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."

Re:Awesome

[christopherfinke]

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!

It's really quite nice

[A Dafa Disciple]

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!

Re:trolly troll troll

[amliebsch]

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

LEARN TO READ! HTH HAND.

Re:trolly troll troll

[Potor]

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:Features

[Jugalator]

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:Aw nuts

[christopherfinke]

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]

Re:Firewall this...

[christopherfinke]

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.

Re:awesome

[Red Alastor]

That sounds pretty cool, I will go and download it right now, hmmm with all the extensions I am running my firefox is becoming bloatware :op time to remove a few I think.

What I like about it is that its function don't appear when you aren't on Slashdot so it doesn't add to your clutter.

Re:Opera?

[appavi]

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

Re:Reply to text option

[rholliday]

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

You can. It's in the Extension options.

Re:Missing one...

[appavi]

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:Mmm OK... where's preferences page?

[christopherfinke]

I can't find preferences for slashdotter on SeaMonkey

There isn't one, although you can access the preferences under about:config. They all start with extensions.slashdotter.

Re:What about IE?

[christopherfinke]

But where do I configure the extension, like to turn on/off various features like you can do it firefox?

The options dialog for the Slashdotter uses some XUL tags that weren't supported until Firefox 1.5, and not supported at all in Mozilla or Seamonkey. This isn't necessarily a problem, since you can't get to the options dialog in those browsers anyway.

If you want to change the options for Slashdotter without the dialog, call up the page about:config. Slashdotter's options all start with extensions.slashdotter. The boolean ones are pretty straight-forward, and the stylesheet one is the subdomain of the section that you want to style Slashdot as (e.g. apple, it, games, etc.) or blank to disable it.

Greasemonkey Script can make it pretty...

[GeekLife.com]

I altered someone's greasemonkey script a bit. It unitalicizes all the article text, changes all the fonts to sans-serif, makes the page fixed-width to help with unending, unreadable length lines of text, and fiddles with a few font sizes for better readability.

// ==UserScript==
// @name Slashdot: italics swap, topic skin
// @namespace
// @description
// @include http://slashdot.org/*
// @include http://.slashdot.org/*
// ==/UserScript==
 
function addGlobalStyle(css) {
    var head, style;
    head = document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0];
    if (!head) { return; }
    style = document.createElement('style');
    style.type = 'text/css';
    style.innerHTML = css;
    head.appendChild(style);
}
 
addGlobalStyle(
 
    ".intro { border: solid thin #FFFFFF;padding: 10px; background-color: #FFFFFF; color: #555555; font-style: italic; line-height: 155%; font-size:13.5px; }" +
".intro a { color: #338833; text-decoration: none; }" +
".intro a:hover { text-decoration: underline; }" +
".intro i { color: #000000; font-style: normal; }" +
".topic img { position: relative; top: -25px; }" +
".storylinks { font-size:11px;}" +
".details { font-size:11px;}" +
"#frame { font-family:sans-serif;width:960px;margin:15px auto; }"
 
);

Thank God...

[identity0]

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:*Gasp*

[christopherfinke]

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].

Re:Mmm OK... where's preferences page?

[Atzanteol]

There isn't one, although you can access the preferences under about:config. They all start with extensions.slashdotter.

Or you can go to "tools->Extensions" and then double-click on the slashdotter plugin. It brings up a nice dialog box to configure slashdotter.

Re:Opera?

[mac123]

Err...you mean like these ones [userscripts.org]? They work fine in both Opera and Greasemonkey

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

[jambarama]

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.

Re:Tinfoil hats on!

[Myen]

It's not actually Mozilla admins - it's addons.mozilla.org reviewers.

There is no barrier to entry in becoming a reviewer. You are only expected to install the extension, use it for a bit to make sure it does what it claims and doesn't break, and approve. (Disapprove, of course, if it doesn't work.)

There is no code review involved. The reviewers are not even really expected understand code. Being approved on there doesn't really signify a sign of quality. Heck, if you want to you can end up reviewing your own.

Re:Features

[mrchaotica]

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:On Writing (and a suggestion for the extension)

[underspecified]

I don't see the grammatical error in the bolded text. There is a comma splice [wikipedia.org], though. Remember: if the two phrases sound good alone, use a period or a semicolon!

There's no comma splice here. The final two sentences are joined by the conjuction 'and' plus a comma. The author does show a propensity for using serial commas [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org], though most authorities will agree that this is correct usage, if not more logical. ^_^

Re:Opera?

[pAnkRat]

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.

It's good

[ejd3]

I actually started using this a few days before this story broke. I like being able to customize which theme is used by default. (I use the linux one because I think black just looks better than teal.) I used to use some Greasemonkey scripts to enable just about the same functionality that this extension does but the thing that I think is really missing from Greasemonkey is an auto script updater. One has been made http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/2296 [userscripts.org] but I'm sure that this works with very few scripts as of now.

Re:The times they....

[zerocool^]

This issue isn't complicated to solve. When you leave your comments Threaded, slashcode displays some random crap comments for no other reason. Try this: set your comments to "Nested" and "Oldest First", and set your threshold to "+3". It's slashdot nirvana.

For whatever reason, Nested does what you'd think it should do. Top level posts are all the way on the left of the screen; direct replies are underneath. Setting your threshold to +3 has the following benifit: Before the karma counter ran on the Bill and Ted system, it was a simple number between whatever and 50 (I don't remember if it went below zero, but I think it did). If your karma was 25 or more, you got a karma bonus to your posts, i.e. posts you made were at +2 starting, rather than +1. Unfortunately, this is still in effect, and almost everyone has enough karma to post at +2, or at least enough people that there's lots of noise in with the signal. So, by narrowing your comment display to +3, you only see comments that *someone* has modded up.

So, that's "only comments that have been modded up" coupled with "a proper nesting system" and "not random crap". And if you want to see the rest of the comments, just click the "X replies beneath your current threshold" link to display them. Try it; you'll never go back.

~Will

Re:Opera?

[Ken_g6]

Hey, just stick a header on there, delete the "javascript:", save that as some_file_name.user.js, and that's a Greasemonkey script!

Not that it seems to work for me, Greasemonkey or otherwise. Did /. munge some characters?

Example header:

// ==UserScript==
// @name Slashdot View Moderation
// @namespace http://your-web-site/
// @description 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.
// @include http://slashdot.org/*
// ==/UserScript==

Tagging is by users

[SeanDuggan]

Actually, I'd be worried if dupes were tagged as such when they're put up; if the editor realizes it's a dupe, why's it up in the first place?
Users add the tags, not the editors.