A Firefox extension to add
contacts, events and view
addresses
By
Vijay Rao under guidance of
Prof. Chris Pollett
Problem
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A lot of communication happens on the web
Contacts and Events data are found on the web
and no automated tool exists to harness this
information
Users have mail clients such as Outlook or
Thunderbird already installed
Need something that harnesses this client
Viewing several addresses together and have
ability to add additional landmarks
State of the Art
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Several applications such as “Contact Manager”
and “Contacts Sidebar” from Thunderbird exist
to manage contacts albeit manually
User manually types information such as name,
address, email etc into such tools to save it
To add events to the user’s calendar user has to
manually create an event or receive an invitation
Google toolbar detects addresses automatically
but the user can only view one address at a time
Solution
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A Firefox extension that extends the
browser to perform some of the above
mentioned tasks
User selects portions of text from a
webpage and expresses intent to either
add a contact or an event
The extension automatically parses the text
to identify names, addresses and email
addresses and converts the data into
industry standard formats such as VCF or
ICS format
The standard exchange format makes it
compatible with any mail client such as
Outlook or Thunderbird.
Use Google Maps API to geocode
addresses that are parsed from a web page
and display them
Technology
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Used the following technologies
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XUL
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XPCOM
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A component object technology used by Mozilla that is similar to
Microsoft COM and exposes the internal functionality of the browser
Javascript
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XML User Interface used by Mozilla to render the browser. Can be
extended easily by providing overlays
The scripting language used in the browser chrome to handle
events and programming
JSP
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To display addresses on Google Maps
Initial Challenges - Technology
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Firefox extension creation has great
documentation 
Firefox modules such as XPCOM are poorly
documented 
XPCOM exposes the underlying functionality of
Firefox
Had to dig the source code of Firefox to figure
stuff out
Used Regular Expressions but could get really
long and complex
Picture of source file
Initial Challenges - Parsing
Parsing web pages can get excruciating
painful
 Dependant on the web designer’s coding
style
 Navigating the DOM can get tricky due to
use of unnecessary elements in design of
the web page
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Add Contacts
Name
Street
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Parse Selected Text
Text could be of
several formats
Used Regular
Expressions for
STATE ZIP pattern to
identify addresses
City State Zip
Name
Street
City
State Zip
Street
City
State Zip
Phone
Email
Add Contacts (Cont’d.)
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Example of Regex that was used to locate
a State Zip pattern. Other building blocks
were built around this pattern
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/\b(AL|AK|AS|AZ|AR|CA|CO|CT|DC|DE|FM|FL|GA|GU|HI|I
D|IL|IN|IA|KS|KY|LA|ME|MH|MD|MA|MI|MN|MS|MO|MT|NE|
NV|NH|NJ|NM|NY|NC|ND|MP|OH|OK|OR|PW|PA|PR|RI|SC|SD
|TN|TX|VI|UT|VT|VA|WA|WV|WI|WY|AA|AE|AP)\b \b[09]{5}(-[0-9]{4})?\b/;
VCF Format
Industry standard format for exchange of
contact information
 Defines all attributes of a person such as
Name, Address, Phone Number, Email etc
 Recognized by all mail clients such as
Outlook, Thunderbird etc.
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VCF Format Sample
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BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:2.1
N:Google Inc.
FN:Google Inc.
TEL;WORK;VOICE:650-253-0000
TEL;FAX:650-253-0001
ADR;WORK:;;1600 Amphitheatre
Parkway;Mountain View ;CA;94043
END:VCARD
Add Events
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Parsing Selected Text to automatically
detect
 What
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What is the event about
 When
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When is the event supposed to happen
 Where
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Where is the event happening
Add Events (Contd.)
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Example of a Regex that was used to
locate a date time pattern
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((0?[1-9])|(1[012]))[/](0?[1-9]|[12][09]|3[01])[/](19|20)?\d\d\s\d\d?(:\d\d)?\s(AM|PM)(\
s(to|TO)\s(((0?[1-9])|(1[012]))[/](0?[1-9]|[12][09]|3[01])[/](19|20)?\d\d\s)?\d\d?(:\d\d)?\s(AM|PM)
)?/
ICS Calendar Format
Industry standard format for exchange of
calendar data such as events
 Defines attributes for the When, Where
and What
 Can specify rules for recurring events
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ICS Calendar Format Sample
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART:20080517T093000
DTEND:20080517T213000
LOCATION:233 W Santa Clara Street San Jose, CA 95113
DESCRIPTION:5/17/08 9:30 AM to 9:30 PM \n\nDetox Secret's Revealed One Day
Workshop\nDetox Secret's Revealed One Day Workshop\nWhether you're just starting out in the
health and diet arena, or you consider yourself a health expert, what I've found is that everybody
needs a little support and guidance. You may want to take better care of yourself but feel like
you're too busy to achieve optimal health & vitality. In fact, you might feel like you take 1 step
forward and 3 steps back when it comes to achieving optimal health. All my life, I struggled with
food, weight and body image. I know what it feels like to look in the mirror and not...\n
Hedley
Club - Hotel De Anza\n233 W Santa Clara Street\nSan Jose, CA 95113
SUMMARY:Detox Secret's Revealed One Day Workshop
BEGIN:VALARM
TRIGGER:-PT15M
ACTION:DISPLAY
DESCRIPTION:REMINDER
END:VALARM
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR
View Addresses
Works with Tabular display of addresses
 View all addresses in a cluster on Google
Maps
 View them in context of other landmarks
 Gives the user a context of reference to
the addresses he is looking at
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View Addresses (Contd.)
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Example of a regex that was used to
detect addresses on a web page
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\d+\s[\w\s]+\b(AVENUE|AV|AVE|WY|WAY|TE|DRIVE|DR|CO
URT|CT|Boulevard|Blvd|Road|RD|Street|ST|LANE|LN|TL
|EL CAMINO REAL|Highway|HWY)\b
Conclusion
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Several challenges were involved such as parsing of
information and detecting patterns in web pages
Contacts and Events can now be automatically parsed
and saved with a mere right click on the browser
Ability to add contacts and events as an extension to the
browser while leveraging the user’s mail client makes
the browser a natural extension to the user’s browsing
experience
Viewing addresses on Google Maps makes it very
inituitive as the user is no longer dependant on the
website’s ability to show the address on a map
Demo
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View Demo
Bibliography
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Jonah Bishop Firefox Toolbar Tutorial Retrieved May 01, 2008 from
http://www.borngeek.com/firefox/toolbar-tutorial/
Mark James Retrieved May 01,2008 from
http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/
Jan Goyaverts (28th Aug 2007) Regular Expression Tutorial Retrieved May 01,
2008 from http://www.regular-expressions.info/tutorial.html
Internet Mail Consortium Retrieved May 01, 2008 from
http://www.imc.org/pdi/vcard-21.txt
Internet Mail Consortium Retrieved May 01, 2008 from
http://www.imc.org/pdi/vcal-10.txt
Captain's Mozilla XUL LOG Firefox Toolbar tutorial Retrieved May 01, 2008
from http://www.captain.at/programming/xul/
Google Map APIs Retrieved May 01, 2008 from
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/
John Resig (2006) Pro Javascript Techniques Apress
Mozilla Developer Center XUL Overlays Retrieved May 01, 2008
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/XUL_Overlays
Mozilla Developer Center XPCOM Retrieved May 01, 2008
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/XPCOM
Q&A
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Thank You