MTG Finder 1.1.0

MTG Finder 1.1.0 includes some new features described bellow:

• Two new websites have been added to the search modes.
• Mtg.ru - This is a great russian website that supports cyrillic charset in the queries. Maybe you want to use this search mode because the popup displayed is smaller than others and is fast and light.
  The popup shows the card image, mana cost, types, rarity, expansion (including expansion card number) and artist.
  Use this search mode only with english or russian card names.
  
  

  

  Mtg.ru search

  
  
• Tapped Out - Tapped Out is a community that has several mtg tools such as a draft simulator, or a deck database. When you search in MTG Finder through this website, you will find the card image, card data and the more interesting feature: stats of the decks playing this card.
  Tapped out search mode allows only card names in english.
  
  

  

  Tapped Out search

  
  
• Context menu search is available. From this version, when you select words in chrome and do right click, a new MTG Finder context menu will be displayed.

  

  MTG Finder Context menu

  
  In this new menu, you will be able to choose one of the existing search modes to search the card in a new window or tab (the Chrome popup seems to be available only clicking it...).
  You can choose if the search is done in a new window or tab in the new option of the options menu. Warning: We've noticed that sometimes, when you use this new feature, the window/tab opens, but it shows only the footer. It's an error that we're trying to fix. If you reopen the window/tab with the context menu, it should display normally the second time.
  

  

  Options page with Tab/window choice

• A problem with non utf-8 charset has been fixed in the magiccards.info search. Before, when you searched for a selected word in a language with non-utf-8 (such as russian, japanese, chinese or korean), it used to redirect you to a "card not found" page. Now this has been fixed and you can perform searches of russian, japanese, chinese or korean card names with magiccards.info search.

You can download MTG Finder in the Chrome Webstore Site, and remember, if you liked it, score it with five stars!! :-)
Continue reading »

Links

This post will include links to interesting pages sorted by categories.

ANDROID

• Developer's guide - Android official API and code samples
• Anddev - Android Forum
• AndroLib - Android Apps
• Google Play - Official Android apps store
• Android.es - Spanish Android blog
• XDA Developers - Great Android Community
• Playandroid - Android Game reviews site

CHROME

• Chrome code - Chrome Extension code and APIs
• Cromium project - Official Chrome browser and OS project
• Chrome Webstore - Official Chrome Webstore
• Chrome Extensions - Unofficial Chrome extensions store

WEB DEVELOPMENT

• W3 Schools - General Web development
• HTML5 Rocks - Html 5 samples and tricks
• Blogger tips and Tricks - Blogging blog

SOCIAL MEDIA & GADGETS

• Mashable - Updated news

MAGIC THE GATHERING

• TCG Player - MTG Online Gaming Store. Price comparison between several tcg stores.
• Blackborder - MTG Strategy and shop
• Adventureson -  TCG Online Shop
• Magiccards.info - MTG Database
• Gatherer - Wizards Official MTG Database
• Magic no mola - Spanish MTG blog
• Magic Card Market - Popular trade site
• Magic Madrid - Spanish MTG blog
• Magic Malaysia - Malaysian Magic The Gathering news, tournament reports and articles blog
• Apathy House - MTG Database and utils
• Mtg.ru - Russian MTG Strategy, database and shop
• Tapped Out - MTG Strategy, cards and deck database and draft simulator
• ABU Games - MTG Retailer
• MTG World - Startup MTG Online store and community
• Troll and Toad - CCGs Retailer, especially out of print MTG single cards.
• Magic Game Plan - MTG strategy blog that includes a deck pricing tool
• Mana Leak - MTG UK strategy community and large store
• Bazaar Games - MTG UK webstore
• Deck Tutor - Italian trade place

If you think that some link should be here, feel free to comment it here or email us.

Continue reading »

Blogging tips: add favicon and open links on new tab by default

Maybe you have noticed the new icon displayed on the The Munson's Apps tab. This icon is named favicon. If you want to replace the blogger-favicon that everyone has, continue reading this lines.

The Munson's Apps favicon

Adding this to your website or blogger page is so easy (source). You only need to include this code lines in your head tag replacing ICON_URL with the location of your image (it will be displayed as 16x16, if it's greater, it will be auto-resized).

<-- start favicon -->
<link href='ICON_URL.ico' rel='shortcut icon' type='image/x-icon'/>
<link href='ICON_URL.png' rel='icon' type='image/png'/>
<-- end favicon -->

In blogger, you can do this by going to Dashboard -> Template -> Edit HTML and insert it before the </head> tag (search it with Ctrl+F). Remember to save always a backup of the HTML before change it.

One problem that you can find is the .ico file. Maybe you can't create it or simply you don't have where to host it (blogger don't allows to upload .ico files). There are several sites with this purpose. Here I recommend one that I've used: iconj. Iconj is free, you only need to register. It hosts and generates your favicons for you and give you the source code ready to paste in your website's head.

Note that the ico file is only for Internet explorer, so if you don't include the first line, you will be able to see the favicon on Chrome or Firefox, but not in IE.


Other feature recently added to The Munson's Apps is to open all links in a new page. Maybe you know that inserting the target="_blank" attribute on any "a" tag, you will get this result, but doing it for every link is annoying. There is a simple solution to it, copy and paste the following code in the head tag of your blog like you did before with the favicon:

<!-- Open all links on new page -->
<base target='_blank'/>

With those lines, all of your links will be opened with the target='_blank' attribute by default without specifying it.

Updated 23/04/2011: to open all external links in a new window, read Blogging tips: Open all external links in a new page
Continue reading »

MTG Finder 1.0.0

MTG Finder now supports Apathy House search. This featured has been suggested by several people, so I decided to include it.

This new feautre, allows you to see the price look-upper from Apathy House with its price stats, like this:

Apathy house search

From the 1.0.0 version, MTG Finder will open a "news" page like this one when new versions are released. In this way, you will be able to read the new MTG Finder's features. If there are new options available, the options page will automatically open too.

The options page now includes a Donate button. Now you can contribute with this project in an easier way :-).

Options page

If you think that your website should be part of the MTG Finder searches, you can suggest it commenting this post.

MTG Finder is available for free and with only one click here.

Continue reading »

MTG Wishlist 1.1.0

MTG Wishlist 1.1.0 is here with some new features listed below:

• Sync available through Chrome's bookmark sync. Now you will be able to have the same wishlist in all of your computers, including extra column display options. Please read this before enabling this option (Thanks to George Papadakis and Duhoux Pierre-Louis). This feature needs bookmark permissions, so you could see a message asking you more permissions if you had the older version of MTG Wishlist.
• Arrows are displayed instead of the "up" and "down" buttons in the notes field. Those buttons allows you to move up or down the cards in your wishlist. If you decide to hide the notes column, arrows will disappear too.

New view with arrows

• Name cards can directly link ebay searches. Clicking the card name will open a new Chrome tab with the US ebay query. This feature is optional and disabled by default.
• When new versions of MTG Wishlist are released, the webpage containing new changes will automatically open. If there are new options, the options page will also be automatically opened.
• A Paypal "Donate" button has been included into the options page. With this, you will be able to collaborate with this young project in an easy way.

Options page

You can download MTG Wishlist here.

Continue reading »

Extension data Sync through bookmarks using BSync

I commonly use different computers: two at home and another on the work laptop with different OS. When I want to use some of the extensions shared between these pcs, I must set the same options four times to be updated when I change the machine. This simple task becomes very annoying when you are constantly changing. But imagine that you must bring your full mtg card wishlist (with more than 100 items) from one computer to another...
Fortunately, Google Chrome have a great mechanism to resolve this: Chrome bookmark sync.

I've been looking at the work done by George Papadakis (check it here) and the extension that bringed me to him: All Mangas Reader (by Duhoux Pierre-Louis). They developed the BSync script that I'm using in my own extensions. It allows chrome extensions to sync data helped by Google Chrome Bookmark sync.

To use extension sync you must enable Chrome bookmark synchronization (help here). This feature will create a folder under Other Bookmarks named BSync containing the extension data in files named like "Extension name.xxxxxxxxxxx". Don't delete these generated files!!!
I've taken the All Mangas Reader 5 minutes sync interval (although I'm thinking in make it customizable), that means that the syncing is not instant.

You must know that when the extensions are installed on multiple computers and you enable the sync for the first time, all data on other machines can be overwritten by the newest data. It's recommended to enable sync on one computer only, and when the corresponding file is created under Other Bookmarks -> BSync, enable it on the other computers.

Note that according to the Duhoux Pierre-Louis words, Chrome sync is limited. It allows until 100 updates of bookmarks in a day, so sometimes bookmark sync won't work.
Continue reading »