[Plugin] Word Of The Day

I used the Google Desktop tool for a little while and there is a plugin for it called Word-a-Day which I enjoyed. Basically it showed a new word and it's dictionary definition each day from various sources. I was wondering if it would be possible to have a similar plugin for TrueLaunchBar. Perhaps it is already possible to do this by skinning the Weather Monitor plugin but I have no idea how to do that.

Regards,
Brian

Perhaps someone will make one for you soon! Stay tuned.

This kind of thing can be done with the newsreader plugin.
Although it wont display the meaning of the word in the menu, it will show it in the tooltip

Just add the following feeds to the Newsreader Plugin :

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/daily.rss">http://www.urbandictionary.com/daily.rss</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/wotd.rss">http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/wotd.rss</a><!-- m -->

But I might code a skin for the Weather Monitor Skin soon, as i cant figure out how to show only todays entry on the urbandictionary feed :S

Thanks Ozxar, I tried using the newsreader plugin and as you say it works - but not the ideal way of doing it. Coding a skin for it would be great but I can at least use it in the meantime.

Q Section,
I had a look at the list of other uses for the Weather Monitor plugin that you say have been tested and work. Are they available anywhere. I had a look at the skins section for Weather Monitor but only a few are available there. Some items in the list sound interesting. I also thought that some of them might be useful to use to see how skins are made for weather monitor so that I might even have a go at my own Word-a-Day suggestion.

Most of the plugins listed in the signature are usable although most have not been actually created. These are listed as ideas that do work based on the general operating principles of the Weather Monitor plugin.

Several of us have created rather unusual customisations of the WM such as a Cinema monitor listing current films with times of the local cinemas, Wind Monitor, UV, Health/Allergies, Sun, Moon, News (BBC, ABC, CNN, Aljazeera etc.), Homeland Security (Alert Status), Zodiac, Air Quality, TLB Forum etc. Again, these just mentioned have been created and work properly. So based on that then the others mentioned will work as well.

There is a very good page that Yuri made with information on how to create your own. It is found here.

Yuri also said he is working on a new Universal Data Fetcher that will have more capabilities but as to when........we must wait patiently.

If you have any questions when you attempt to make your own please do not hesitate to post here.

OK thanks for that. I'll have a look and see what I can do when I have some time. In the meantime if anyone has the inclination to knock up a skin for Word of the Day that would be great.

Perhaps someone will make one for you soon! Stay tuned.

Someone has made one! Please find Word-a-Day plugin below.

In order to use it unzip the plugin and place the Word-a-Day.ini file in the C:\Program Files\TrueLaunchBar\plugins\weathermon\providers file then place the Word-a-Day folder in the C:\Program Files\TrueLaunchBar\plugins\weathermon\skins file.

Right-click on your TLB and select New>Weather Monitor. You can name it Word-a-Day or whatever you wish.

Next select the Word-a-Day skin and Provider.
In the URL field enter http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/mwwod.pl
Select all the Parameters to Use in skin (or whichever you prefer).

You should have a good plugin now. Post here for any problems or if you would like it to be a little different. We intentionally only included the first two definitions so anyone using this plugin can learn how to add a third or fourth etc.

EDIT: We just threw the background picture together so it does not look as good as it can. Feel free to customise it to your liking.

Brilliant. Thanks. Exactly what I wanted. Looks good. I'm sure I will be able to work out how to add more definitions if I wish - good move on leaving it open for additions to help newbie users like me learn about making skins. Can't have everything on a plate! :lol:

We are glad you like it. If you wish to change the colours you can do this by editing the skin.ini file. If you open it the location of the colour settings should be obvious.

Changing fonts, colours, background image etc is easily done in the ini file thanks. Looks fine to me but might change around some things just to see what the effect is. Great job.

Great job but I think I found a few bugs.

When I click the plugin, it loads 2 instances of Webster Online.

I also have a ton of space below the plugin. See picture below.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b255/jkdclick/ScreenShot001.jpg">http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b255/ ... hot001.jpg</a><!-- m -->

Great job but I think I found a few bugs. When I click the plugin, it loads 2 instances of Webster Online.

This is a known bug of Weather Monitor.

I also have a ton of space below the plugin.

This space is included for words with several definitions as there were yesterday when the plugin was made. You can decrease it if you please by cutting down the height of the bg.png.

Sorry for the large image.

It is always best in forums to use an image server such as ImageShack or Photobucket. We believe Yuri has not said anything about this but many other forums prefer it as it saves server space and costs. 8)

Your TLB looks good!

Thank you.