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• Hack: "Friends of RedBubble" quick link for mybubble
  by Dave Pearson

  Inspired by this thread...

  Inspired by this thread I’ve knocked up a quick Greasemonkey hack that adds a Friends of RedBubble forum link the the quick links bar in mybubble. This, of course, is only useful to people who use Firefox, have Greasemonkey installed, and who are a member of the FoRB group. If that’s you and this sounds useful then pop over here to get a copy.

• What's your RedBubble Year?
  by Dave Pearson

  Note that I’ve also posted about this on the forums A little earlier today I noticed t…

  Note that I’ve also posted about this on the forums A little earlier today I noticed that the total number of pages of art on RedBubble was about to hit the 6,000 mark. And then I got to thinking that most people probably look at the first 10 or so pages and perhaps the last couple of pages (just to see what’s right at the “bottom” at any given moment). And then I got to thinking some more: somewhere around the middle there’s probably lots of stuff that most people don’t notice. So, how about picking a random page and bookmarking it (the content will change over time anyway). So how to pick one at “random”? Pick a year, perhaps? So, long story short, the pick a year and find art tool page thing Yeah, I know, it’s stupid… So, what’s your RedBubble year? Did you find anything fun? Edit: As of December 2007 this no longer works due to the fact that the “most popular ever” view is now restricted to just 30 pages. :-(

• Hack: RedBubble art list exporter for Microsoft Windows
  by Dave Pearson

  Ever since I wrote getrbart I’ve been toyi…

  Ever since I wrote getrbart I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a variation on that theme that might be useful to people who aren’t in the habit of getting “down and dirty” on their Windows machines, people who prefer not to install software they don’t know about and who don’t fancy running command line scripts. Last week I finally cracked and started work on something: This is a very early release of the software, it doesn’t do a whole lot of stuff. Things it does do: Lets you download a list of all your public art on RedBubble. Lets you save the list and load it again later. Lets you download it again (dur!) Lets you export the list as a comma-separated values file. Lets you export the list as a tab-separated values file. Lets you export the list as a set of HTML files, which might be useful for including in your own website (if you have one). Please note that this is a very early release of the tool. I’m making it available to people who are feeling adventurous (or foolish, depending on how you want to look at it) and who won’t mind reporting problems or giving suggestions. I can’t promise that it’ll do everything you want, but I can promise that it’ll be free to download, free to use and will always be free to use. If you fancy having a play head over here and have a read and, if you like what you see, download, install and have a play. PS: Yes, I know the application icon sucks in a big way. I’m a developer, not a designer. :P Version Details: v1.5.0.0 — Released 2008-05-21 / v1.4.0.0 — Released 2008-05-16 / v1.3.0.0 — Released 2008-05-16 / v1.2.0.0 — Released 2008-05-15 / v1.1.0.0 — Released 2008-05-14

• Hack: Simple BubbleMail Preview
  by Dave Pearson

  Inspired by this thread (although it is a subject that…

  Inspired by this thread (although it is a subject that has come up many times before) on the RedBubble forums I’ve created a Greasemonkey script to implement a very simple BubbleMail preview facility. It works by adding a preview button to your screen when you compose a new BubbleMail: When you press the button a preview of your BubbleMail will appear below the button: It’s not perfect. It has some issues. But it’s a start. See over here for more details about the script and to get a copy.

• Edit a work from the public view
  by Dave Pearson

  Last week PigleT and me were chatting about how annoying it is that you can’t edit a work on Red…

  Last week PigleT and me were chatting about how annoying it is that you can’t edit a work on RedBubble from the public view of the work. Diving into your art or clothing list to find the work, or hacking on its URL, can be a real pain. I then got to thinking that a Greasemonkey script could be the way to go, although this would have the downside that it would only work with Firefox (not that I see that as a downside). PigleT then had the cracking idea of using a bookmarklet. Smart idea because it would work with most browsers. And then we did the usual thing and let the good idea stay just like that: a good idea. And then I saw this thread and that got us going again. I tried one way (and failed) and PigleT tried another and it worked, but only for art. I then hacked it a little and made it work with art, clothing, journals and writing. The end result can be found over here. And it works. And works well. And solves a really annoying problem. There’s a couple of issues, not least of which is the fact that any number of strange things could happen if you used the bookmarklet while viewing something other than a public view of one of your works. Think of this as a feature rather than a bug. Edit: If you’re a Firefox user, and you have Greasemonkey installed (or are happy to), then this approach might be more to your taste.

• Hack: Better text formatting hints
  by Dave Pearson

  Time for another Greasemonkey hack. This one replaces the existing text formatting hint you get when making comments (the text that po…

  Time for another Greasemonkey hack. This one replaces the existing text formatting hint you get when making comments (the text that pops out when you click on the “Show text formatting help:” link below the comment box). Instead of the rather small bit of help you get webgrrl’s rather handy text formatting cheat sheet. See over here for more details.

• Hack: RedBubble Art Manager for Windows v1.2.0.0 Released
  by Dave Pearson

  I’ve just uploaded a new version of my RedBubble art manager application...

  I’ve just uploaded a new version of my RedBubble art manager application (this is v1.2.0.0). You can get it from here. The main change in this release is to enhance the “promote a work” dialog as per Julie Langford’s suggestion. Whereas before it simply let you promote with a simple image it now lets you promote with a simple image or one of the various product previews: Another change is that I’ve added a command that takes you directly to a work’s edit page on RedBubble, something I thought of after reading a comment made by Shelley Heath. Edit to add: I’ve just noticed a small bug. If you try and generate a promotion code for a mounted print with no border the resulting code doesn’t work. This is now fixed and will be available in the next release.

• Hack: Script to export an art list
  by Dave Pearson

  _Warning: This is a solution looking for a problem. It’s also aimed at people who have the ability to execute ruby...

  Warning: This is a solution looking for a problem. It’s also aimed at people who have the ability to execute ruby scripts. Edit: I’ve now used this tool to knock up a quick and dirty website as a simple test of the idea. I’ve seen a few people ask for this, and I’ve been after a way to do this myself: a facility on RedBubble that lets you export a full list of your works (or, at the very least, your art) so that you can do something else with it elsewhere. Today I got to thinking that it should be possible to scrape the data from my public art page. A bit of hacking with ruby later (using its “net/http” and “rexml/document” modules) and I had something that produced a very simple tab-delimited text file containing the work ID and the work title (given these two items it’s pretty easy to infer everything else). Like I say: this is a bit of a solution looking for a problem right now, but a quick test with Google Docs shows that the file imports nicely as a spreadsheet: I’m also thinking that such data could be handy as the starting point for writing a tool that generates some sort of front-end (on one of my own sites) into my works on RedBubble. If you think this sounds interesting, and if you’re able to run ruby scripts, pop over here and grab a copy.

• Hack: Random page of UK group art
  by Dave Pearson

  The UK group has quite a lot of art in it now (204 pages as of the time of writing) and it has…

  The UK group has quite a lot of art in it now (204 pages as of the time of writing) and it has been suggested that having so much art could work against a lot of the stuff that’s in there (a suggestion that makes sense to me). So, I got to thinking: it could be amusing to have a little tool that directs you to a random page. One line of PHP code later: The UK Group Art Random Page Selection Thingy Clicking on that link will take you to a random page. Note, however, that there’s a small problem with the above in that I need to hand-edit the max number of pages as the number of works increase. Still, for a quick one-line hack, it’s not so bad. I think.

• Hack: Move user actions further up a user's profile page
  by Dave Pearson

  This thread over in the forums raises an interesti…

  This thread over in the forums raises an interesting point: wouldn’t it be nice if the user actions for a user’s profile (the actions for adding them to your watchlist or to send them a BubbleMail) were in pretty much the same place all the time. Currently, because they come below the user-supplied part of the profile, and because some user-supplied text can be very long, you’ve got to go hunting down the page to find them. If they always came before the user-supplied text you’d always know where to look. Inspired by this issue I’ve written a Greasemonkey script to solve the problem. So, if you use Firefox, and if you’ve got Greasemonkey installed, have a look over here.

• Edit a work from the public view: Redux
  by Dave Pearson

  After messing with yesterday’s edit facility hack...

  After messing with yesterday’s edit facility hack I got to thinking that it would be fun to create a Greasemonkey script anyway. So I did This is different from the bookmarklet approach in that it adds the edit facility into the page of the work, like this:

• Hack: Random profile page link generator
  by Dave Pearson

  Inspired by yesterday’s little hack I got t…

  Inspired by yesterday’s little hack I got to thinking that it might be fun to have some way of pointing people at random aspects of your profile (random page of art, random page of clothing, random page of favourites, random page of people on your watchlist being the obvious ones). To make it work, to make it so it approaches being easy to use by most people, it needed some sort of link generator. Some hacking about with PHP later and here it is: The RedBubble random pages from your profile link generator thingy I’ve tried as best as I can to document how it works and how you can use it over on the page so I won’t write any more about that here. However, if you’re stuck, or find it confusing, or just need a hand with something, feel free to ask here. To give you an idea of what it ends up doing: View a random page of my art

• Playing with mapping
  by Dave Pearson

  Pretty much ever since I started an online gallery on my main website I’ve be…

  Pretty much ever since I started an online gallery on my main website I’ve being geotagging my photographs at the album level. This has meant that, as well as being able to provide locations per album, I’ve been able to provide views of my photographs via a Google Earth feed, Google Maps and Virtual Earth. Recently I’ve also been working on some ruby code that makes it easier for my to write querying scripts for the photography on my main site. This evening I realised that I could pull the two threads together and easily produce a map of my works on RedBubble where the work is on my main site and is geotagged. This is still in the early stages of testing but here’s a few examples of what I can done (fingers crossed they work for you): A map of my RedBubble works on my RedBubble wrapper site. My RedBubble works on Google Maps. My RedBubble works on Virtual Earth. My RedBubble works viewed inside Google Earth.

• Hack: RedBubble Art Manager for Windows v1.5.0.0 Released
  by Dave Pearson

  I’ve just uploaded a new version of my RedBubble art manager application...

  I’ve just uploaded a new version of my RedBubble art manager application (this is v1.5.0.0). You can get it from here. There are no new features in this release, all it does it tidy up a couple of loose ends and adds a little more error checking in places.

• Childish Things
  by Dave Pearson

  Given that RedBubble doesn’t have sets or collections at the moment (unlike another site I use a lot...

  Given that RedBubble doesn’t have sets or collections at the moment (unlike another site I use a lot) I’ve not really thought too much about “collecting” any images together, I’ve not really done much by way of having any kind of connection or theme to my images (other than the fact that most are taken around Lincolnshire). Elsewhere, on my other sites, I’ve tended to group my photographs together in a very mundane way (and I don’t use mundane as a pejorative there—mundane can be good) and, in the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking that I should look for any themes emerging in my photography and try and create collections that way too. This new account on RedBubble seems like as good a place as any to give this a go. So, today, I’ve been uploading and tagging images that relate to one theme that I’ve noticed and have, since noticing it, been adding to: Childish Things I’d like to describe the theme, I’d like to describe the point of the theme and the mood that goes with it, but it’s hard. I’m not a writer. It’s hard to put the mood into words. Perhaps I will at some point. Until then I can only hope that the photographs convey the mood.

• Hack: Public view tab in mybubble
  by Dave Pearson

  Another Greasemonkey hack for RedBubble. This one adds a “public view” tab to the row of tabs you see when you’re using mybubble...

  Another Greasemonkey hack for RedBubble. This one adds a “public view” tab to the row of tabs you see when you’re using mybubble. While there are other ways of getting to your public view (either via the “Things you can do” menu in your main mybubble view, or from the link right at the bottom of the page) this one works well for me because it puts it in a really obvious place: If this sounds handy, and you use Firefox, and you’ve got Greasemonkey installed, pop over here and give the script a go. Edit to add: This isn’t really needed so much now because your user name, up in the top right corner of every page when you’re logged in, is now a link to your public profile.

• Hack: "Add to Google Reader" button for all forum threads
  by Dave Pearson

  Yet another Greasemonkey hack for RedBubble. This one adds a Add to Google...

  Yet another Greasemonkey hack for RedBubble. This one adds a Add to Google button to all forum threads. This makes it easier to keep on top of threads you’re active in (if you’re a Google Reader user, obviously). If this sounds handy, and you use Firefox, and you’ve got Greasemonkey installed, pop over here and give the script a go.

• "Edit this work" hack updated
  by Dave Pearson

  I’ve uploaded version 0.2 of my work editing hack...

  I’ve uploaded version 0.2 of my work editing hack. This version fixes a problem with getting to the editing page for a work when you’ve arrived at that work’s page via a link in your activity log.

• Hack: RedBubble Art Manager for Windows v1.3.0.0 Released
  by Dave Pearson

  I’ve just uploaded a new version of my RedBubble art manager application...

  I’ve just uploaded a new version of my RedBubble art manager application (this is v1.3.0.0). You can get it from here. The main change in this release is the addition of a “Preview” button to the promotion code dialog: When you use this a new window will appear that shows a preview of the image that is generated, like this: Also, as per a suggestion from shawhouse, I’ve added size parameters to the laminated and framed prints. This does make a subtle difference to the final image. And now for a bug: reflexio has discovered that RBArtMan fails to download your art list if you’ve only got a single page of art. I’ll see about fixing this at some point today.

• Hack: RedBubble Art Manager for Windows v1.4.0.0 Released
  by Dave Pearson

  I’ve just uploaded a new version of my RedBubble art manager application...

  I’ve just uploaded a new version of my RedBubble art manager application (this is v1.4.0.0). You can get it from here. The main change in this release is the addition of profile promotion code generator dialog: It generates code that creates a banner for your profile just like you can find in your promote tab here on RedBubble. The main difference is that it’ll do Textile code (used here on RedBubble) and BBCode as well as HTML. This release also fixes a bug that was reported by reflexio. Cheers reflexio!

• "Edit this work" hack updated
  by Dave Pearson

  I’ve uploaded version 0.4 of my work editing hack...

  I’ve uploaded version 0.4 of my work editing hack. This version fixes a clash between my code and RedBubble’s code that stopped the zoom view of art working.

• "Edit this" and "Public Tab" hacks updated
  by Dave Pearson

  Today’s RedBubble Thursday broke a couple of…

  Today’s RedBubble Thursday broke a couple of my RedBubble hacks. The two affected were: Edit this work Public view tab I’ve fixed them both and have uploaded the new releases.

• "Edit this work" hack updated
  by Dave Pearson

  I’ve uploaded version 0.7 of my work editing hack...

  I’ve uploaded version 0.7 of my work editing hack. This version fixes a long-standing problem that has existed for some users ever since I released v0.3. The problem was that, for some users, the edit link would no longer appear. Thanks go to Gracey and Cathie Tranent for taking the time to report the problem and also for helping try and track it down. Extra thanks also go to Cathie for actually figuring out what the problem was (failing to do the “is this my work” check with a case-insensitive comparison, d’oh!).

• Hack: Move comment box to bottom of comments
  by Dave Pearson

  Now that I’ve finally got around to messing with Greasemonkey...

  Now that I’ve finally got around to messing with Greasemonkey I thought it might be fun to try and “fix” another RedBubble annoyance: the fact that, some time ago, the comment entry box for most works was moved to the top of the comments (personally I prefer it to be at the bottom for a couple of reasons). So, a quick bit of hacking later, and I’ve got it working. If you use Firefox, and have Greasemonkey installed, and prefer the comment entry box to be at the bottom of all the comments, give it a try. Edit: It seems that a change to RedBubble today (2007-12-13) has placed the comment box back at the bottom of the list of comments and, as such, this hack is no longer needed.