Greasemonkey

@Pistachio on Twitter gave me a great idea for a new Greasemonkey script.  Twitter users know that putting the @ sign in front of someone's Twitter ID (e.g. @twitterID) is the way to reply to that person through twitter.  When you're on twitter.com, or using a twitter client, this @twitterID is usually hyperlinked to that Twitter profile page (e.g. http://www.twitter.com/twitterID ).  However, this is usually NOT the case when you view a Twitter ID on any other webpage (including Gmail).  I decided to put together a Greasemonkey script that changes that, so that any Twitter ID, anywhere (even in Gmail) will be hyperlinked to the corresponding Twitter profile page.

Since I try not to reinvent the wheel when possible, I built my script on top of Jesse Ruderman's AutoLink Greasemonkey script.  (I did delete some of the functionality that people might not want, such as bugzilla IDs and phone numbers – if you want the full version of that script, get it here. Note that you'll have to merge my Twitter filter into his script if you want the Twitter auto-linking functionality.)

Once you install the script, @rossruns will look like @rossruns.  As an added benefit, Jesse's script already converted email addresses and plainlink URLs into hyperlinked versions, so you get that auto-linking functionality with this script, too.

Want to install this script for your own use?  First install Greasemonkey, and then get the script here.  (Instructions to install Greasemonkey can be found here.)

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As promised, I spent some time over the past week putting together a Greasemonkey script to reorder the modules on the new Vox homepage.

After the feedback people left, the new order I ended up using is:

Left Column                      Right Sidebar 1) Posts                         1) QotD 2) Comments                      2) Vox Hunt 3) Neighbor Activity             3) Team Vox News 4) [This is Good] Explore Box    4) Tips Box 5) Vox MSN Advertisement         5) Themes Box                                  6) Advertisement                                  7) Find your friends box

which can be seen in the screen shots to the right, here:

Want to install this script for your own use?  First install Greasemonkey, and then get the script here.  (Instructions to install Greasemonkey can be found here.)

As always, if you have any comments, feedback, or suggestions, or notice any bugs, please leave me a comment or send me a note.  I'll do my best to stay on top of any issues that arise.

Also, to those people who left me feedback but didn't get the exact order they wanted – I'm willing to make a custom version of this script just for you with the modules in the alternative order that you wanted.  Please leave me a comment as to whether you still want the order you suggested, and I'll send you a PM with the location where you can download/install your custom version of the script.

Enjoy!

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Okay, that Greasemonkey script I mentioned the other day took a lot less time to make than I thought.  Still waiting to hear what the majority wants for the order of the modules, but my first cut at it seems to work well and doesn't interfere with the readability of the page at all:

Vox homepage, above the fold

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If you haven't noticed yet, Vox pushed out another release (release 42) that fixes some of the issues people were having with the Vox homepage.  Now, you have all your recent comments, posts, and activity visible by just scrolling down the page.  The QotD and the Vox Hunt are together (although not above the fold).  As improvements go, this is MUCH better than release 41, but not quite yet what I could see myself wanting to have on my homepage.

I'm planning to put together another quick-and-dirty Greasemonkey script for the Vox homepage – the first revision of this (and only planned revision, at this time) will only re-order the content boxes around on the page.  For example, I would much prefer to have the QotD and Vox Hunt up in the top right, where currently the "Find your friends" and ad boxes are.

I'd like to make this script something that people would want to use, so for now, I'd like to hear how you'd like your homepage reordered.  Please leave a comment if you think you'd like to have your homepage reordered in any way, and let me know what your dream order for the boxes would be.  Keep the following in mind:

• On the first revision, I'm only going to reorder the stuff on the left up/down, and the stuff on the right up/down.  I'm not going to be moving things left-to-right or vice versa, or merging content of boxes.
• I'm not going to delete anything.  If you don't want ads, use an ad blocker.  I will however be amenable to putting things that aren't used often (like the find your friends widget) at the very bottom of the screen, where you won't see them often.

If I get overwhelming direction in the comments to order things a certain way, I'll definitely create a version of the script to order them that way.  If there's a more even split for what people want, I will probably pick the solution I would prefer and just implement that.  If you have any special requests after the fact, send me a note and we'll see what we can do.

I will be waiting to hear what people think until early next week (March 17th), after which I'll decide on an order, put together the script, and post a follow-up with a link for people to install it.

Edit: While hacking Vox to our whims may be fun and useful, the only way it's ever going to be "fixed" for real is by sending Vox some feedback with what you would like changed.  In addition to leaving a comment for me for the short-term fix, I urge you to tell Vox what you'd like reorganized on the home page – if they get enough feedback asking for a specific change, they will probably at least consider making the change (as shown by their efforts in release 42 to fix some of the complaints they received from their release 41 modifications).

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Threaded comments – Hacking Vox

http://hack.group…

And so, it’s official now. Vox seems reluctant to provide the threaded comments support, but where’s a will, there’s a way, and I found the way (but only for users of Firefox and other such browsers, that support GreaseMonkey).

In case my last hit of Greasemonkey on Vox wasn't enough for you, here's another great script to help your Vox user experience – one that moves comment replies and inserts them in the proper place so your comments are threaded, rather than ordered by timestamp! (See image below for example).

I can't take credit for this script, it's the effort of Dmitry Rubinstein, who is not only one of the hosts of the Hacking Vox group, but has also created a number of other Vox and LiveJournal related scripts (see full list here).

Dmitry's post on the topic has the direct link to install, or you can install via the Userscripts archive located here.

Example of Threaded Comments

Installation Note: If you scroll down to the very end of the comments in the announcement post, you'll see that this script is initially set up for all POSTS only.  In order to make this apply to comments everywhere (audio, video, etc), you'll need to:

1. Go to Tools -> Greasemonkey -> Manage user scripts
2. Click on "Thread Comments"
3. Edit the Include pages to replace http://*.vox.com/library/post/* with this: http://*.vox.com/*

Enjoy your threaded comments!

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Ever since Papi Chulo (formerly Pants Party) first pointed it out to me, I've been both happy and frustrated with the Vox Recent Activity page.  On one hand, it does provide an "easy" way to keep track of follow-up comments and favorites on posts you or someone in your neighborhood.  On the other hand, it can bulky with 30+ posts on the page, each with its own set of comments.  Scrolling down to older posts can put a serious case of carpal tunnel on your mouse-wheel finger, and if you have a couple of really popular threads going, you might not even know that one of the older posts has had a follow-up.  (I've also heard some people can't even load the page in their browsers, but I'm not sure this will fix that issue.)

I decided to jump on the Greasemonkey bandwagon and write a GM script to help out with this issue.  I came up with a solution that, while quick-and-dirty, does a good job of streamlining the Vox Recent Activity page: the script creates links in each post to show/hide the comments, with the default setting of all comments being hidden on initial page load.  That means your page that used to look like this:

Recent Activity Page – Normal

now looks like this:

Recent Activity Page – After Script

All you have to do to view the comments for an individual post is click on the [+/-] link, and they'll toggle from hidden to shown.  Click it again and they go back to being hidden!  Pretty cool, huh?

Example of Expanded Thread

Now your recent activity page is a lot slimmer, easier to navigate, and you can click on just the posts that you want to follow up on to see the most recent activity.

Want to install this script for your own use?  First install Greasemonkey, and then get the script here.
(Instructions to install Greasemonkey can be found here.)

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions on how to improve this script, please leave a comment here or send me an email.

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So I know I'm not alone in wanting everyone to turn off that "recent updates" feature that appears on your homepage.  Until Vox admin gets around to letting everyone decide whether the reader wants to view these updates, rather than whether the publisher wants to share it, it seems we're stuck noticing every time someone changes their template, adds a new neighbor, or picks their nose (okay, that last one is made up, but now you probably understand how intrusive/unnecessary this "feature" seems to me).

Anyway, having recently read Andy's comment about using Greasemonkey to hide spoilers, I thought it would be pretty easy to use Greasemonkey to similarly hide this section of the homepage.  Using the platypus plugin to cut/widen sections of the table holding the recent updates section, I've created a very stupid, simple Greasemonkey script that anyone using Firefox+Greasemonkey can install and automatically get rid of this section of their vox home page.

Basically, all the script does is cut the "recent updates" section from the page and stretch the "recent comments" section to cover the gap, as shown below:

Greasemonkey Change – Before and After

TO INSTALL:

The Greasemonkey script you need to install can be found here.  If you have the latest Greasemonkey add-on installed for Firefox, it should pop up the install box and ask you whether you want to install.  You can view the script if you want to make sure it's safe, yadda, yadda.  As long as Greasemonkey is turned on, your homepage should load and [almost] immediately be reformatted to hide the "recent updates" section.

Please note that this variant of the script to perform this modification was created by me using the openly available Platypus addon for Firefox.  Platypus is not required to use this script.  While it appears to work just fine, I claim no responsibility for any problems you have while installing, modifying, or deleting this script.  If you do have problems, it's easy to uninstall via Greasemonkey's configuration page.  Instructions on how to install/use Firefox and Greasemonkey can be found on their respective installation links above.  This script is subject to the same Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial -Share Alike 3.0 License that governs the rest of the content on my site.

Note: I do understand that some people like to see this info, or want to see parts of this info.  I don't have enough Greasemonkey knowledge to be able to let you configure the section to only hide those kinds of updates you don't want to see.  If anyone wants to take a shot at this, I'd be more than happy to help however I can, be it beta testing, code reviews, etc.  I just don't think I can do it on my own given the time and energy I have to commit to things right now.

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