Slash-MozBar : A "My Sidebar" generator for Mozilla.

  Born from a story on Slashcode.com, this utility is a snap-in task for 
Slashcode's "slashd" daemon.  The goal of this project is to take the 
generated "sitename".xml file and create a pleasant-looking table for use in 
a Mozilla/NS6.0+ browser's side bar.  

  This code has been tested on Linux using perl 5.6.1 and Slashcode > 2.x
Obviously, things work better if Slash is installed prior to Slash-MozBar ;)

Things to change:

* Timing is important.  You want this task to run shortly after the 
  open_backend task.  Timing can be controlled by the "$task{$me}{timespec}"
  var, with date/time format like Unix cron.

* The script takes the value of the Slash variable "sitename" for use in the
  generated page title.

* IF you are not using the image resize:

  * Comment out/remove the "use Image::Magick" line from "slash_mozbar.pl",
    and set "$GL_RSZ" to 0.

  * Make sure you manually craft resized copies of your topic icons to place 
    in the images/mozbar directory.  Aim for a size of 30x30 to make sure there
    is enough room left in the bar for text ;)

  * Images in the images/mozbar directory should have the same name as the 
    actual topic images.

* IF you are resizing images:

  * Make sure ImageMagick and its perl modules are installed.
 
  * The destination directory for resized images (defaults to images/mozbar)
    needs to be writable by your Slash user.

  * "use Image::Magick" needs to be uncommented and "$GL_RSZ" needs to be 
    non-zero (preferably 1).

Intructions:
  
1. If you want to have resize capability, make sure ImageMagick/PerlMagick
   is installed.  Packages can be downloaded from http://www.imagemagick.org/

2. XML::Parser needs to be installed, available from your local CPAN mirror to
   be built by hand or easily installed using perl's CPAN module.

   Time::Local is now required, but should be included as part of your perl
   installation.  If you do not have it for some reason, grab it from CPAN.

3. Create a directory named "mozbar" under your existing Slash site's "images"
   subdirectory.  Usually this is located under:

   <slash root>/sites/<site url>/htdocs/

   If you are using the image resize feature, make sure the "mozbar" directory
   is writeable by your Slash user.

4. Copy div.png and spacer.png into the newly-created "images/mozbar/"
   directory.  These images are used to provide the grey line separator and 
   table spacing, respectively.

5. Create a file called "mozbar.html" in your site rootdir, allowing the Slash 
   user write access.  This file will be populated every half hour with the 
   latest links/images/etc.

6. Copy slash_mozbar.pl into your site's tasks directory, usually:

   <slash home>/site/<site url>/tasks/

   Make sure slash_mozbar.pl is executable by slashd.  A permission set of 0755
   should be sufficient.

7. Test the installtion using the Slashcode-supplied "runtask" script, located
   in the <slash home>/bin directory.  Monitor the site slashd log file for 
   any errors (<slash home>/site/<site url>/logs/slashd.log).

   Call up the resulting http://your.slash.site/mozbar.html in a browser and 
   verify that it looks correct, based on the information in your
   "sitename.xml" file.

8. Assuming no errors are encountered, restart slashd with an 
   /etc/init.d/slashd restart (or a stop; start).

9. When ready to go "public", use the sample code from add_tab.html to create
   a button or link on your Slash site so users can quickly add your tab to 
   their Mozilla/Netscape sidebar. 


To do:

- Support other resize utils besides ImageMagick.
- More error checking.
- Use template instead of hard-coding output format.
- Don't resize images if they already exist in mozbar subdir?
- Allow for header image instead of "$constants->{sitename} Headlines"

Questions/Comments/Bugs to: Scott Sorrentino <dude@perldude.org>

Special thanks go to Colin Viebrock for bringing up the concept of a 
Mozilla sidebar and his constant help in the HTML design process.

This code is freely distributable and modifiable under the GPL, included as
file "COPYING".