BB.com forum enhancements (greasemonkey)

Bleeding edge version: http://blitzbasic-forum-enhancements.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/bbcomforumcodeshelper.user.js
Latest version number: 0.7.38

Inspired by this thread, I've started creating a forum codes helper script for the Firefox add-on GreaseMonkey

I've created a google code page here: http://code.google.com/p/blitzbasic-forum-enhancements
It's not yet completed but I thought I'd share what I have done (since it seems to be working fine).

Features:

Resize textarea to 100%
Add toolbar below textarea with forum code buttons
Post collapsing
Expand/Collapse All posts links
Jump to Bottom link
Popout sidebar
Topic watch functionality.

Some testing would be appreciated (as would modifications and suggestions).

Config can now be done by browsing to [a about:config]about:config[/a] and use bbfch.config as a filter.

screenshot of v0.7.38:


NOTE: although I've excluded the Accounts subdirectory of BB.com, I cannot guarantee that there are no security flaws with this code, nor with greasemonkey, this is a use at your own risk thing. I can guarantee that I've done nothing to deliberately create security flaws, nor have I put any password harvesting code in this script.

Always view the source of any code that you install via greasemonkey and check the include and exclude paths to make sure you're happy with them (you can always add your own).

Tested on:
FF 2.0.0.14, WinXP, greasemonkey 0.7.20080121.0

Cool! I don't have greasemonkey installed here, but I'll give it a shot at work!

this just points out flaws in the site does it not ?, why should we need to download extra tools to make the site more user friendly. i may be missing something but this just feels wrong.

I've just updated it substantially, added post folding (customizable and easily disabled in the config).

Not really, personally I have no problem with a lack of buttons for forum codes, but some people did, so I decided to create this.

I might well turn off some of the stuff once I've completed it, but I've added it for others to use.

I would really rather BRL spent time on more important programming tasks than this forum. It's functional, no one can really say that they've had trouble communicating with it. This is just icing for the cake.

What else are you going to do? Piss and moan about it, despite it being plainly obvious nobody could care less?

That makes two of us. It's not like the forum contributes positively to BRLs bottom line anyway.

This is very nice. :o)

Good to see people just getting on and doing it rather than waiting for others to do so.

Well done, Pert.



And now a line of randomness just so I can play with the forum code buttons.

[edit] Hrmmm... small issue: I've just typed out the above post and used the preview feature to see what it looked like. All is well, apart from the fact the text area down the bottom so I can re-edit the post has now reduced itself to a single line. :o( Very squishy.

Second post to make a point: Having posted the above, the text area has stayed a single line. :o(

ACK! Even closing Firefox and restarting it hasn't fixed it! Time to start clicking buttons randomly!

I'll never understand why so many people complain about the site needing an upgrade. Its just a programming forum, not a social networking site. If that's what you want then you should probably try 'myface' or 'spacebook' or one of the other half million sites that all assist in helping you find pretend friends and keeping you in touch with people you'll never meet or don't even like.

Yes the forum is basic, but it does its job.

Ahh... yes, you managed to catch it during a slightly botched update. You should be able to fix it by uninstalling, remember to tick uninstall associated preferences, then reinstall.

Updated it btw, you can now edit the preferences by putting about:config in the location bar and use bb.com as a filter. (and it has nice collapse buttons, and collapse/expand all at the top and bottom)

Test.


Aaah, cool. All fix0red. As ever, my timing was impeccable. Ta.

I should have said it was a way to cut down on people's post sizes :)

Yeah, why not piss and moan about it, its not that hard to add a little extra to the site. it is after all an important first impression maker, when new people see the site they MAY be put off when comparing it to other rival sites.

A Website is a good indication of the support given to a product or its community,(NOT ALWAYS but it is in a lot of cases)


I agree to a point, but do you really think that the people behind the scene's cant spare a tea break here or there to tweak things on the site.

Lets face it, this is a community, just like facebook or myspace, were a community of people who enjoy and love the product that's sold here and as a result we spend our time reading, posting and existing as part of this community.

ether BRL like it or not, or if they wanted it or not, they have it, and as the site owners they have some basic responsibility to take care of the community, to protect our privacy by making the website secure and safe and not have all of our details exposed to the world, to make it easy to use for those of us with complications or factors that hinder their or our ability to post or use the site.

This plugin is cool, it adds a lot of nice little things to the site, but its things that the site should have had already.

so yes, piss and moan, or point out the flaw's until they do something about it.

Sweeeeeeet.

Quote of the month.

If it keeps some people happy then it's probably worth the effort.

I think 'myspice' is great for musicians but not much else, I don't visit 'facelook'.

Wow!

That's impressive!

Working fine on MacIntel 10.5 too.

Testing, Testing, Whee!

Hm, no post expand/collapse images showing up under Linux (using Ubuntu 8.04). Error from Firefox's console that I'm guessing is related to your use of inline images:

Warning: Expected end of value for property but found '!'.  Error in parsing value for property 'background-image'.  Declaration dropped.
Source File: <a href="http://blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=78196" target="_blank">http://blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=78196</a>
Line: 0

I'm guessing something is a little different about the CSS support for Firefox 3 here.

At any rate, I can still expand/collapse posts, just don't have that pretty image.

Nice addition
Thank you very much!

Scratch that, had a chance to test it in Windows and it doesn't work there either.

As unhelpful as this is, Noel, that's odd because it


Perhaps a redownload of the Blitz-site specific .js file?

If it doesn't work under two different OSs, I'd say that's a sign that redownloading it isn't going to fix it. >_>

Are you using FF3 on windows as well?

Ok, Noel, that error appears to be related to the !important directive. Removing it seems to solve it for FF3, but I recall having to use it in FF2. Need to reboot into windows to test.

I wanted to see what Noel was seeing (scary?) so I installed FF3RC1 (the latest) on this Windows box that was successfully using FF2 with the Greasemonkey extension...

...but when I went to install Greasemonkey on it, I discovered there isn't an FF3-compatible version of Greasemonkey yet.

So now I don't know what to think (with regard to what Noel's using).

It seems to work fine without the !important directive on FF3 ubuntu 8.04 AND on my laptop in windows, but I'll need to reboot to be sure. I'm sure I needed it before, but it may have been a result of the way I was originally using the image.

Greasemonkey itself seems to run fine even if it doesn't officially support FF3 yet.

Yes.

Forcing extensions to run regardless of their compatibility is a nice thing to be able to do, but it has its downsides.

Removing !important does indeed fix it. I'm not sure why this should be the case, since it was all legal CSS, but then no browser seems to fully support any CSS standard in the first place (even Firefox).

Well, no harm really, removing it for FF2 seems to work as well, so I think I'll just kill it altogether.

My n00b self didn't realise extensions would run despite not being compatible.

Live and learn. :o)

Most don't.

but they enabled FF3 beta support in the latest release

can you make it just show new posts>????????

Define new. I'm sure I could write something to only expand posts if they're within x hours old, it would require a bit of work though. I don't really have any way of determining whether you've read the post or not.

Theoretically I could store the last time you visited a topic and base it on that, but it could end up making your firefox config rather unwieldy.

can you add a (simple?) link to go to the 'Post Reply form' in the top of the thread, near to 'Explan All, Collapse All'? [I'm so lazy to scroll down the window :D]

I was actually planning on doing that one, I'm lazy too :)

OOOOhhhh! Magic! Thank you [my lazyness is increased by 200% thank to this :D]

COOL thanks Perturbatio!

hmm, just recent posts would be cool

What about a search feature for the gallery? Too many times have I wandered the pages of the gallery looking for something...

Would probably be better implemented on the server, since I'd have to write code to download EVERY gallery page and then search it. I don't think BRL would be happy having their server hit like that every time someone wanted to search the gallery.

*EDIT*


I'm working on something, but it'll need a bit of time.

Honestly, I think that this forum is pretty nice. I actually dislike those all-black (or other dark color) forums with millions of emoticon buttons and extra features. Anyone else agree with this minimalist philosophy?

I agree about minimalist philosophy, but the 'standard' (=not enhaced with GreaseMonkey scripts by Perturbatio and Grable) is *under* the minimal ! Now - for my tastes - the forum is perfect.

WhatTF! Perturbatio, did you have changed the code? Now it doesn't work?!?! And now it requires YahooApis?
Ahhhhh...(I'm crying...) I want back the v0.6.22....:(

[I'm running on FF3 + GreaseMonkey 07.20080121.0 - the previous .js file works on the same configuration]

edit

I'm reading the script and I found

 * Written 23rd August 2008 by Kris Kelly
 * Modified 24th August 2008 by Kris Kelly

Do you have a time machine :D ?

Nope, I was tired that night, I didn't realise that I had committed those changes.

I've uploaded the latest version, but be aware that I have started using YUI (I'm planning to add a menu to the top of the page that will have options and features), YUI is a useful API for doing the things I want to do.

I resolved finding your old js on another computer.
Maybe is the FF3 version + GreaseMonkey not fully compatible, but your last js version doesn't work on my machine - at the moment.

...this is interesting

Can I suggest you to mantain separate (on GoogleCode) the 2 version you are working - at least since the 2nd version is fully completed?

I was pondering doing this yes.

Incidentally, you can go into the source changes and view a snapshot of any version if you need to rollback.

This is great stuff !!!

I had to tweak firefox 3 beta about.config to get this running, but I love it. thanks!!

Working here with FF3 and Ubuntu 8.04

The Post reply to topic is now wider and has forum codes buttons (nice), and they work.
But the Expand All and Collapse All buttons are not visible.
Also the shrink and expand buttons are not visible.

@Wiebo


What did you have to tweak?

@Andrea & Wiebo

What version of the script are you using?

I haven't really been testing in FF3 for now

I use the link in the first line of this thread
Link to newest Version.
I installed it only few minutes before I answerded first time in this thread.
It must be the newest version I think.

Updated, added sidebar and topic watch functionality.

Only currently tested in FF 2.0.0.14, WinXP

*EDIT* only install if you're brave. There seems to be some teething issues with this one.

solved this one

Pertubatio: I've disable the version check for plugins to get greasemonkey working. not your script, that has worked flawlessly (as far as i can tell) since I installed it. I'm not sure which version i am running here, but it's the one that was available just before i posted in this thread. Gonna try this new version now.

Well, this latest version doesn't seem to work on beta 3. I have no post folding options anymore, nor do I see that new sidebar.. Any log I can check, Perturbatio?

Unfortunately, no, I can't write to anything outside the config using a greasemonkey script.

Something you can try checking:

select all the page content (CTRL+A)
right click and view the selection source
then do CTRL+F and search for yui.yahooapis.com
if that's there, then the script is at least getting initialized.

I wonder if FF3 has issues with referring to external JS? It could break a lot of sites if that's the case.

This is cool. I'm using it right now!
EDIT:Just found a glitch.If you scroll down real rapid,you can scroll off the screen!

Yep, I'm aware of this one, it's a result of the sidebar being 100% high. I might try dropping it to 99% or so and see if that resolves it.

As regards FF3, it looks like they've changed some stuff that affects greasemonkey, I don't think it's going to be easy (or currently worth my effort) to fix it until FF3 is officially released and greasemonkey has been properly updated, Version r30 on the featured downloads section seems to work fine in FF3 (Ubuntu 8.04 FF3.0b5) (but doesn't have the sidebar).

I'm at work so I cannot check what you asked, but I will do so tonight.

Yes, now the expand/collapse Buttons and the expand all and collapse all buttons are there with using
FF3 and Ubuntu 8.04. Thank you, nice features.

For those using FF3, greasemonkey has been updated to version 0.8 and they claim that it's fully compatible now. (I haven't tested it yet).

A few days ago I updated FF3 and Greasemonkey did not work anymore
but today greasemonkey is updated and works again, but the script is not
working again.

*£$%!

I can't get the sidebar, expand or collapse all posts working even though I have the forum codes button and the extra large text area. I'm on FF3.

Also, when I navigate to about:config, and search for "bbfch" (as described in the first post), no items are displayed.

Am I doing something wrong? I'm new to Firefox so I may be missing something really obvious...

FF3 and greasemonkey are still a bit flaky, the last known version to work with FF3 is version r30

Well, it's not working for me =] I'll hold on until GM and FF are stable again. I can't blame you for it, Perturbatio... or maybe I can.. I dunno =]

I installed now the version from the first window
this one:



and now the buttons-row in the Post reply to topic window is visible and works,
with the version r30 i see nothing.

Working with ubuntu 8.04 and FF3 newest update, and Greasemonkey newest update.

I'm working on it for FF3 now, I've got everything working except the sidebar.

not bad :)
but i guess it would be no problem to implement it to the forums directly, hm?

here is TinyMCE, which you really should check out: http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/
try the demo!

TinyMCE is overkill for a forum post box, not only that, the content it produces is HTML which would require validation and filtering.

And it's a tad buggy in places and they have a strange hatred of BR tags.

it's not an overkill and you simply can disable the stuff you don't need until it's useful for a forum.
and of course the user can't edit the html code if the admin doesnt want to.

Very wrong. The admin cannot at any point trust tinyMCE to return correct markup, it's very easy to edit the code that tinyMCE returns, all you need is firebug.

But that's irrelevant to this thread.

This thread is for the greasemonkey plugin script, not for debating the pros and cons of tinyMCE. If you don't want it, don't use it.

This is great stuff, Pert. Thanks! I've been feeling claustrophobic for a while with the original input window. Especially when editing the growing Newbie thread. ;)

does this 'newbie thread' have anything todo with the Windows7 thread?

Any progress for an FF3 fully working version?

There are still issues that need to be ironed out.

Devils - sorry, didn't come back to this thread. I'm referring to the Helpful Hints sticky post in the newbie forum.

[Test Post]

Pert, issues that need to be ironed out? like what?



hehe the truth hurts :-) great quote for sure!! but WE STILL DO IT huh?

Like getting YUI to behave nicely in FF3. I haven't looked at this for about two weeks though, I was on holiday then terribly busy at work.

*edit*

I had pondered just getting all the compressed versions of the YUI libs and sticking them in the source, but that seems a little kludged.

I didn't read all the posts here, but I would like to see the forum navigation links under the last post in every topic

Any update on a compatible FF3 script?