Aardvark Firefox Extension
The Aardvark Firefox extension is a tool for web developers/designers as well as casual users.
If you get a prompt about installing software, click Edit Options, click Allow, then click OK. Click Install Now again and Aardvark should be installed just like any other extension.New! Aardvark as a bookmarklet....
In addition to working in Firefox 2.0, Aardvark now works -- if imperfectly sometimes -- as a "bookmarklet". This means you just bookmark a link, and you are good to go. Just pick the bookmarklet whenever you need Aardvarkability.
It works in Safari, and might just work in IE, which I'll confirm next time I decide to boot up windows.
Go to this page for the bookmarkable link and to learn more.
And by the way, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukuh....and a Joyful Yuletide and Saturnalia for all my Pagan friends!
-rob
rob@karmatics.com
12/22/06
Using Aardvark
Once you have installed Aardvark as an extension (as opposed to running the demo), start it by right-clicking on the page and choosing "Start Aardvark" from the menu. The extension will run until you leave, refresh, or stop it by pressing “Q” for quit.
As you glide the mouse over the page, you will see a red rectangle framing each element under the cursor. You will also see a little yellow caption showing the HTML element type and its class or id if they exist.
The Keystrokes
You can then press certain keys on the keyboard (as indicated below) to do various things, such as delete the selected element from the page, isolate the element, or move the selection rectangle outward to the containing element.
| W | Wider | Select a wider area. For instance, if you have selected a table cell, pressing W will select the table row |
|---|---|---|
| N | Narrower | Undo the last "Wider" command |
| Q | Quit | Quit Aardvark (that is, stop selecting elements), until you restart it from the menu |
| U | Undo | Undo the last "remove" or "isolate" command. |
| R | Remove | Delete the selected element |
| K | Kill | Delete the selected element permanently |
| I | Isolate | Delete everything surrounding the selected element |
| B | Black on white | Set the element (and all contained elements) to be black text on white background |
| C | Colorize | Sets the element's background to a random color |
| V | View Source | Shows the source code of the element (with indenting and color highlighting) |
| D | "De-widthify" | Removes any fixed width values from the element (and any contained elements) |
| P | Paste | Insert the last removed element before the current selected element |
| H | Help | Show (or hide) the list of keystrokes |
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Copyright ©2005-2006 Karmatics, Inc., All Rights Reserved.
Things You Can Do With Aardvark
- Clean up unwanted banners and surrounding "fluff," especially prior to printing a page
- See how the page is created, block by block
- View the source code of one or more elements
Cool new stuff in version 2.0
Aardvark is now designed to also run as a "bookmarklet", which means IE and Safari get some Aardvark love. It is also now designed to be highly extensible....anyone who can write javascript can make it do just about anything they want. Web developers will be able to have it call functions in their own web applications on the selected elements, which can be extremely useful for debugging. Please give me a week or so to document the new tricks and give it a bit more testing in bookmarklet mode.
If you install the excellent R.I.P., (Remove It Permanently) extension, you can use the Kill command to permanently remove items from a page. It is often easier to use Aardvark for this rather than the one built into R.I.P., thanks to Aardvark's "Wider" command.
Most of the other improvements in version 2.0 are minor and/or cosmetic: a better help screen, smarter display of the little element tag, better undo, ability to go "narrower" multiple steps, etc.