JavaScript Archives | Vegard Skjefstad

I made a Google Translate Firefox extension that lets you translate between any two language from the Firefox address bar. Awesome!

When I write for this site, I use many different tools¹. To spice up the language a little, I use Thesaurus.com. Dictionary.com is a life saver when I want to look up definitions of words. And Google Translate is handy because English is my second language, and I often find myself in need of a little translation from Norwegian.

Both Thesaurus.com and Dictionary.com are easily available through Firefox search engine integrations. I simply open a new tab, hit either t for thesaurus or d for dictionary, enter the word I’m looking for, and the respective site in queried. It’s all very convenient. For a while I’ve been looking for a similar solution for Google Translate, but I’ve found none. The Firefox extensions that exist for Google Translate are either massive feature creeps, or very limited.

I needed a simple extension that made it possible to translate between any of the languages supported by Google Translate. And what’s the programmer’s approach when we have a problem that isn’t already solved by someone else? We solve it ourselves, of course!

There are a lot of mobile platforms out there: iOS, Android, Windows Phone, webOS, BlackBerry and Symbian, just to mention a few. In my honest opinion, there are way too many and a good thing at least two of these, webOS and Symbian, will disappear off the face of the Earth in the not-so-distant future. Looking into the crystal ball, I’d say that the future for Windows Phone also looks bleak: Windows Phone 7 sales numbers are, to put it mildly, disappointing and if it wasn’t for the fact that Microsoft can bleed pile upon pile of cash before they have to throw in the towel, the Windows Phone platform would have been taken behind the barn a long time ago. It was a great leap from the unbelievably crappy Windows Mobile platform, but as long as you don’t sell any handsets you’re not making any money, no matter how huge the potential is. What might turn the tide for Windows Phone, though, is Microsoft’s partnership with Nokia, which is also getting pretty desperate not to get completely squeezed out of the smart phone market, or that Windows Phone 7.5 Mango is some sort of magic money making wand, or that Steve Jobs turned out to mean more to Apple’s success than he should or that the Android platform continues to dig itself into a segmentation hole. Didn’t we learn anything at all from J2ME?

But I digress already.

Vegard Skjefstad

www.vegard.net

Tag: JavaScript

Google Translate Firefox Extension

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