A new way to browse the FIRST website

[Pat Fairbank]

Ever been frustrated by the number of clicks it takes to navigate to a team's info page on the FIRST website? Or ever wanted to go directly to the Team Updates page but forgot that the URL is "http://www.usfirst.org/community/frc/content.aspx?id=450"? I sure have, especially when browsing on a mobile device (try typing "https://my.usfirst.org/myarea/index.lasso?page=teamlist&menu=false&year=2008&eve nt_type=FRC" using the iPhone keyboard).

So, I spent a couple of hours one gloomy evening coding up a solution (okay, okay, it was a sunny afternoon, and I was trying to avoid doing schoolwork), and shelled out nine bucks for a domain.

Usage instructions: frclinks.com +

/t/[team number]
/team/[team number]
Go to the FIRST information page for the given team.

/w/[team number]
/website/[team number]
Go to the website of the given team.

/t
/team
Go to the list of all registered FRC teams.

/e/[event id]
/event/[event id]
Go to the team list for the given event ID (e.g. il, ny, wat).

/r
/regionals
Go to the Regional Events page.

/c
/championship
Go to the Championship Event page.

/d
/documents
Go to the Competition Manual page.

/u
/updates
Go to the Team Updates page.

/b
/blog
Go to Bill's Blog.

So, for example, http://frclinks.com/r would instantly redirect me to FIRST's Regional Events page, while http://frclinks.com/w/47 would redirect me to a site that is strangely familiar.

This is all done using Google App Engine, an awesome, free platform that lets you easily develop web applications (using Python) and host them on Google's infrastructure (I can't recommend it enough if you're into building web apps). I'm releasing the code under the BSD open-source license; you can get it here.

I'm sure I'm missing some useful links; let me know if you have any suggestions for additional shortcuts or general feedback.

[Leon Machado IV]

Awesome work

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Pat Fairbank

Ever been frustrated by the number of clicks it takes to navigate to a team's info page on the FIRST website?

Often.

My feature request of the day would be a link to the official FIRST web forum (in particular, I want the FRC Q&A). Maybe syntax like "http://frclinks.com/f/qa" (or just "http://frclinks.com/q") would be appropriate?

[synth3tk]

I love it, and will recommend/use it often!

[The Lucas]

Good timing. With registration pending, the FIRST map is essentially useless (0 teams registered for everything). I was trying to find some past regional attendance data for a few teams (to figure out how Buckeye, Boston, NYC, Michigan changes might impact FLR attendance) but I couldn't click into any team's info page and or remember the string (page=teaminfo). (EDIT: if you go to FTC and click "Who are the teams from this area?" it displays all events and specifies year=2008, so that lists teams)

I would recommend improvements like /t/[state/providence/country abbreviation] to redirect to list of all teams in that area (t/de would show the list of 2 teams in Delaware). It will not work right now because no one is registered but it will be useful later. You might even want to add extras like /r at the end of /t/ or /e/ string to display only rookies in that area/event.

Mods: Can you sticky this thread? The more people know about this the better. More than once someone has asked me how I got a list with certain options out of FIRST's site, only to tell them I learned the variables and typed it in.

[klrswift]

Great job!! this is a much more efficient way to get official info on teams.

[Cory]

Pat, this is awesome! You are the man. I cant even explain how annoying I find it to navigate the FIRST site.

[Karthik]

Pat,

Totally awesome.

Maybe /e/s/[event] and /e/mr/[event] to pull up schedules and match results? I know those would be handy to use on a blackberry while at an event.

[artdutra04]

Great work.

Now we can finally use the FIRST website in a rational manner, the way websites are supposed to be used.

It's too bad the people who designed the FIRST website in the first place made it so convoluted and full of worthless Javascript code. It wouldn't be hard to implement mod_rewrite on the USFIRST.org servers to make breadcrumb-based page URLs.

[B.Johnston]

Amazingly Efficient!

You could even market the use of them as "clinks" since your redirect site url lends itself to this brand or descriptor.

As in FR clinks.

It seems every new tech concept has some sort of branding.

P.S. since it's out in public now "clinks" would fair game as a public domain "brand".

[AndyB]

AMAZING. You just made my day.

[Pat Fairbank]

Okay, I've implemented some new "clinks" based on Tristan's, Brian's, and Karthik's suggestions. There was a bit of a namespace collision for the short forms of schedule, (match) results, and rankings/standings, so if anyone has a better suggestion please speak up.

/t/[area id]
/team/[area id]
Go to the team list for the given area ID (e.g. CA-USA, ON-Canada).

/e/s/[event id]
/event/schedule/[event id]
Go to the qualification match schedule for the given event ID (e.g. il, ny, wat).

/e/m/[event id]
/event/matchresults/[event id]
Go to the qualification match results for the given event ID (e.g. il, ny, wat).

/e/r/[event id]
/event/rankings/[event id]
Go to the rankings for the given event ID (e.g. il, ny, wat).

/f
/forums
Go to the FIRST forums.

/q
/qa
Go to the Q&A forum.

[B.Johnston]

Not to make it any easier for us end users...

but could the redirect server support a --form-- on the page

That we could enter the values into then hit enter?

I've bookmarked

http://frclinks.frclinks.com/

and just type the argument ie w/47 in the address bar to work this way,

but it would be more intuitive to have an active entry box on the page.

[SamC]

additionally to make this even easier than it already is, in firefox (and possibly others) you can bookmark http://www.frclinks.com/%s then go to the bookmarks menu and right click your new bookmark, select "properties" and type "frc" in the keyword. You can now type in the address bar something like "frc t/330" which will redirect you http://www.firstlink.com/t/330 (which redirects you to the corresponding FIRST page)

[Pat Fairbank]

Originally Posted by B.Johnston

Not to make it any easier for us end users...

but could the redirect server support a --form-- on the page

That we could enter the values into then hit enter?

I've bookmarked

http://frclinks.frclinks.com/

and just type the argument ie w/47 in the address bar to work this way,

but it would be more intuitive to have an active entry box on the page.

Done.