home - download - space_ghetto - details

Ghetto Blaster details

Some notes about the history and inner workings of Ghetto Blaster.

Contact

You can contact me with any suggestions, questions, or bug reports at HangOnStChristopher@gblast.org. When reporting a bug, please copy and paste the Firefox build string from the about page (looks something like "Mozilla/5.0 ... a bunch of stuff ... Firefox/3.0.1"). You get to this page by typing "about:" into the address bar.

History

Ghetto Blaster was originally created by jerrygarciuh for posting to space_ghetto on LiveJournal. As space_ghetto has moved around, it's been modified by him, nigamajiga, and HangOnStChristopher to keep up. DRZ contributed the video posting, tab reuse, and picture rehosting code, and inspired the multiple image feature and Flickr fix. It is currently being maintained by HangOnStChristopher.

How it works

Ghetto Blaster simply opens a new tab and goes to the posting form for the selected site. It generates the HTML for a post using the image clicked on by the user. The constructed HTML looks something like this:

<p><img src="http://elsewhere.example.net/image-you-clicked-on.jpg"></p>
<p><a href="http://www.gblast.org/" style="font-size: xx-small">Posted with Ghetto Blaster 12.5</a></p>

The Javascript waits for the posting form to load, then inserts the text into the appropriate box on the form. Multiple images/videos (up to nine) can be posted by keeping the tab open and blasting again.

Versions of Ghetto Blaster prior to 10.0 used a different method for posting. A GET request was submitted to the s_g/LJ posting page, and the post text encoded and assigned to a parameter in the URL. (This field was "serendipity[body]" for Serendipity, "event" for LiveJournal.) The server took care of inserting the submitted data into the box on the posting page.

The new design is more flexible in that it can be used to fill in a posting form for any web site, potentially making Ghetto Blaster usable anywhere. Right now it is still hard-coded for space_ghetto and LiveJournal, but future plans are to set up a preferences system to allow the user to add new sites.

Changelog

version 13.0: still prerelease
- two ghettos now, updated for posting to both
- s_g path modified for Drupal on spaceghetto.st
- s_g path modified for Drupal on spaceghetto.net/sg
- added roulette feature to randomly post to one or the other
- bumped up max allowable Firefox version to 4.*

version 12.8: 2011-01-30
- added capability for picture rehosting to spaceghetto.org or Picrandom
- bumped up max allowable Firefox version to 4.0.*

version 12.7: 2010-08-21
- made Flickr fix more generic to handle variations in their page structure

version 12.6: 2010-08-14
- fixed blasting of images from Flickr

version 12.5: 2010-03-20
- add ability to post multiple images (appending images to post)
- bumped up max allowable Firefox version to 3.6.*
- auto-preview (s_g only)

version 12.3: 2009-08-23
- s_g path modified for Drupal on spaceghetto.st/sgd
- added capability to post video
- will now reuse an open tab if one is available

version 10.0: final version never released
- load and fill in posting form instead of passing text as a GET parameter
- s_g path modified for Drupal on spaceghetto.net/sgd
- pointed extension homepage and tagline links to www.gblast.org
- bumped up max allowable Firefox version to 3.5.*
- dropped check to see if user is logged in to s_g
- stopped using jar file for overlay and skin content

version 9.0: 2008-10-12
- modified for Serendipity on spaceghetto.net/sandbox
- try to detect whether user is logged in to s_g by looking at cookies
- added "Posted with Ghetto Blaster" tagline to posts
- cleaned out a bunch of cruft

version 8.5
- bumped up max allowable Firefox version to 3.0.*
- eliminated install.js, converted over completely to newer extension
  packaging style
- cleaned up somewhat

version 8.0
- modified for Serendipity on spaceghetto.org/enter/sandcastle

version 0.6
- modified for Serendipity on sg.gn.net.au
- removed option to use imgred.com to avoid direct hotlinking
- restored avatar support

version 0.5
- modified for Serendipity on spaceghetto.org/serendipity
- removed avatar support

version 0.4
- added LJ posting back in w/no journal selected

version 0.3
- modified for WordPress on pockyway.com instead of LJ
- if user right-clicks on page with background image, use that image
- add preferences dialog for user to specify avatar to prepend to post
- attempted to add code to hide menu items when not on an image or a page
  with a background image, but it breaks stuff and is commented out

version 0.2
- modified for new LJ community (sp4c3_gh3tt0)

home - download - space_ghetto - details

Page last updated 2011-06-11