Developer discussion for Creative Commons technology and tools

[Asheesh Laroia <asheesh AT creativecommons.org>]

I've been working for the past week or so on a JavaScript licensing widget 
that has been suggested on our wiki 
<http://wiki.creativecommons.org/JsWidget>.  It's a new way to integrate 
CC licensing into your web application.  It's really as easy as pie: Just 
add the following tag somewhere in the body:

<script src="http://api.creativecommons.org/jswidget/tags/0.1/complete.js"; 
/>

and a CC licensing widget will appear.  Your web application can then use 
regular DOM queries to determine the user's choice.

NOTE that this is not ready for prime-time use!  I want feedback on what 
people would like us to add or change.  Right now it serves only 
English-language text; in the future you will be able to do 
src=".../complete.js?locale=", stick your language code at the end, and 
get text back in your language.  Beyond translation, tell me how else I 
can be of service!

You can download a trivial sample application and a long-ish README at our 
SourceForge project: 
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=80503&package_id=239510 
.  For y'all's (in)convenience I've attached the README here, too.

It'll take you all of five minutes to deeply understand what's going on, 
so I suggest you do if you're thinking about (or if you already are) 
offering CC licensing to users of web applications you work on.

-- Asheesh.

P.S. Hi everyone, I was an intern last summer but now I'm a real tech guy 
at CC.  Pleased to meet you all!

--
"I only touch base with reality on an as-needed basis!"
                -- Royal Floyd Mengot (Klaus)This code is an example of how to integrate with the Creative Commons 
JsWidget.  If you just want to see how to use it, read index.html.

== WARNING ==

This is just a preview!  YOU SHOULD NOT RELY ON IT!

It's not even a betta, nor in beta.  It's a glimpse into the 
ever-changing future.  No warranty is provided; this software may eat 
your cat, spill your milk, and prepare your breakfast.  Or it may not.

Having said that, we plan to keep 

== What is JsWidget? ==

The JsWidget is a JavaScript file hosted on creativecommons.org that 
displays a user interface for selecting a Creative Commons license.  We 
wrote it so that if you didn't want to write your own interface, you 
could just call ours.

We think it's so nice that we're going to make our web app things use it 
eventually.

For an example of how to use it, STOP READING and look at index.html.

== Jurisdictions ==

JsWidget comes with support for different jurisdictions.  If a user of 
it wants to select a license customized for a particular country's 
copyright law, the interface will handle that properly and will 
automatically update as the international CC licenses are localized or 
updated.

== Languages ==

In this preview edition, there is only support for US English.  In the 
future, you can select a language with the ?locale= option to 
complete.js.  If you leave the ?locale= off, then (in the future) the 
server will attempt to negotiate a language with the client with the 
Accept-Language header as per 
http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.4 .

Our language codes for ?locale= are fairly standard; when I find a 
reference for where en_US and fr come from, I'll make a note of it here.

== Style ==

We give you two style files that make it look bearable.  You probably 
want to customize these so the form has the colors and styles your users 
expect.

== Re-use ==

See COPYING for information on copying/reusing this work.  Basically, do 
whatever you want.

If you want to see how things work behind the scenes, look through 
https://cctools.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/cctools/jswidget/.

== Questions ==

Ask us questions about this!  Email our development mailing list 
cc-devel AT lists.ibiblio.org .

-- Asheesh Laroia <asheesh AT creativecommons.org> 2007-07-19.