Glossarbot

[mbrampton]

Glossarbot is now released!  It is a content mambot that enormously leverages the power of having a glossary.  Use of the Glossary component is a prerequisite, and provides the mechanism to build a glossary of terms and their definitions.

Glossarbot automatically scans content, looking for terms that exist in the glossary.  The content is then presented with a popup definition for the term, automatically providing help to the reader who may not know all the special terms in use on a site. 

Glossarbot has a number of parameters to control how it functions and the appearance of the glossary definitions.  You can find Glossarbot at http://www.remository.com where you can also see examples of it in operation, and find other Glossary software.  At the site, you can also see an experimental integration of Glossarbot with Remository, to provide definitions of terms used in detailed descriptions of files in the repository.

Feedback on Glossarbot or any other aspect of the Glossary project - please use the dedicated forums at http://www.remository.com.

[eyezberg]

Cool.
Doesn't work on your frontpage with IE, works on download (remo) pages..?
Thanks for keeping this alive & improving on it!

[mbrampton]

Thanks for pointing that out!  I'm a bit stuck to fix that, as it is erratic.  I now suspect that it is to do with the Google ads, which change.  There is no reason why anything else would generate different JS one time rather than another.  Most of the time it works, and I can't pin down when it doesn't. 

Use Firefox!

[eyezberg]

I can't use FF, just moved and the comp' is still boxed, no way I can install anything on the one I am allowed to used

[designguru]

I really love this bot but after much testing I'm finding that its causing content to resize automatically in firefox to the approximate width of the javascript popup!?  Weird eh?  Anyone else have this problem?

Shame I can't use it... hard coding links to the glossary is a little silly when this amazing tool is out...

q.

[mbrampton]

Glad you like Glossarbot   Sorry it doesn't work as you would like.  I've never seen the problem you describe, but it sounds like an interaction between different Javascripts.  Glossarbot relies on the widely used overlib.  I suspect the most likely clashes would be the editor or the template.  Have you tried changing editors, just to see what happens?  Or even templates?

I'd be grateful if you could expand on your comments about the hard coded links with Glossary.  The Glossarbot mambot was developed specifically to work with the Glossary component.  What would you like it to work with?

[designguru]

I'll look into the possible javascript conflict - I'm using a simple bespoke template with hardly any javascript in it though, and am not using a wysiwyg editor, hmm, I'll throw the bot ontp my dev server and play around there, then post the conclusions...

re: hard-coded links - I just meant that glossarbot saves so much time in automatically referencing terms to the glossary, whereas the alternative is to go into the content and actually hyperlink text - taking time and running the risk of dead links...

q.

[mbrampton]

Oh, sorry, I see what you mean now.  Yes, doing it dynamically is a lot neater.  The only problem is that the overhead gets large when the size of the glossary grows.  The ideal solution to that would be to have two different opportunities for mambots, one on editing and one on loading.  Something like Glossarbot would then run only after an edit rather than every time the content is displayed.  The difficulty about this is that it would necessitate storing both processed and unprocessed content in the DB.

I hope you can find something to explain the odd display behaviour - I've never seen anything like that

[Terry]

Hi,

I logged in y our site but too much files to download. I don't know which is full package for install n using on Joomla 1.0.5 , please give me some instructions.

Thanks

[mbrampton]

You can find the Glossary component at http://www.remository.com/Remository/Do ... ssary_1.8/.

The Glossarbot mambot is to be found at http://www.remository.com/Remository/Do ... arbot_1.9/.

The Glossary searchbot is at http://www.remository.com/Remository/Do ... earch_bot/.

[Terry]

thanks for fast respond !!!

[mbrampton]

Glossarbot 1.91 is released today, with improved handling of words with accented characters.  Previously, these were not found if the accent was on the first or last letter.  The regular expression for the search has been improved, and will now cope with this situation. 

Also, some content pages might have no glossary popups, so this new version of Glossarbot suppresses the inclusion of the heavy Javascript of overlib when it is not needed.

[justinas]

maybe it would be usefull to make posibilities not only show description, but also enter the link to read more about the word or etc... Because we dont have a good autolink component in joomla. I think it would be usefull



thanks!

[mbrampton]

You can actually include links in the definition of terms, and they will show up in the popup definitions created by Glossarbot.  The only consideration is that you have to set the parameters for Glossarbot so that the definition will come up on a click, not just on mouseover.  If you only use mouseover, then there is no way to move the mouse to the link without losing the popup!  If using click and mouseover together, it is worth checking that your site works OK with IE, since IE doesn't always like two different mouse actions to be combined.

To see a link in a definition, look at the home page of http://www.remository.com and look for the popup on "Mambo".

[squig]

Hello, I like the look of this glossarbot, I just am reading about it for the first time today.

But the link for "mambo" as you gave as an example, you have to click it once to stop
the hover, then move again to the hover link. This is too confusing for the
visitor. Is there a way to implement an option to make when you click on the
main article link that it will go directly to the link, without having to click,
then click again on the hover link?

Or could you create a commercial plugin to make this possible for glossarbot?
Would also like the ability of removing the i icons
and having just the link show under the word by itself.

Thanks

[mbrampton]

Well, there is a logical constraint on what can be achieved.  Bringing up the definition of the term on a mouseclick is an option within Glossarbot.  Clearly if that option is set it would be contradictory to have another definition of what happens on a mouseclick for the same area of the screen.

I haven't verified this, but so far as I can see there is nothing to stop you configuring Glossarbot to bring up definitions only on mouseover, and then including glossary words within the text of an ordinary HTML link. 

Also from memory, the information icon is a configurable option for the Glossarbot mambot.

[justinas]

I have tested glossar on my site (newest versions) and found some bugs. But maybe these bugs are from mine tmeplate. I found that keywords gets blanked correctly, but not all times in IE popup window gets after pressing the keyword. Or, I found that description popup's after all banners loads.

for example in this link: http://www.vtv.lt/content/view/13597/112/

with FF OK.

who has ideas what is going on and how to correct it?

[mbrampton]

Have you got Glossarbot as the last (or near the last) of the content mambots?  The popup link looks to have been partially attacked by htmlentities or some similar process.

[justinas]

glossarbot is in the last position of "content" bots (only before "Mos pagination" bot), I'm using "Spaw" editor.

[justinas]

so who can help me with this problem? 

[Terry]

HI,

I've installed Glossary component, Glossarbot & search.bot success but when i put {glossar} into the content, they show blank content. So I have to drop {glossar} tag go out of the content then everything works fine again.

Please give me some instructions how to put {glossar} & put some helps file in the release.

Thanks

[focalguy]

Great idea and exactly what I have been looking for. Unfortunately I couldn't get it working with IE. I'll try on another box to make sure it's not some weird setting I have but if it works with IE for me I'll definitely use it.

[mbrampton]

Glossarbot itself works fine with IE, have a look at http://www.remository.com with IE to prove it

Problems can arise with Javascript interactions, though.  So a lot depends on what else you have installed.

Terry, I'm not sure what you're trying to do with {glossar}.

[Terry]

Sorry cause my english 's very poor.

For example:

Short Desc:

Blah blah blah

Full Desc:

Blah blah blah Blah blah blah Blah blah blah Blah blah blah {glossar}

Correct me if I go wrong !

Thanks

[focalguy]

Glossarbot itself works fine with IE, have a look at http://www.remository.com with IE to prove it

That's exactly what I did. I don't have the glossary component installed to test it on my own site but on remository.com in IE it doesn't work for me. I turned off Kerio firewall today which sometimes messes with things and it still doesn't do anything. Works fine in FF for me.

[focalguy]

Well it still doesn't work for me in IE on remository, but I checked it on some other computers and saw it worked so I got it going on my site now. Working great!

I am wondering about how it deals with full stops or periods. I had the term "I.T." for Information Technology and I used the "." so that it wouldn't pick up every instance of the word "it". Then I just noticed on some older content that anywhere I had the word "into", it was being changed into "I.T." so the "." was acting as a wildcard it appears. Is this intentional or just the way it works? Is there a way to use terms with a period in them?

[||NeX||]

I'm searching for something similiar. Instead of poppin up a window I need to make out of this term a link to a page (not a glossar page). Has anyone an idea where I can find such tool?

[Ka1N]

You could try autolinks... never used it tho.

http://www.netpresent.net/CMS/Products/ ... #Autolinks

[youngwilly]

great plugin - but I cant get the popup window closer than 10 cm away from link - and usually this is not in view of the page - the changes I have made to the config (putting the popup above the link) and changing the X and Y offset seem to have had no effect?