MetaFilthy 2.8
MetaFilthy homepage: http://www.diffenbach.org/metafilthy.html
MetaFilthy Usage Instructions (click)
MetaFilthy is a Firefox browser extension for keeping track of your last read comment in each metafilter.com thread and for responding to posts and comments on metafilter.com
metafilter.com is a trademark of its owner. MetaFilthy is not a product of, or affiliated with, metafilter.com
Advertisement: try my newest extension, Back IS Close.
If you do not agree to the license, you may not download or use MetaFilthy
Copyright (c) 2005 TP DiffenbachPermission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to use the Software, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
No permission or license is granted to modify, merge, reverse engineer, disassemble, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
As prominently stated on its homepage, MetaFilthy by default sends your MetaFilter username and user id and the url of the page you have commented on, when it checks for updates.
When MetaFilthy runs on your computer, it can do anything Firefox can do. Because of this, if you don't trust MetaFilthy's author, you really shouldn't use MetaFilthy, because by using MetaFilthy, you're trusting the author with all the capabilities of a running program on your computer.
However, MetaFilthy version 2.3 (and later) allows you to turn off the sending of your username and id and the url of the page you have commented on. If you elect to turn of the sending of personal information, MetaFilthy will nevertheless continue to check for updates, and your computer's Internet Protocol ("IP") address will continue to be sent; it's impossible to communicate via HTTP without sending this address (as the address tells the foreign computer where to send its reply).
The author enjoys seeing who is using the product of his hard work, but if you really want to not send your Metafilter user information, just go into MetaFilthy's preferences and turn off sending that information.
By default -- that is, if you don't act to turn it off -- MetaFilthy will send your user name, id, and the url of the page you're commenting on.
MetaFilthy 2.6 has arrived! It can:
2.6 Changelog::
2.3.3.3 Changelog::
2.3.3 Changelog::
2.3.2 Changelog::
2.3.1 Changelog::
2.2.5 Changelog::
2.2.5 Changelog:
2.2.4 Changelog:
2.2.3 Changelog:
2.2.2 Changelog:
2.2.1 Changelog:
2.2 Changelog:
Due to a programmer error in version 2.01, MetaFilthy versions 2.1 and later render pages about 100 times faster than version 2.01. If version 2.01 was too slow for you, try version 2.2.1!
I NEED YOUR HELP: please email metafilthy@diffenbach.org with your comments about what's good and what's bad about MetaFilthy. I'm especially interested in the settings dialog. Is it too big for your screen? Is it easy to understand? Do the settings make sense?
MetaFilthy Usage:
The last-read comment feature:
Remembering the last read comment has nothing to with the age of the comments, in contrast to the "(n new)" links on metafilter.com; MetaFilthy remembers the last comment you read, regardless of the age of new comments. Come back next week, and it'll still show you the first comment you haven't read. Or if you've read all the comments, it'll show you that, even if the MetaFilter front page still thinks some comments are new. MetaFilthy even remembers after re-starting Firefox. (You could even manually transfer the "last read" file from home to work, if you cared to.)
And what if mathowie deletes the last comment you read, will that break MetaFilthy? No! MetaFilthy does more than just bookmarking the last comment: it remembers all comments and their authors, so it can even show you where comments were deleted (but only if you had previously visited the thread when those since-deleted comments were present). Because "works 99% of the time" isn't good enough.
Replying to comments with MetaFilthy:
Using the mouse context menu: right-click on anywhere in a comment, or the text of the post, (including on the author link or time-stamp) , and select "MetaFilthy" from the context menu, to quote the comment in its entirety. Or select some text on the page, and right-click and select "MetaFilthy" from the context menu, to quote only that selected text.
Or using the MetaFilthy status bar icon: click the MetaFilthy icon on the status bar, then click on any comment to quote it in its entirety, or select some comment text with your mouse, to quote only the selected text.
The comment or the portion quoted is automatically copied to the comment input box, transformed as described below; the page is scrolled to the bottom to display the comment input box, and focus is set to the comment input box.
Both the menu item and icon appear only as specified in the MetaFilthy settings, and then only on MetaFilter pages (metafilter, metatalk, ask mefi) where it is possible to comment, and when you are logged in. They do not appear on "front" pages, closed posts, or on sites other than metafilter.com.
Quoted text:
The quoted text is surrounded in quotation marks; you can choose to use double quotes or single quotes. If the first quotation mark in the quoted text is the same style as your selected quotation mark, all quotation marks in the quoted text are switched in style: double quotes to single quotes, single quotes to double quotes except those apparently being used as an apostrophe.
Optionally, all but the last paragraph is prefixed only with an open quotation mark, with a single close quotation mark after the closing paragraph, as per the Associated Press Style Manual format for "running quotes".
In the quoted text, italicized or emphasized text is changed to unitalicized text; unitalicized text is italicized.
Breaks ("<br>") in the quoted HTML are optionally changed to line feeds; this takes up more space in the comment input box but makes editing easier. In very rare cases setting this option may result in quoted text with fewer line breaks than in the original.
All other html mark-up (links, images, etc.) from the quoted text is retained in the quote. If only a portion of the quote was selected, mark-up that applies to that portion is retained.
Attribution:
The quoted text is prefixed with the name of the commenter being quoted, and a link to the original comment. That link displays the text you specify in MetaFilthy's settings; you can specify one form for comments and another for posts.
The default link text for posts is "posted", for comments "writes," (with a trailing comma).
Editing:
You can additionally specify that MetaFilthy expand the comment input box to the width of the page, or the height of the input box in pixels to the value you specify. Enter zero ("0") or leave the height blank to prevent MetaFilthy from adjusting it.
Please remember to quote only the text necessary to your own comment; please don't over-quote.
Privacy information:
MetaFilthy communicates with its author's web site when you use it, to check for newer versions and to transmit debugging information consisting of your metafilter.com user name, user id, and the url of the page you're commenting on. Checking for updates cannot be turned off, but you can set your MetaFilthy preferences so it does not send your user name, id, or the url of the page you are commenting on.
Acknowledgements:
To Neil Hodgson, for SciTE the excellent cross-platform programmer's text editor.
To "Fnord" the pseudonymous author of the FarkIt extension. Even though no code from Farkit survived into the MetaFilthy release version, it provided a solid starting point.
To Alex Sirota, author of colorzilla, and Edward Ackroyd, author of GooglePreview, for insights into About boxes and status bar icons.
To those taking the time to answer at the mozillaZine Extension Forum, including "rue", whose answer referring about explicitOriginalTarget was pivotal to MetaFilthy, and whose Sessionsaver extension showed me how to invoke the preference dialogue. And to "phun", for his suggestion to look at his wikalong extension to figure out a nasty bug in my code.
And a special thanks to "asqueella", also in the Extension Forum, for his many patient answer to my many bewildered questions.
To Robert Ginda for his vexing, frustrating, but absolutely essential Javascript debugger, Venkman.
To Ted Mielczarek for his Extension Developer's Extension (and that always delightful must-have extension, Nuke Anything).
And most of all to Nathan Yergler, for his demoext extension, which provided a quick start and good coding standards for building MetaFilthy.
To Matt Haughey and his users at metafilter.com for providing the discussion that inspired MetaFilthy.
And to my Mom, for using her PayPal account to buy my metafilter.com subscription so I didn't have to give PayPal my personal information, for encouraging me to keep working at the extension, and even feigning interest in what it does.
Author: TP Diffenbach
To contact the author, with questions, comments, bug reports, or donations please email metafilthy@diffenbach.org
MetaFilthy and this documentation copyright © 2005, TP Diffenbach