Today I’ve received email from Mozilla that they’ve taken down my add-on. They did that by request from Facebook as trademark infringe claim, because my add-on had Facebook in its name. As to not let the same happen to my text hosting service I’ve changed its name to Text Hoster. I hope that it would be enough as linking to Facebook is really an option for my service, not the main feature.
Lets call it a week of Firefox add-ons:) I’ve created new one, this time it’s working with my own site (Facebook Text Hoster). Usage is very simple. Select the text you want to post on Facebook, right click and select “Post on Facebook” from context menu. You’ll be navigated to Facebook Text Hoster site where you only need to click Share button. It’s as simple as my previous two add-ons, the only difference is that this time I’m passing the text through encodeURIComponent function. It encodes your text before sending, so even if you want to post special characters they would be properly displayed.
Some time ago I’ve wanted to post excerpt from the book I was reading on Safari Books Online on my Facebook wall. Everyone who have ever used Safari knew that their books are displayed in special way, so you can only use their applet to copy text (probably they’ve done that to avoid people copying entire books). As a result you’ll obtain text which would reside in your clipboard. To publish it on Facebook you need just to paste it into appropriate field and…
Yes, Facebook limits text to be posted to 420 characters, so if you want to post something longer you need to find other way. And that’s how Text Hoster was born. It’s web application written by me to host text which can then be posted to Facebook. When you’ll go to fb.liox.eu you’ll find a field to enter your text and Send button, I believe it’s self explanatory. When you’ll click Send simple check is done to calculate length of your string, so if it’s less than 420 characters then it would not be hosted as there is no reason for it. Then you’ll see a page with your text, full link to your text, bit.ly shortened link and Facebook share button. After clicking Share you’ll be navigated to page as the one below.
It’s typical representation of Facebook generated link, as you can see there is shortened version of the text and bit.ly link, you can also add short description to it. Now click share again and voila your text is on your Facebook wall (of course you should be logged before sharing or you’ll be asked to log in), when somebody would click on it he would be navigated to hoster page and able to read full text.