Slashdot Firefox Extension

christopherfinke writes "I've been working on Slashdotter Firefox extension for Slashdot users, and version 1.2 has been approved by the Mozilla admins. Features include the ability to auto-add cache links after story links (from any of Coral Cache, Google Cache, or Mirrordot), a quick-reply feature that adds a 'Reply' option to the right-click menu when you select text in a comment, the option of styling all of Slashdot's pages like a chosen Slashdot section, links in the comment sections that allow you to toggle open/closed all of a comments replies, and more. All of Slashdotter's features are optional, and the extension is compatible with Firefox, the Mozilla Suite, Seamonkey, and Flock."

Features

Does the extension automatically remove dupes and fix typos in the titles of submitted stories???

Re:Features

If it parsed the story tag "dupe" (which actually are in DIV's using the CSS class "tags", so they should be identifiable), and could associate these tags with their detailed story (DIV's with CSS class "details"), these DIV's can then be hidden by applying the appropriate collapsing "display:none" style, and if you've got this far, possibly also add a link to expand these collapsed stories if you're still interested.

Re:Features

Or, for that matter, would the plugin author consider providing functionality which would systematically add dupes and typos to other sites using Slash, so as to bring them into closer conformity with Slashdot's standards and make them more familiar in appearance and function to a Slashdot-acclimatised audience?

Re:Features

Does the extension automatically remove dupes and fix typos in the titles of submitted stories???

No, but I just used it to reply to your post, and it works pretty well. In the quick reply section of the preferences, I put this in for my format:

<p><i>%s</i></p>

And it works great.

Re:Features

Nah, he's using <i> for good reason -- just to italicize the text to visually differentiate it from the rest of his post, because Slashdot doesn't support doing it with CSS like it ought to. He should only use <em> if it's actually emphasized, which it isn't.

On the other hand, he really should use <blockquote> instead of <p> because it is a quote, which was what I was going to point out until I saw your post. ; )

Personally, what I use for quotes (manually, until I install the extension) is <blockquote><i>%s</i></blockquote>.

(I just hope he notices and reads this post, since I replied to a reply instead of replying to his post directly.)

Re:Awesome

Looks like the select-text replies aren't AJAX, but it turns the reply to this link into an AJAX-enabled thingy.

The AJAX replies feature isn't for replying to comments, it's for those links that say "X Replies below your threshold." It makes it so you don't have to load a new page to see those replies.

Now we just have to wait for the VCs to come along and dump millions on the poor guy for using the word AJAX.

Woohoo!

At First Glance

I thought this extension allowed me to slashdot sites while I browse. :O)

Seriously though, I like this feature:

* You can choose to have all Slashdot pages styled like one of Slashdot's sections. For example, if you're a fan of the Games section's hideous purple and black color scheme, you can have every Slashdot page look just as horrifying!

Opera?

Why doesn't anyone make any Opera js scripts? :(

Re:Opera?

Opera 9 Beta supports greasemonkey scripts. Greasemonkey scripts should work in opera as is or with some minor modifications.

Re:Opera?

I wrote a bookmarklet, which I personaly use in Galeon, but it should work in all Moz* browsers.
If you hover over the comment Link (#15013415) it will pull the moderation results for this post with xmlHttp, and display the result table in a DIV tag, beside the current post.
The bookmark name is "slash mod"
The URL is:
(AFAIK this should all be in one single line.)

javascript:(function(){ var currentUrl =''; function h(event){ var url = 'http://' + this.host + '/comments.pl' + this.search; if(currentUrl == url){ var theDiv = document.getElementById('kwsmodding'); if (theDiv != null) { theDiv.style.display='block'; } } else { var req = new XMLHttpRequest(); req.open("GET", url, false); req.send(""); var resultText = req.responseText; var tableText = '' + resultText.split('data_head">')[1].split('')[0] + ''; var theDiv = document.getElementById('kwsmodding'); if (theDiv == null) { var theDiv = document.createElement('DIV'); var mybody=document.getElementsByTagName('body').item( 0); mybody.appendChild(theDiv); theDiv.style.zIndex=100; theDiv.style.backgroundColor='grey'; theDiv.id='kwsmodding'; theDiv.style.position='absolute'; theDiv.style.backgroundColor='grey'; theDiv.style.display='block'; } theDiv.innerHTML=tableText; theDiv.style.right='30px'; theDiv.style.top=(event.pageY - 20 ) + 'px'; theDiv.style.display='block'; currentUrl = url; } event.preventDefault(); } function hout(event){ var theDiv = document.getElementById('kwsmodding'); if (theDiv != null) { theDiv.style.display='none'; } } var xpe = new XPathEvaluator(); var nsResolver = xpe.createNSResolver(document); var result = xpe.evaluate('//li/div/div/a[contains( @href , "comments" )]', document, nsResolver, 0, null); while (res = result.iterateNext()) { res.addEventListener('mouseover', h, false); res.addEventListener('mouseout', hout, false); } })();

Once this is added to the bookmarks you can use it in the following way.

• go to slashdot
• pick story
• click "read more"
• after the page has finished loading, klick the Bookmark
• mouse hover over a Comment Url (normaly the last part of: " by Poromenos1 (830658) Alter Relationship on 23:26 28 March 2006 (#15013415)" in the Comment header)
• wait a sec.
• read result
• mouseOut the let the table dissapear again.

The code does some cacheing, if the users hovers/mOuts the same link a few times, the URL request is done only once.

What about IE?

Aren't you going to make one for IE? How about IE7?

Yay!.. Taco did you see that?

I've been hoping for Taco to include the "colapse thread" feature for a long time. I still think it should be native instead as in the form of a plugin - then everyone could (and probably would) use it.

It would make it a lot easier to find the next real comment after a comment tree created by some Troll post... Another positive thing is that we'd get rid of the "high positioning" replies that normaly end up in the first tree. Are you listening Taco?.. :)

Cheers!..

The times they....

You're right about needing to be able to skip a comment tree. You don't even need a fancy collapse feature — just a link that means, "go to the next comment at this level". I often don't bother to look at popular stories because I know I'll never have the patience to find my way past all the trolling, irrelevent jokes, and shoot-from-the-lip flame wars that the initial posters always indulge in.

This wasn't such a big deal when I started following Slashdot 5 years ago. But there are a lot more users now. It's really pathetic when any popular site is unable to evolve with the times — but when it's Slashdot, you want to cry.

Re:The times they....

I set any comment modded "funny" at -6 in my preferences. That cut down on a lot of the garbage.

I see a great need: a Bayesian function on this extension to automagically "mod" comments; e.g. anything with the word "Micro$oft" or "M$" modded at -4, free ipod spam at -6, and so on.

Re:Yay!.. Taco did you see that?

There are greasemonkey scripts [userscripts.org] to allow collapsing threads. [userscripts.org] And scripts to collapse stories [userscripts.org]and remove sidebars [userscripts.org] and figure out how much time you waste [userscripts.org]on /. and add mirrors [userscripts.org] and whatever else you want on slashdot. [userscripts.org]

I'd give them a look before I demanded the slashcode [slashcode.com] writers add features you want (or write the code yourself and submit it to slashcode), unlike other news sites [digg.com] this is an OSS project.

It's really quite nice

This was the first I had heard about this exstension. I've been using it for the last half hour or so and I'm very pleased. It really does make browsing /. here a more enjoyable experience.

I find some of the additions of the extension to be things that really should have be built into /. anyways, such as things that you find at Digg [digg.com] like AJAX comment retrieval - things that are not at all hard to implement that can dramatically increase the user experience. Nevertheless, I'm not really too surprised by /.'s apparent slowness in embracing new web technologies considering how long it took them to simply make this site fully standardized in CSS

One negative aspect of the extension, however, is that it seems to me that, depending on the feature set you have enabled, /. pages in general now take a bit longer to load, but not so long that it makes the plug-in not worthwhile, especially since it facilitates the speed of navigation in other ways.

All of you should check this out for sure!

Feature Request

I for one would welcome an insert "imagine a beowolf cluster" or "welcome our evil overlords" or "netcraft confirms" or "all your base are" or "in soviet russia" button. That would be great.

Re:Aw nuts

But now I can't see tags anymore, even though I unchecked "hide tags"

Whoops. That'll be fixed as soon as 1.2.1 is approved by a Mozilla admin; in the meantime, if you like Slashdotter and want to show tagging, you can download the new version from my site. [efinke.com]

Does it have First Post button?

Does it have a First Post button? Imagine the millions of man-hours per day saved by people hitting that button rather than typing all that manually.

Re:Missing one...

Camino doesnt support extensions.

From Camino FAQ [caminobrowser.org]

Q. Does Camino support Firefox extensions?
A. No, and it never will. Firefox extensions rely on XUL (a user interface toolkit made by the Mozilla Foundation) to interact with the user and draw their interface. Camino uses Cocoa (an interface toolkit made by Apple) and does not support XUL.

Also from the interview [gigaom.com] with Camino Project lead Mike Pinkerton

We recognize this is a problem for our users, but extensions only exist because of the cross-platform UI layer upon which Firefox is built. It's that same cross-platform UI layer that makes Firefox feel "wrong" on Mac OS X. Camino's use of Cocoa for the user interface makes it fit in with the rest of the platform, but prohibits us from using extensions. We feel this is a trade-off worth making. That said, we are investigating ways to allow non-user-interface extensions to register and work correctly.

Re:Firewall this...

I'm blocked by Websense from downloading this extension

If my site (efinke.com) isn't blocked, you can download the extension [efinke.com] from there.

also missing...

Later versions will include a feature that automatically votes for the "Cowboy Neal" option in Slashdot polls.

Re:Legitimate story?

Seems hazy if an author should be allowed to submit a story to /. about his own project.

Yeah, we wouldn't want anyone knowledgeable about a subject starting threads.

Re:Reply to text option

any chance we could customise the reply to selected text option?

You can. It's in the Extension options.

Thank God...

Slashdot's comments section has such a broken UI, I was actually thinking the other day to write a program to help me navigate it. Props to you for making that unnessisary.

I have some ideas about what is broken on Slashdot. Some of them would require actual site modifications to fix, other could be fixed with a browser extention.

If you want more bugs, how about:

  - When I'm in the post writing screen, there is no text of the story or link to it, so I have to open Slashdot in another tab and go to the story to read it.

  - The comments index is very, very broken. The "threshholds" concept's three drop-down menus (-1:5), (Threaded/Nested/Flat/No comments), (Oldest 1st/Newest 1st/Highest 1st/Oldest 1st Ignore threads/Newest 1st Ignore threads), and the "Comments spill at 50" concept interact in bizzare ways such that I don't even know what it's *trying* to do.

  - I *hate* the fact that comments below your viewing threshhold are listed at the bottom of the thread level instead of between the posts that it was replying to and got a reply from. So you sometimes see people seemingly reply to themselves, or flaming others, but they are actually replying to something below your viewing threshhold. I've seen arguments start this way, because someone thinks a flame was directed at them instead of to the AC that replied to them earlier. Please. for the love of god, put in an indicator if there is a post below the threshhold that a post is replying to.

  - I would like to be able to view the whole comments section as a threaded, subject-only(that is, no expanded posts) view, and open up individual posts which will open up in a nested, all-open veiw. Perhaps allow right-clicks on post titles should allow you to open up the comment and its follow-ups with any pre-specified threshhold options?

  - Instead of three drop-down menus in the comment index, how about a list of rules which we can rearrange the order of to make settings? Might require AJAX.

  - Slashdot's user prefs allow me to "bias" the moderation towards funny, or informative, or other moderation types, but it is a PITA to change it for each story. Some stories I want to read in "funny" mode, others I want to read in "Informative" mode. I should be able to change the bias to one of several presets like on an Winamp equalizer on a per-story basis.

Re:Thank God...

Not all of it, but we are working on a lot of this (in fact it's a little scary how close some of your ideas are to ours :)

Stay tuned...

Re:trolly troll troll

I think you'll find that the grammatically correct version would have been "All your Slashdotter feature are belong to optional". HTH

Re:Wow

This dude needs a job!

I've got a job. What I need is a life.

Re:Wow

What I need is a life.

What you need is kids. They'll take care of your free time for you, dontcha worry 'bout that. ;-)

Re:Wow

That would be to imply that there are women being bred in a secret government laboratory to be specifically aroused by Dungeons and Dragons, comic books and your ability to compile the kernel.

Um... anyone know if this lab is looking for QA?

Re:Wow

Hmm...is there a feature you can click that turns up the 'intelligence' of the posts your read?

Apparently not.

Re:trolly troll troll

The features belong to "Slashdotter," the name of the extension given in TFS.

LEARN TO READ! HTH HAND.

Re:trolly troll troll

I'm pretty sure that's right, so the sentece should be "All of Slashdot's features" if the features belong to the site, or "All of a Slashdotter's features", if the features belong to the individual who uses the site

Nope. The software is called Slashdotter, and all of its (i.e., Slashdotter's) functions are optional. BTW: I used it to respond to this post. It works brilliantly! Thanks, dude.

Re:*Gasp*

No Bon Echo support? :(

I just downloaded Bon Echo and tested Slashdotter; it works, and I've uploaded a compatible version (1.2.2) to the Mozilla Addons site. It should be approved anytime within 1 day to 3 weeks (based on past experiences). In the meantime, it's available here [efinke.com].