Comments on: You don't always get what you want, but if you ask sometimes, you just might get...what you want.

You don't always get what you want, but if you ask sometimes, you just might get...what you want.

dawson — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:05:07 -0800

A different kind of call out: MeFi has a brand new pony. Just last week I made a plea for some sort of thread marker/scroll tag. Others were interested. Then within a few days, miracle-man Plutor released a script that surpasses all expectations! Already he's updated it, and you can download it here. It's getting rave reviews, and team lowkey modified Plutor's script for a slightly different look if you prefer. Major thanks and props to Plutor for a badass greasemonkey script that should benefit all Mefite .

By: dawson

dawson — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:07:45 -0800

erm. mefites even.

By: Dr-Baa

Dr-Baa — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:11:48 -0800

Cool! I just installed it. Thanks for bringing it to my/our attention.

By: starman

starman — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:14:50 -0800

Thumbs up.

By: agregoli

agregoli — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:20:43 -0800

Glad some people got that issue fixed. I just use "find" for my username with less fuss.

By: ODiV

ODiV — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:32:37 -0800

You comment in every thread you read?

By: ODiV

ODiV — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:32:55 -0800

Every time you read it?

By: jeblis

jeblis — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:33:56 -0800

Ok it convinced me to finally try greasemonkey (I know, I know). Looks good. More Ponies...

1) Wish I could set it to automatically be on the last comment shown before I refreshed ( a la fark).
2) Also dragging it down a long thread will be a pain.
3) Would be easier if I could pick it up anywhere on the tag.

By: jeblis

jeblis — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:35:11 -0800

You comment in every thread you read?

This comment is just to save my place.

By: jeblis

jeblis — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:38:38 -0800

Oh I see. I follows me down. Nice.

Can I get it in Cornflower Blue?

By: dawson

dawson — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:40:06 -0800

ODiV , hell no. This simply will/can take you back to where you left the thread. Say you were into a discusion, leave for a few hours, and there are lots of new comments. This will drop you off where at the last comment you read.
Obviously not something everyone wants (and thus optional) but has little to do with ones own participation in a thread.

By: jeblis

jeblis — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:47:09 -0800

I like how it points down and you can grab it to reset it further up. Is it cross sit, multi-user, social, Web 2.0 Standards Compliant?

By: Wolfdog

Wolfdog — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:47:23 -0800

Now read agregoli's comment, dawson.

By: rtha

rtha — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:50:21 -0800

Cool. Thanks!

By: Skorgu

Skorgu — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:52:22 -0800

I reiterate Plutor's godhood.

By: dawson

dawson — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:53:45 -0800

I did Wolfdog. Democracy at play here. For me, and it appears, a few others, this works way better. Not to be snarky (and not to duck 'responsibility', I have to leave the computer for several hours), unless I'm missing something, you insatll this if you want it. If not, the original thread has myriad workarounds.
Some prefer to prime a hand pump, I like to just turn the tap on.

By: Wolfdog

Wolfdog — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:01:40 -0800

I meant, read it, because that [i.e., agregoli] was who ODiV [to whom you replied to with "Oh hell no"] was replying to to [not you] [hence your reply was somewhat of a non sequitur].

By: Ambrosia Voyeur

Ambrosia Voyeur — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:09:30 -0800

Plutor, will you accept mailed homemade treats? Memail me an address and I'll think of something yummy.

By: dawson

dawson — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:23:29 -0800

Wolfdog, I apologize. I'm obviously not thinking clearly. You are correct and I am not. Thanks!
Ambrosia Voyeur, I, too, have make offers of sacrifice to Plutor, but so far, it seems I am not worthy ... (^_^)
really , really must go tutor now, anyway, this ain't about me. do carry on.

By: dawson

dawson — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:29:28 -0800

of course Ambrosia is a 'hot chick' ( I mean that in the most chivalrous way, ma'am) and I'm and 'old beard' so I understand, Plutor, if you prefer a handmade treat to a Amazon item. I'm not jealous. At all!
See y'all at 9 pm EST.

By: Wolfdog

Wolfdog — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:34:41 -0800

This can all work out very tidily and happily if someone sends me a homemade treat and, well, that's the main thing, really, you can work the rest of the arrangement out if it seems important.

By: jack_mo

jack_mo — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 12:07:01 -0800

Brilliant work.

I thought it was a bit distracting, though, and after a bit of Googling managed to work out how to turn the marker thingy into a very tiny little 6px x 4px light grey oblong. (Turns out you can replace it with pancakes, pissing elephants, whatever. - just run an image through this data url generator and paste the gobbledegook it gives you over the two chunks of gobbledegook at the bottom of the script that start with "data:image".)

Don't think I broke the script while changing it, so if anyone who uses the plain theme (doubt it'd be visible against the blue/green/grey) wants a version they'll barely notice, here it is.

(Hope it's okay to do that, Plutor.)

By: jeblis

jeblis — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 12:13:16 -0800

jack_mo Thanks I like it more subtle.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 12:32:05 -0800

NO, NO CHANGING MY CODE. IT IS A UNIQUE SNOWFLAKE.

Joking. Please change and modify. I generally release everything I make (that's not for-work) under the BSD license, which, for the Open Source unaware, means that you can do whatever you want with it for whatever purpose you want, including sell it for profit (good luck with that). I didn't explicitly put that in this script, but you can consider it an implicit license.

I very much appreciate offers of homebaked goodies and Amazon whatnots, but in all honesty, a MetaTalk shrine to my glory is all I really ever wanted. Really.

By: team lowkey

team lowkey — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 12:46:48 -0800

Plutor, would you mind terribly pulling the image dimensions out as variables to make custom images a little easier? I've done it with your latest update here. I guess it would make sense to pull out the grabber size as well. Or, you know, if you'd rather not, feel free to tell me to piss off.

And, again, this is totally fucking rad. Thanks a bunch.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 12:46:50 -0800

If someone were to—hypothetically—start a collection to—hypothetically—buy me, say, a Smart Fortwo, or a Wii, or a small rocketship, I wouldn't make the delivery person return it.

By: dg

dg — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 12:55:47 -0800

*bows before the shrine to Plutor, lights candle*

By: Plutor

Plutor — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:04:40 -0800

team lowkey: "Plutor, would you mind terribly [...]"

I've got a todo list for the next iteration accumulating already, and this (or perhaps mefiquote-esque configurability) is at the top, as is making the dragging-handle bigger.

By: team lowkey

team lowkey — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:09:35 -0800

Sweet!

By: lilkeith07

lilkeith07 — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:26:43 -0800

One thing that I noticed is that if a answer is marked "Best Answer" then it won't stop on that comment it will go to the one right before it. Not really a big problem. And thank you very much for making this, I was using dog tags but this is much better to use.

By: team lowkey

team lowkey — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:15:28 -0800

It doesn't look like the new comment count works on the front page of Ask. I'm guessing it's because it says "answers" instead of "comments".

By: Sys Rq

Sys Rq — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:18:07 -0800

Best part of this pony: When someone links to a #COMMENT, and I click it, and the new page invariably starts at some seemingly arbitrary point in the middle of an apparently random comment (what's up with that?), the correct comment now has a pretty little arrow next to it.

By: juv3nal

juv3nal — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:27:02 -0800

the new page invariably starts at some seemingly arbitrary point in the middle of an apparently random comment (what's up with that?).

Are you using an old version of the mefi comment divider greasemonkey script? I think the newer version fixed that.

By: Sys Rq

Sys Rq — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:30:45 -0800

It's probably something like that. I'll just update 'em all.

By: Deathalicious

Deathalicious — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:46:24 -0800

Damn you Plutor! shakes fist

By: hangashore

hangashore — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:20:32 -0800

Now look what you've done! This off-label use will void our MeFi warranty! We're DOOOOOMED!

Spiffy! Kudos again, Plutor.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:09:52 -0800

Anyone got a screenshot or two of what this looks like in practice? I don't have greasemonkey installed (seems to cause stability issues in Firefox for me).

By: Ambrosia Voyeur

Ambrosia Voyeur — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:25:36 -0800

yo here be she

By: team lowkey

team lowkey — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:34:48 -0800

I've changed the image, so this isn't the official look, but close to it. Plutor's is larger with a red square. Here's the marker, and here's the jumper. The marker follows you down the page as you scroll, marking how far you've read. The jumper hangs at the bottom of the page if you're higher in the thread than your mark. Clicking on the jumper will pop you to the marker, and both can be dragged next to a comment to mark your spot.

By: maudlin

maudlin — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 17:25:18 -0800

I love this! For some reason, whenever I refresh Firefox 2.0 in a long, active thread (here or at other blogs), the page never autoscrolls to show the first new comment, but scrolls down to some point well below the first new comment. IE 6, in contrast, always scrolled to the first new comment.

But at least here, I can look for the lovely little pointer -- thanks!

By: SassHat

SassHat — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 17:43:57 -0800

/hugs plutor a LOT

By: onalark

onalark — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 17:51:18 -0800

whoah, when did we get the ability to subscribe to comments in a thread? crazi..HEY GET OFF MY DAISIES YOU ROTTEN LITTLE WHIPPERSNAPPERS!!!!

By: mosessis

mosessis — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 19:18:33 -0800

Wow, Plutor, I just checked out the list of scripts you've shared with us; I hadn't realised how many of the scripts I'm running came from you. Thank you for all the goodness you've given us!!

By: taz

taz — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 22:11:51 -0800

Oh, man! Thanks, thanks, thanks! And thank you, team lowkey, too!

By: Plutor

Plutor — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 01:52:29 -0800

In return for all of the thanks and hugs and wows, updates!

* WAY better, alpha-layer-enhanced semi-transparent (ooh, subsite-themed) default image
* Fixed counters on AskMe (this is what happens when end-users are my QA)
* Fixed marker on best answers in AskMe
* Made it easier to hack in new images (I wanted to make it runtime-configurable, but I don't think there's a way to take a local image and read it in with pure JavaScript).
* Infinitely bigger jumper/marker handle, even on the jumper, which honestly worked better than I'd anticipated.
* How come no one noticed the marker would creep up the page by one comment each time the page was loaded?
* Focusing the comment box tags the last comment (I noticed that the tag couldn't follow me to the last comment on my 1200-pixel-tall screen at work.)

By: Plutor

Plutor — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 01:57:10 -0800

Available at the same place as before.

Yes, I woke up at 3:30 AM and couldn't fall back asleep so I got up and coded. What of it?

By: jack_mo

jack_mo — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 04:50:29 -0800

This is just brill, Plutor. Thanks again for all the work you're putting in.

(Did I just say brill? 1980s playground slang memoryspasm!)

By: team lowkey

team lowkey — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 09:55:43 -0800

The new marker is great. Thanks for making it easier to customize the image, and for making it completely unnecessary to do so.

Would it be possible to have it tag the last comment if you scroll to the end of the page? I'm also on a 1200px, and clicking the comment box is definite improvement over manually dragging the marker, but automatic is better still. Because I'm just. that. lazy.

By: team lowkey

team lowkey — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:20:42 -0800

Oh, who am I kidding. I can't help but tinker. The partial transparency thing is brilliant. I've made the marker just a little shorter, and with a little whitespace on the back for grabbing. The old yellow one moved here, if anybody cares.

By: a_green_man

a_green_man — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:21:40 -0800

I really like the idea of this, but I'm not quite ready to switch to FF yet. Is it terribly hard to make it compatible with Opera also? I expect it may be a pain, so no worries, it just never hurts to ask. (Some of the decisions by the OperaDevs frankly boggle me in their shortsightedness.)

By: Plutor

Plutor — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 09:08:36 -0800

For anyone who's still paying attention, there are a couple of minor bugfixes up today, including finding a really boneheaded mistake I made that was making the jumper sometimes take its sweet time reappearing.

According to this, Opera should be able to natively use "most" Greasemonkey scripts. I don't have the big-O installed (besides on my cell phone), so I can't test it out right now. I have a strong feeling that a few things won't work (it might not remember the marked comment location between loads, the jumper fading-in might not work, the marker probably won't go translucent while you're moving it, etc). Someone give it a whirl and let me know. If it seems seriously deficient or malfunctional, I'll take the plunge.

By: a_green_man

a_green_man — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:15:01 -0800

Well, I did try before I posted (both yours/Plutor's and team lowkey's). Neither one did anything for me on Opera 9.25 and while I have gotten other GM scripts to work, I can't claim to know why they do or don't. Usually if I don't see "opera compatible" on the download page I just skip it, but this looked like it was worth a try. Maybe someone else will have some insight before this thread is completely buried.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 07:21:13 -0800

For you, a_green_man, MetaFilter Scroll Tag now supports Opera (8+, I think). Opera users will also need to install this script that emulates the Greasemonkey builtin functions I'm using.

By: maudlin

maudlin — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:08:54 -0800

Hey, has anyone else who has installed this script (which I still love) noticed that the "x new" link below a FPP now opens in a new tab, while the "x comments" link opens in the same tab, as usual? I have my profile set to open links in a new window, which up until now meant that all external links opened in a new FF tab and a few MeFi links opened in a new tab under some circumstances. This is new behaviour for this link.

I don't know if I'm the only one seeing this, or if this is even related to this script, but I wanted to check here before I made a MeTa FPP about it as this change seemed to happen about the time I installed this. Bug? Feature? Illusory correlation? Formication?

By: Plutor

Plutor — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 08:02:04 -0800

You're not hallucinating, you're completely right. It's this script doing it. I've just updated it with a fix.

By: maudlin

maudlin — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 08:10:27 -0800

You kick serious ass, Plutor. The fix works. Thanks!

Although the news that I'm not hallucinating means this is going to be a much more boring week than I had expected. I hate Wednesdays.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 06:05:29 -0800

I just discovered that userscripts.org has rss feeds for tons of things, like all comments on all of my scripts. They also have feeds for individual scripts, which might be more useful for people who aren't me. Even better, if you create a user account, you can favorite scripts and then get an rss feed of all comments on all of your favorited scripts. A better way to keep up to date with updates.