VBF - Birthday of Buddies Notifier

[akhileshbc]

Hi all,

Yesterday, I was free in the evening. So, just thought about trying to create something new. And thus after thinking for an idea, I came to this idea of having the birthday notifier. And started working on this project. I have asked the vBulletin team months ago, whether they have a mod or something that does shows the birthdays of buddies. But they said they don't have any. Since I have lots of friends, I miss some of their birthdays most of the time. So this extension would definitely helps me to greet them. But not sure whether others would also feel the same.

In simple words, this is a google chrome extension, that allows members of VBForums to get notified about their friend's birthdays. So, simply, when you access the home page of VBF, you will be able to see how many and who among your buddies are celebrating their birthday today.

There are two portions where the notification is shown:

1. The top right portion of index page :-
   This would show the number of friends that are celebrating their birthday today as well as a link to update the local db. When you click that "Update" button, it would update the local db with the usernames of your friends.
2. The bottom portion of the index page, where "Today's Birthdays" are displayed :-
   Here, the name of your buddies will be shown with a different color, just to notify you.

You can view the video demo(on usage) for details: http://youtu.be/BNlJDWHshxQ



Since Google Chrome allows extensions or apps to be installed via the Chrome Store, I tried creating a developer account. But I wasn't able to pay the one time developer fee of 5$, using my UCO Bank's Debit Card(VISA). I believe, they only take Credit Cards, which I don't have any at the moment. So, the following is a workaround.

Installation of Extension

So, the steps for installation is as follows:

1. Download the ZIP that contains the CRX file attached with this thread.
2. After downloading, extract it.
3. Then, open the extension page for the Google Chrome, where you manage the extensions. It is, Menu button --> Tools --> Extensions. Or simply enter this link in your address bar: chrome://chrome/extensions/
4. Then, drag and drop the CRX file you have downloaded from here, to the extensions page. It would show a popup saying about the permissions. Click Add and you have successfully installed.
5. Now goto vbforums.com and login to the site if you have not already!. Then click the "Update Friends DB" button on the top right corner of the VBForums's index page. This will add the usernames of your friends to the local db. After that, whenever you visit the home page, you will be notified of any birthdays of your friends.

Here's the video tutorial on how to install the extension in your Google Chrome browser: http://youtu.be/SWB_dONmh84



Permissions

Only two permissions will be asked by this extension.

• One is to access the local storage for vbforums.com in your browser. This is to access and update the Friends List, that this extension would use locally.
• And the second one is to create tabs. That is, when you click the "Page Action" icon, which will be visible when you visit the pages of vbforums.com, a popup will be shown with some info and has two links in it. One is to this thread and the other is to my VBF profile. So, inorder to open those two links when clicked, this "tabs" permission is needed.

Disclaimer

1. This chrome extension accesses the index page of VBForums.com, and would modify CSS and HTML elements. But these are restricted to the two portions which I mentioned above. jQuery library is inserted to the page for easily accessing the DOM elements.
2. This extension doesn't access any other servers. It only fetches the info from the vbforums.com pages.
3. No advertisements or anything from my side is inserted. But the popup box that opens when clicking the "Page Action" button(the one that appears in the right of address bar, when you access vbforums.com pages) has a line mentioning that the extension is developed by me and a link to my profile is also included.
4. Only link to my profile page(at VBForums) and the link to this thread, are included in the popupbox. No other links are there.

Download

Download the zip: vbf-chromeapp v1.1.zip (v1.1 : May 14, 2013)

Updates (v1.1) : May 14, 2013
-------------------------------------------
1. Included count of numbers when the db is updated.
2. Increased width of the top box showing the "Updated Friends DB", to accommodate the count of friends too.
3. Fixed bug with the home URL detection.
4. Moved resources images to separate folder, tidying up.

I hope this would be helpful for atleast some of you guys.
Feel free to post your suggestions/comments/criticisms/bugs in this thread.