Chofter Applications

This site contains miscellaneous applications developed in conjunction with Chofter.com, the next generation search portal.

All applications are free to use and modify as you see fit.

Some contain open source elements, but in general are not open source. Mostly they are simple applications that perform a single task that people will hopefully find useful.

O2 Broadband Usage Checker

The O2 Broadband Usage Checker (OBUC) is a tool for keeping track of the amount you have downloaded using O2 Mobile Broadband in Ireland.

The tool provided by O2 to keep track of your mobile broadband usage is far from accurate, and only works on a single machine. If you use multiple computers, it is even more inaccurate.

This application logs in to the O2 website to retrieve the correct amount that has been downloaded, helping you to avoid accidentally going over your usage limit.

OBUC is an Adobe Air application, which means that it is runs from your desktop using the Air framework provided by Adobe. If it is not already installed, you can download Adobe Air at http://get.adobe.com/air/.

To check your usage, OBUC requires your phone number and password. While your phone number is cached for ease of use, at no point is your password stored, or sent to any other website other than O2. You can verify this (with a little knowledge of JavaScript) by renaming the O2.air file to O2.zip, and opening with with an application like WinZip. All the code is contained in the O2Checker.html file, and is commented to explain each step.

Download

Download OBUC from HERE, and double click on it.

DaftMonkey is a little script that makes using Daft.ie, the highly popular Irish property site, far more quick and useful.

It works with Mozilla Firefox, using a very popular extension called Greasemonkey.

Daft.ie is an extremely useful website for finding all types of accomodation in Ireland, including rental, sharing, buying, commercial etc. However, while it completely free to use and advertise on, and more or less the entire country uses it, it is in many ways a very simple website, and has not kept up with many of the cool innovations on the Web.

What Does DaftMonkey Give Me?

That is where DaftMonkey comes in! DaftMonkey greatly enhances search result pages in Daft.ie. The basic idea is that you should never have to leave the list of results in order to see the pictures or details of a property. DaftMonkey

  • Loads 110 results on a page, rather than just 10, so you can scan many more results quickly
  • Loads all available pictures as thumbnails for each result, so you don't have to leave the search result page to see them
  • Fetches the properties details when you click the "view more details" button and inserts them into the search result, rather than taking you to another page.
  • Shows a large version of a picture when a thumbnail is clicked, using a cool Lightbox widget
  • Allows you to filter out all properties that don't have pictures
  • Allows you to filter out results based on keywords. For example, if you want to live in northside Dublin, but not in Howth, simply type "howth" into the filter box, and all results for there are removed.

The video below shows a demo of DaftMonkey. You can see a high definition version at http://vimeo.com/3308725

Installing the DaftMonkey script only takes a couple of clicks.

  1. First you must be using Mozilla Firefox, as it is the only browser that offers the ability to modify websites using just your browser. You can get it a http://www.getfirefox.com
  2. Secondly you'll need to install the GreaseMonkey extension for Firefox. You can get it at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748. Simply click on the "Add to Firefox" button and it'll install automatically.
  3. Finally, click the following link to install DaftMonkey: INSTALL DAFTMONKEY
  1. DaftMonkey places a toolbar on all search result pages.
  2. Checking the "Load All Results" checkbox loads the next 100 results into the page.
  3. Checking the "Only Show With Photos" checkbox hides any property that doesn't have one or more photos attached to it.
  4. Checking the "Load Photos" checkbox loads every photo available for each property, and inserts it to the right of each property.
  5. Clicking the "view more details" link at the bottom of each result will no longer take you to another page. It now retrieves the property details and inserts them under the property listing. You can hide the details again by clicking the link one more time.
  6. Typing in the "Filter Results" text box removes any results whose title matches the typed text. You can filter out multiple areas by separating them with commas. E.g. "howth" will filter all properties from Howth, and "howth,castleknock" will filter out both Howth and Castleknock.

Skip Welcome Screen GreaseMonkey Script

The SkipWelcomeScreen GreaseMonkey script is a simple utility for Firefox that automatically skips those annoying "Welcome Screens", otherwise known as full page advertisements, that many websites have unfortunately begun to use. It works on the majority of websites, and currently works for the English language. You can easily edit the script in any text editor to add translations however.

Installing script only takes a couple of clicks.

  1. First you must be using Mozilla Firefox, as it is the only browser that offers the ability to modify websites using just your browser. You can get it a http://www.getfirefox.com
  2. Secondly you'll need to install the GreaseMonkey extension for Firefox. You can get it at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748. Simply click on the "Add to Firefox" button and it'll install automatically.
  3. Finally, click the following link to install SkipWelcomeScreen: INSTALL SKIPWELCOMESCREEN

EasyCheckboxes GreaseMonkey Script

The EasyCheckboxes GreaseMonkey script is a simple utility for Firefox that makes it much easier for you to check, uncheck and toggle checkboxes on a web page.

When the mouse is over a checkbox, it shows an icon above it. If you hover over this, a menu is shown that lets you check, uncheck or toggle some checkboxes.

Two sets of commands are are available.

  • The top section only operates on checkboxes directly above and below the selected checkbox. This is useful when there are a list of items laid out in rows, and you want to select all of them. If there are other checkboxes on the page, including checkboxes in other tables and containers, these will not be affected. You can think of this as a "context aware" selection.
  • The bottom section operates on absolutely all checkboxes on the page.

Installing script only takes a couple of clicks.

  1. First you must be using Mozilla Firefox, as it is the only browser that offers the ability to modify websites using just your browser. You can get it a http://www.getfirefox.com
  2. Secondly you'll need to install the GreaseMonkey extension for Firefox. You can get it at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748. Simply click on the "Add to Firefox" button and it'll install automatically.
  3. Finally, click the following link to install EasyCheckboxes: INSTALL EasyCheckboxes

FancifiedGalleries GreaseMonkey Script

The FancifiedGalleries GreaseMonkey script is a simple utility for Firefox that makes it much easier for you to browse through HTML picture galleries.

The majority of picture, or photo, galleries on the web are simple and HTML based. This means that when clicking "Next Image" over and over, the page reloads many times, which can be slow. Also, you often have to scroll the page each time to see the picture, which is very annoying.

See the video below for a demonstration.

FancifiedGalleries fixes this by turning most simple HTML picture galleries into much improved Ajax galleries. To use it:

  • Hover the mouse over the main image in the gallery. A little icon is shown at the top-left of the image.
  • Clicking the icon activates the script, and highlights the main image in red
  • Now click any thumbnail image, or the 'Next' and 'Previous' links. Instead of changing to another web page, the image is loaded immediately.

Installing script only takes a couple of clicks.

  1. First you must be using Mozilla Firefox, as it is the only browser that offers the ability to modify websites using just your browser. You can get it a http://www.getfirefox.com
  2. Secondly you'll need to install the GreaseMonkey extension for Firefox. You can get it at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748. Simply click on the "Add to Firefox" button and it'll install automatically.
  3. Finally, click the following link to install FancifiedGalleries: INSTALL FancifiedGalleries

Quick Search

The Quick Search browser extension from Chofter.com makes it much faster to find what it is you are looking for.

Quick Search integrates your browser, be it Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer etc, with Google.com, so that results appear as you type. You no longer have to open a new tab to display results, no more typing in the address of a search engine, then typing your search text, THEN navigating to another page.

Just get your results NOW. Click Here To Test QuickSearch

Q. What does it do exactly?
Quick Search inserts a search box at the top right of your page, and moves the cursor into it. As you type, results are pulled from Google and displayed instantly for you.

Q. Why is it better than what I use now?
It is simply much quicker to find what you want. Fewer clicks (no clicks!), instant response, no search portals involved at all. Try it, you'll be surprised at how quick and easy it makes things.

Q. OK, so how do I use it?
Once it's installed (see below for the simple instructions), you simply press Ctrl + Alt + F to search the whole web, or press Ctrl + Alt + S to just search the website that you are currently looking at. Then you just start typing.

Q. Right, that all sounds great, but how do I know that I really, really need this?
If you're a normal web user, Quick Search can really speed up your web browsing. However if you're the type of person who prefers using the keyboard over the mouse, or if you are a user with a vision impairment, the you need Quick Search. Quick Search is a very quick way to find things on the web using only the keyboard. All links are fully accessible and suitable for screen readers.

See the video below for a demonstration.

Installation Instructions

Installing on Firefox

  1. To install on Firefox, first you'll need to install the GreaseMonkey extension for Firefox. You can get it at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748. Simply click on the "Add to Firefox" button and it'll install automatically.
  2. Once you have GreaseMonkey installed, click the following link to install Quick Search: INSTALL Quick Search

Installation on Google Chrome

To install on Google Chrome, you will need to be using the Developer version of the browser. This is because the extensions mechanism for Chrome is still in development, and has not been released as a stable public release.

  1. Install the Developer Release of Google Chrome from here - http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html?extra=devchannel . It's very simple and only takes a minute. You can also read the full details about the developer version of Chrome at http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel
  2. One it is installed, change the shortcut that you click to open Chrome by adding "--enable-extensions", e.g.
    "C:\Documents and Settings\<myUserName>\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --enable-extensions
  3. Start up Chrome, and open the save the following file: Install Quick Search On Chrome. Once it is saved, you should be prompted by the browser if you want to install it. Say Yes!

Installation on Internet Explorer

Due to the fact that Internet Explorer does not have a supportable extension mechanism, Quick Search works only as a Bookmarklet in that browser. This means that it cannot be launched by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F, and instead must be launched by clicking a link.

Drag the following link to your Bookmarks Toolbar, Drag Me To Bookmarks Toolbar

Clicking on this link when you're in any web page will bring up the Quick Search input box.

DublinBiker.com

DublinBiker.com is a mobile site for users of the DublinBikes.ie bicycle scheme in Dublin, Ireland. This is a very useful bike rental scheme with stations all over the city. However it can sometimes be difficult to find a station either with bikes or with space to park the bike you're on while on the move

DublinBiker.com solves this problem by showing all the stations with the number of bikes and spaces in each, with up to the minute data. Clicking on any of the stations will also give you directions to it from where you are.

You can also choose to sort the stations by their distance from where you currently are. This is supported on any browser that has GeoLocation enabled, such as WebKit in the iPhone, as well as Firefox 3.5.

Irish Rain for the Palm Pre & Pixi

Irish Rain is a useful free weather application for the Palm Pre & Pixi smartphones. It shows an animated map of the rain over Ireland for the last three hours. This makes it really easy to know if it is going to rain any time soon. Rather than trusting vague weather forecasts to know whether it's worth going for a game of tennis, or a long walk to the shop, you can see where the rain is right NOW, and see where it's going.

Irish Rain also includes tomorrow's weather forecast for all the main cities in Ireland.

Irish Rain is available for download from the Palm App Catalog. Simply open the App Catalog on your phone, search for "Irish Rain", and click to install.