BabelFox

Convert Google spreadsheets into FoxReplace lists

What is this?

BabelFox is a small web application that takes a Google spreadsheet and converts it into a fancy FoxReplace file, complete with custom regular expressions and other bells and whistles. All of the magic happens here.

For example, observe what happens to a page at the Economist:

While the point is to help you to practice language learning while you surf the web, it can be used to convert any type of FoxReplace list. Lists are given a permalink that can be shared with others (either through email or through the Shared Library on this site), all without exposing your Google account name or the original document's URL.

For more information, read this blog post.

Step 1: Install FoxReplace

You need to be using the FireFox browser, and you need to install the FoxReplace add-on.

You can get Firefox here: www.mozilla.com/firefox
You can get FoxReplace here: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/6510

If you just want to see BabelFox in action without creating your own spreadsheet, you can skip to Step 4.

Step 2: Create an online spreadsheet using Google Docs

If you don't have a Google account, get one here. Create a new spreadsheet in Google Docs (http://docs.google.com) by selecting "Spreadsheet" from the "New" dropdown. Set up your spreadsheet like this:

• The title of the document becomes the title of the BabelFox output.
• You need a header row, but it is ultimately ignored. Use it to label your entries.
• The third and fourth columns are optional.

Now just fill your spreadsheet! There is no size limit, although extremely large sets may slow down Firefox.

Step 3: Publish your spreadsheet and copy the published URL

Click on the "Share" dropdown on the upper right side of your Google spreadsheet and select "Publish as web page." Copy the entire link that appears, which should look something like this...

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=xxXXxXxxxXxXxxXxXXXXXxXx

...and then click "Publish now." Select the "Automatically re-publish when changes are made" option. Note: If you ever change the status to "Stop publishing," then the spreadsheet will no longer be available to BabelFox.

Step 5: Import into FoxReplace

If everything went smoothly with loading and processing the spreadsheet, you should have already saved your custom output file to your hard drive. Now all that is left is to put that XML file into FoxReplace.

(With luck, I might be able to convince the author of FoxReplace to create a "subscriptions" feature to automatically sync one's FoxReplace list to an online XML file--which would mean that changes to your Google spreadsheet would immediately be updated into your replacement list via BabelFox like magic. Until then, however, this is what you need to do....)

Go to Firefox's "Tools" menu, find the "FoxReplace" item, and click the "FoxReplace options..." link. (Also, I recommend turning "Auto-replace with page load" on.)

From the options menu, click on the "Import" button in the lower right hand corner. Then select your saved BabelFox XML file, press "Open," and you're good to go!

Troubleshooting

• Make sure that your FoxReplace add-on is installed (you need to restart Firefox if you haven't already).
• Make sure your spreadsheet is still "publishing" and that it is set to auto-refresh.
• If you are using a set from the Shared Library that isn't working, its likely because the author has stop publishing it. Nothing can be done about that, I'm afraid. I'll try to clean out dead spreadsheets.
• Keep in mind that some regular expressions may bog down Firefox. If the script consistently takes a lnog time to process on your computer, considering changing the regular expression search input.

Source Code

I'd be happy to share any of the code used to grab the spreadsheet data, generate the XML, or display this page. Just post a comment below.

BabelFox was built with ColdFusion, Scriptaculous, and SACK. The Comments section is a modded template from BlogCFC.

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