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Popup Chinese Vocabulary for Chrome | ||
Tags: Vocabulary learning | Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6469 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 1 of 8 26 February 2011 at 9:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I was using Zhongwen Chinese-English Popup Dictionary for Google Chrome, which has
really neat on-hover look-up, so you just have to wave your mouse over a Chinese sentence in order to see each word translated in turn. However, what annoyed me was that I'd see so many awesome new words that I would have liked to learn, and they whooshed by too quickly to even try to commit them to memory (I was L-Ring, so no time to stop). So now I modified this Chrome extension (permissible under GNU GPL) to allow me to hit T whenever I see a useful word I want to review later and at the end of a session I get a list of all interesting words with their complete dictionary entries in a neat tab-delimited format that I can review or automatically import into Anki / Mnemosyne / whatever. Another change I made is that this plugin now works for offline pages, such as downloaded parallel texts. No internet connection necessary. I'm a newbie when it comes to creating Chrome plugins, and I'd classify this one as alpha. That's why I haven't uploaded it to the official Extensions site yet. If any forum member would like to give it a try and help me debug it, that would be very welcome. I would love to expand this for other languages, drawing on real dictionaries rather than Google Translate for a change. I even have decent code for lemmatising words (reaching the dictionary form when seeing a conjugated one) for European languages, albeit in Ruby. If Javascript wasn't such a pain, or if debugging something in Chrome wasn't hit-or-miss, I would be working on other languages this instant. Edited by Sprachprofi on 26 February 2011 at 9:14pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| mr_chinnery Senior Member England Joined 5756 days ago 202 posts - 297 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 2 of 8 27 February 2011 at 12:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm only learning Italian but this sounds like an absolutely brilliant idea. Hopefully
some students of Chinese will help you out, and indirectly benefit me by encouraging you to produce a version for Italian! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5865 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 3 of 8 27 February 2011 at 2:23am | IP Logged | |||||
I thought I would give it a try. Just prior to the install, Chrome warns that this extension can access all your data on all web sites and it can access your browsing history. I took that to mean e-mails, possibly passwords, profiles, and anything else you read or write on the Internet. That scared me away. Am I mistaken? What is your understanding of that warning? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6469 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 4 of 8 11 March 2011 at 4:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My extension also extracts the surrounding sentence now, so that you have an example
sentence along with the vocabulary item you looked up! It still needs testing though, so it is not available anywhere online yet. If you want to install this extension, you have to send me a message.
Chrome extensions can modify the behavior of websites - e. g. by adding pop-up translations of Chinese words, or by adding preview windows to your browsing history, or any number of things. Theoretically they could attach themselves to text boxes and remember anything ever written in them, exactly as you fear. In practice it's extremely unlikely though, because Chrome extensions are not compiled, and one glance at the code would not just tell you that it is doing so but also where it is sending any data to - i. e. it's like forcing any would-be exploiters to leave their passport ID. If they still want to commit a crime... All Chrome Extensions and indeed all software that you install on your computer, no matter how small, have the same ability and carry the same risk. Hence you should not download software OR extensions from an untrustworthy source. Chrome gives you the same warning for any extension, I just wonder why it doesn't give you the same warning every time you download something. Too annoying I guess. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5865 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 5 of 8 11 March 2011 at 9:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks for this detailed explanation. Are you assuring me that you have had a 'glance at the code' and there are no 'passport IDs'?
I am a Chrome novice. Are you saying that every time you add an extension, you get that same dire warning? EDIT: Answering my own question, I just installed the Google Dictionary add-on to Chrome and it gave me the same warning. Certainly I understand what you say about downloaded applications, browsers, e-mail, etc. all have the potential of reading and using your 'stuff'. For example, G-mail or Google Translate cannot work without 'reading' whatever you put into them. What worried me about the warning was the implication (to me) that you might want to subject a word or a sentence or part of your e-mail to this translator, but it could meanwhile be reading all your e-mail and passwords etc. I would find that very troubling. Can you 'see' if that could be happening by having a glance at the add-on code? Edited by tommus on 11 March 2011 at 9:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6469 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 6 of 8 11 March 2011 at 10:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I modified the Zhongwen Pop-up Dictionary extension for myself, so I'm intimately aware
of it and there is nothing worrisome in it. It does exactly what it says, nothing more, nothing less.
Chrome extensions only have access to the pages you yourself call up. I. e. if you actually install a pernicious extension but only browse Wikipedia for the next few hours until you uninstall it, the extension will only have had access to Wikipedia pages ;-) Downloaded computer programs are the real problem; they can access any data on your computer and anything you are typing anywhere. Get a good antivirus program and don't trust pirated software. Edited by Sprachprofi on 11 March 2011 at 10:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Guests Guest Group Joined 7375 days ago 0 - 22 votes Logged on | Message 7 of 8 08 June 2011 at 10:53am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi Sprachprofi,
Very glad to read your message about the Chrome extension, as no later this week I exactly had the same idea as you, which means modifying one of the existing chrome extension in order to extract both the definition and the surrounding sentence into a tab delimited file, to import into a flashcard system. I have been using this technique extensively for learning Chinese during the last 2 years (I'm living in Taiwan), but the copy/paste into an excel sheet stuff is really troublesome... So it would be very great for me to have the chance to try your extension. Maybe also, if you think you need it, we could improve it together in the future (I've a IT background) ? Like maybe getting the mp3 from google translation + adding it automatically to ankiweb ? Or even having this function available directly inside Android browser while reading articles for example ? Actually I cannot send you a PM because your mailbox looks full. Hope to talk to you soon. Mickael | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6469 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 8 of 8 15 June 2011 at 4:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hello Mickael,
I've emptied out some of my mailbox, thanks for letting me know. Please write me at yutian DOT mei AT gmail DOT com so that I can send you the files. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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