurkybar is at version 0.01 for a reason. Plurkybar has a very long TODO list. It is not perfect and still needs much work. If you are a developer and would like to contribute, please do let me know. I might make this project open for collaboration.

Your feedback, comments and/or suggestions are highly appreciated. Thank you!