babelhut.com » Barra de Español

Barra de Español 1.2 is now available!

Peter — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:51:25 +0000

The latest version of Barra de Español is now available from addons.mozilla.org! Those of you who already have an older version installed should see an update notification in Firefox soon, if you haven’t already.

What’s new in 1.2? The biggest new feature is the ability to find pronunciations of Spanish words. You can select a word on any web page, right-click on it, and choose “Pronunciar,” or you may type in the word into the toolbar’s search box and select “Pronunciar” from the dropdown to the right. The pronunciations are found on forvo.com.

Version 1.2 also adds support for Firefox 3.6, and drops support for Firefox versions below 2.0. Inserting the accented characters now works in rich text email editors such as Gmail and Yahoo mail. I’ve also added a new video link to fomny.com.

Check it out and feel free to leave feedback in the comments!

Barra de Español is now in the Public list on addons.mozilla.org

Peter — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 16:44:48 +0000

I received an email today from the Mozilla Add-ons group that Barra de Español has been approved to be in the public listing on addons.mozilla.org! This means that it no longer has the “experimental” label and can be installed without the user needing to check a box. For those of you who forgot what Barra de Español is, check out the original announcement. If you haven’t installed it yet, do so today!

Update: Barra de Español version 1.1 has been released

Peter — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 21:38:54 +0000

I’ve just released an update to Barra de Español, version 1.1. The new version has some new features that I believe make it a necessary upgrade for those of you currently using version 1.0. You can get the new version from https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/12029.

Here is what’s new in this version:

Wrapped “loose” variables and function in a javascript object to meet addons.mozilla.org’s standards.
Added http://www.cinetube.es/ to video sites
Fixed unicode text in search history being stored incorrectly. This change may cause you to lose your previous search history.
Replaced CNN en Español with CNN Chile, since the Chile site actually contains news.
Words selected in text areas can now be defined with the right-click menu.
Added a menu to insert the punctuation characters: upside-down question mark and upside-down exclamation mark.

For those of you who aren’t yet using Barra de Español, it’s a Firefox toolbar for students of the Spanish language. Find out more from the original release announcement.

Barra de Español: A new Firefox toolbar for Spanish students

Peter — Fri, 22 May 2009 14:39:38 +0000

Ladies and gentlemen, Spanish students across the globe, I’d like to introduce you to my latest creation! It’s a Firefox add-on called Barra de Español. It lets find word translations and definitions using wordreference.com by typing the word in the toolbar, or by highlighting the word and right-clicking on it. It helps insert the special characters that Spanish uses that may not be on your keyboard. It provides links to native Spanish web sites which can help you in your study of the language, including news, reference, and video sites. But the best part is that it’s free!

Phew! I’m done with the sales pitch now. Seriously though, check it out. You can download it from addons.mozilla.org. It’s currently considered “experimental” on their site so you have to check a little box that says that yes, you really want to install this. Don’t worry though, I’ve tested it thoroughly and I use it myself daily. It is definitely release-quality, and hopefully the reviewers at Mozilla will upgrade the add-on from its experimental status shortly.

Why would I create such a thing? Well, why wouldn’t I? I’m studying Spanish and I know how to program a computer. The natural conclusion is that I would write this, right? The truth is, I didn’t think of it until I saw this article on Tofugu.com talking about a Japanese toolbar. I began to wonder why all the cool Japanese studying kids got the cool tools, but I had nothing like that to help me with my Spanish studies. I think this shows that jealousy is not always a bad thing.

If you interested in more details about the creation of Barra de Español, I wrote about the process on my personal blog. Also, I want to thank Ramses from spanish-only.com for checking my Spanish on the project site.

So what are you waiting for? Try it out, and then leave a comment to let me know what you think about it!