This is part of a series of posts introducing the projects built by open source contributors mentored by Creative Commons during Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2019. Mayank Nader was one of those contributors and we are grateful for his work on this project.

Creative Commons (CC) is working towards providing easy access to CC-licensed and public domain works. One significant step towards achieving that goal was the release of CC Search in 2019. Through this search and indexing tool, we’re making a plethora of CC-licensed images accessible in one place. As CC Search expands to include more than just images, CC is also developing a suite of applications and interfaces to help users across the world interact, consume, and reuse open access content.

The CC Search Browser Extension is one such application. This browser extension is an open-source, lightweight plugin that can be installed and used by anyone with an updated web browser.

Why did we create this browser extension?

Browsers are the gateway to the web, and users often install browser plugins to improve productivity and overall experience. With the CC Search Browser Extension, users can now search for CC-licensed images, download them, and attribute the owner/creator without needing to head over to Flickr, Behance, Rawpixel or any other source of CC-licensed content. The other great feature? The CC Search Browser Extension works across different browsers, providing a familiar and intuitive experience for all users.

Key features of the CC Search Browser Extension: 

• Search and filter CC-licensed content

You can use the extension filters to filter the content by the source website, types of licenses, and/or use-case.

• One-click attribution

One condition of all CC licenses is attribution. Attributing the owner/creator of CC-licensed content found using the extension is easy with one-click attribution. Both the Rich-text and HTML versions of the attribution are available.

• Download images (and attribution)

Download the image to use it in your works through the extension itself. You can also download the attribution information as a text file along with the image; this can be helpful when downloading multiple images in a single session.

• Bookmark images

Bookmarking the images will save them in the extension. You can view and remove your bookmarks from the bookmarks section.

• Export and import bookmarks

As a user, you can easily archive and/or transfer your bookmarks. This feature makes sure that the process of archiving and transferring bookmarks is uncomplicated and straightforward.

• User-interface (UI) options available for custom settings

The extension also allows for setting default filters, etc. The “Options” page helps declutter the main popup of the extension, ensuring that it shows only the most necessary information. In the future, this “Options” page will also host additional and updated features.

• Sync your custom settings and bookmarks across devices

Chrome and Firefox have a built-in feature that syncs browser settings and preferences across your logged-in devices. The extension leverages this feature to sync your custom settings and bookmarks. This will make your experience more pleasant and familiar. 

• Dark Mode

The extension also has a dark mode that you can toggle “on” by clicking the icon in the header. This reduces screen glare and battery consumption. You can set the dark mode as default in the “Options” page.

Future plans and development

• Find and fix bugs
• Add a review and feedback tab on the “Options” page
• Integrate Vocabulary into the extension
• Develop usability enhancements
• Remove infinite scrolling and replace it with pagination or voluntary loading
• Add search syntax for better specificity of results and a search syntax guide
• Make the code more modular and add more tests
• Port the features of the CC Search web application that are relevant in the context of the browser plugin

Installation

The latest version of the extension is available for installation via Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Opera.

Join the community

Community contribution and feedback is an essential part of the development process, so we encourage you to contact us if you have feedback or a specific suggestion. This is an open-source project, you can contribute in the form of bug reports, feature requests, or code contributions.

To install the development version of the extension, read the installation guide on Github.

Finally, come and tell us about your experience on the Creative Commons Slack via the slack channel: #cc-dev-browser-extension.

The post Introducing the CC Search Browser Extension appeared first on Creative Commons.

Creative Commons is doubly excited to announce the publication of two official Chinese language translations of version 4.0 of our license suite: Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. These translations will enable approximately 1.2 billion persons (more than 15% of the world’s population) to understand our licenses in their first language. We could not be more pleased to see this effort reach a successful conclusion after more than five years of collaboration among experts and communities.

Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese are different in important respects, but also have many similarities and overlapping communities. Even within each language, variances occur depending on region and cultures. While all official translations are faithful linguistic translations of the original English language 4.0 licenses, CC and its community account for these variations and document the rationale for those differences on our website.

Uniquely, this effort spanned volunteer legal experts and community members across the following jurisdictions: China Mainland, Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore, and Taiwan.

Chunyan Wang led our efforts on the Simplified Chinese translation, and Tyng-Ruey Chuang led our efforts on the Traditional Chinese translation. They were assisted by a large group of volunteers, to whom CC extends its profound thanks, including the following individuals:

Xingzhi Xin
Yi Zheng
Beibei Sun
Ben Cheng
Li Yahong
Ying Chan
Benjamin Chow
Haggen So
Lucien C.H. Lin
Yi-Hsuan Lin
Shun-Ling Chen
Ally Wang

This accomplishment is a testimony to the strength of our community and our shared vision for supporting the growth of the global commons. A special thanks to the Ford Foundation for a grant through their Global Travel and Learning Fund to support a meeting of the 4.0 translation teams in 2015 and 2016, and to the Wikimedia Foundation for supporting the teams’ translations efforts in 2016.

Congratulations!

The post Our 4.0 License Suite Is Now Available in Simplified and Traditional Chinese appeared first on Creative Commons.

At Creative Commons, sharing and gratitude go hand in hand. We empower the sharing of knowledge and creativity, as well as celebrate the collaborative creativity and gratitude that sharing engenders.

As Chair of the Creative Commons Board of Directors, I am ending 2019 with a special sense of gratitude for the CC community. This has been a year full of challenges and opportunities for CC. Our staff has risen to the occasion with remarkable energy, collegiality, and grace. Interim CEO Cable Green deserves special recognition for taking on new responsibilities with his typical insight, steadiness, and dedication. He is backed by an outstanding team that includes the rest of the CC staff, our Board of Directors, and the Advisory Council. The CC community also includes the CC Global Network and the millions of educators, librarians, technologists, creators, and activists who use our tools to help grow the global commons. And of course, it includes the generous donors—including visionary foundations and individual CC community members—who make our work possible. (Not a donor yet? Please contribute here!)

At our most recent Board meeting, we recognized two extraordinary members of the CC team. 

Johnathan Nightingale and Tom Rubin have completed their terms of service as members of the CC Board of Directors and will now join our Advisory Council. 

Johnathan Nightingale has served on the CC Board of Directors since 2015, including as Chair of the Development Council. Among the many highlights of his service, Johnathan provided key technical and management expertise as we built the team and the technology behind CC Search, and served as a trusted mentor to our technical and project staff.

Tom Rubin has served on the Board of Directors since 2013, including as Vice-Chair. Tom contributed critical legal expertise and strategic guidance in support of CC’s mission and vision, always holding the organization to the highest standards of performance and professionalism.  

We extend our deepest appreciation and gratitude to Johnathan and Tom for their outstanding contributions, dedicated service, and steadfast devotion to CC’s mission and vision. We look forward to continuing to rely on them as they take their new roles as members of our Advisory Council. 

If you are reading this, then you too are a member of the Creative Commons community. Thank you for sharing our commitment to open knowledge and creativity, and for supporting our work. 

We end this year with gratitude and excitement for continuing our work in 2020!

Molly Van Houweling | Creative Commons Board Chair

The post Welcoming 2020 With Gratitude appeared first on Creative Commons.

Since its launch, CC Search has become more than just a search tool for CC-licensed content; it has come to exemplify the virtuous cycle of knowledge creation—where we create, collaborate, and learn from one another. 

Our recent collaboration with a group of students from UC Berkeley was a true exercise in this cycle of creation and collaboration.

In the fall of 2019, instructors of the UC Berkeley graduate course, Product Design Studio, approached us to act as “clients” to a group of students learning how to solve complex design challenges. Of course, we said yes! And thanks to prior user research on CC Search, we already knew what design challenges we faced but were struggling with how to fix them—that’s where the students’ insights were critical.

Like a well-trained team of consultants, they immediately asked thoughtful questions about the proposed design challenges, reframed them in terms of the user journey, and identified what they would be tackling. Early on, they were able to identify that the key challenge we face with CC Search is how to convey complex CC license and attribution information in a way that is succinct, actionable, and engaging.

Fast forward to the end of our four-week collaboration and the students left us with an immensely impressive outcome: a user research report of nearly 40 pages, a presentation highlighting and explaining their final design choices, and several interactive, high-fidelity prototypes.

In aggregate, the UC Berkeley students dedicated dozens of hours to this project while we provided guidance, feedback, and insights along the way. 

After completing the project, student Janine Rosenbaum told us, “Working on CC Search gave me hands-on experience…I really enjoyed the great teamwork and learned a lot of new things, especially regarding user testing.”

Student Victor Grajski echoed Janine’s sentiment, “It was a pleasure working with the team at Creative Commons. I greatly appreciated how much they know and understand their users, and it was inspiring to see how enthusiastic the team and their users are about creating a global commons! Working in a group to make a well-run, established team like theirs happy with a 4-week timeframe was an ideal learning experience for me as a designer.”

What are the next steps for the CC Search product team? 

The results of this collaboration have jump-started an overhaul of the CC Search user interface, serving as a launchpad for upcoming iterative design improvements. 

The outcome of this project truly spoke to the power of the cycle of knowledge creation. Each prototype was better than the last thanks to the many talented minds who, in the spirit of collaboration, brought their best ideas to the table with informed enthusiasm.

To stay up-to-date on the technical updates that we’ll be making to CC Search throughout 2020, be sure to follow Creative Commons Open Source on Twitter @cc_opensource, join #cc-usability in the Creative Commons Slack, or keep an eye on the Active Sprint and Backlog in GitHub! 

 

The post How UC Berkeley Students Helped Improve CC Search appeared first on Creative Commons.

In 2017, CC published Made with Creative Commons, a book examining 24 different business models built around CC licenses and CC-licensed content. Financially supported by more than 1600 backers on Kickstarter, the project itself is an example of how openly licensed work can be funded and how CC-licensed content can evolve over time. 

After publishing the book and distributing copies around the world, we have proudly watched as the Made with Creative Commons project continued to germinate thanks to the energy and resourcefulness of the CC community.

Just recently, members of our community across Latin America—including Gunnar Wolf, Luis Enrique Amaya González, Leo “elopio” Arias, Andrés Delgado, and Evelin “scann” Heidel—collaborated to produce a Spanish translation of the book. Marisol Simón from the Economics Research Institute in Mexico edited the translation.

Earlier this year, Hilman Fathoni, Fitri Ayu, and the rest of the CC Indonesia team translated the book into Indonesian. They were also able to hold a public event and print copies of the translated book thanks to funding from the Indonesian Creative Economy Agency.

Finally, Soohyun Pae is currently leading a translation into Korean, and Petter Reinholdtsen is undertaking a translation into Norwegian.

These efforts by you, the CC community, are a testament to the vibrancy, resourcefulness, and ingenuity of the open movement—and your commitment to growing the global commons.

We would like to say thank you to each and every person who has had a hand in carrying this work forward over the last two years, and we look forward to receiving more translations in the future!

If you’re working on a new translation of Made with Creative Commons, let us know by emailing us at info@creativecommons.org or tagging us @creativecommons on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn!

 

The post Thank You for Translating “Made with Creative Commons” appeared first on Creative Commons.