MetaFilthy replacement for Firefox 2.0?

November 4, 2006 5:20 AM

Are there any programmers out there who would be interested in making a MetaFilthy clone/replacement for Firefox 2.0? [more inside]
posted by Bugbread to Feature Requests at 5:20 AM (24 comments total)

I really like the quoting functionality of MetaFilthy, and I really miss it since moving to Firefox 2.0.

I'd ask Diffenbach, but I don't want to impose, and I know he's had his fair amount of drama concerning MetaFilthy, but, of course, if he is willing to make an updated version, that would be awesome.

Instead, I figure that by commenting here, it's an open request/suggestion to anyone, including Diffenbach (note: not a demand. Just wondering if anyone with the skills would be interested/willing). I realize it's a lot of work, so if nobody's interested, c'est la vie. If anyone were interested, well, that would be really cool.

(For those who haven't used MetaFilthy: It does a lot of things, but the primary one is that you can select a chunk of text, right click, select "MetaFilthy", and it will automatically add the selected text to the input box, italicize it, put it in quotes, preface it with the name of the author of the comment being quoted, and create a link to the comment being quoted.)
posted by Bugbread at 5:20 AM on November 4, 2006

Seconded. Metafilthy is the only reason I haven't upgraded to FF 2.0 at work.

Thank you ortho, for making it easier to slack off at work.
posted by chiababe at 5:35 AM on November 4, 2006

I love it. I miss it in 2.0, which is ironic, because it's so Web2.0
posted by OmieWise at 7:11 AM on November 4, 2006

As a short stop, why not change the install.rdf file in metafilthy 2.3.3.3?

1. download the .xpi file to your desktop
2. open it with winRAR (or equivalent)
3. extract then open install.rdf (in a text editor)
4. change the MaxVersion line to something later (maxVersion="2.0.*")
5. add the modified file to the .xpi archive
6. open firefox add ons
7. drag and drop the .xpi file into it
8. re-load firefox

There we go, a functioning metafilthy. I'm not sure on the full functionality, but quoting works and this is a good solution for now (and forever if someone can confirm everything works). If you can't go through these steps, I can dump the edited file up on my blog for you to grab...
posted by davehat at 7:20 AM on November 4, 2006

Unfortunately, the metafilthy license says "No permission or license is granted to modify, merge, reverse engineer, disassemble, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software." so distributing a modified version sounds like a pretty bad idea to me.
posted by paulus andronicus at 7:39 AM on November 4, 2006

What, you people don't have Nightly Tester Tools installed? Among other things, it lets you force "incompatible" extensions to be loaded into new Firefox versions.
posted by kindall at 7:41 AM on November 4, 2006 [1 favorite]

Yeah, it works just fine with Nightly Tester Tools.

if he is willing to make an updated version, that would be awesome.

orthogonality has said that he definitely won't be maintaining the extension anymore and since a future update of Firefox might break it, it would be great if someone could replicate its various functions.
posted by jack_mo at 7:59 AM on November 4, 2006

There's a greasemonkey extension that replicates the quote function.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 8:31 AM on November 4, 2006

monju_bosatsu: Where could I find that greasemonkey extension?
posted by Bugbread at 8:47 AM on November 4, 2006

Actually, I also really like the "skip to newest comment" part and the "make input box wider" part (how do you non-MetaFilthy folks cope with this teeny tiny input box?), so it looks like Nightly Tester Tools it is for me.
posted by Bugbread at 8:49 AM on November 4, 2006

The mefiquote script is available here, along with a bunch of other mefi-specific scripts. I use the resizeable form fields extension to adjust the size of the comment box.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 8:59 AM on November 4, 2006 [1 favorite]

Whoa. Thanks, m_b. I didn't realize there were nearly so many of 'em.
posted by Bugbread at 9:15 AM on November 4, 2006

kindall writes "What, you people don't have Nightly Tester Tools installed? Among other things, it lets you force 'incompatible' extensions to be loaded into new Firefox versions."

Fantastic! I just metafilthy-ed that quote.
posted by chiababe at 9:19 AM on November 4, 2006

Hmm...After starting it up, I'm getting "your comment appears to be blank" in response to comments that aren't blank...
posted by Bugbread at 9:44 AM on November 4, 2006

Well, shit, that one went through fine...
posted by Bugbread at 9:45 AM on November 4, 2006

Never mind, completely and totally unrelated issue.
posted by Bugbread at 10:42 AM on November 4, 2006

The Nightly Tester Tools works!

I don't like GreaseMonkey scripts anymore. I find that with many scripts there's a noticeable performance impact on page displays.
posted by clevershark at 11:21 AM on November 4, 2006

I haven't upgraded to FF 2.0 myself, but I've heard that you can get a 2.0 verison if you email the author (who, I understand, hates seeing his name here.)
posted by orthogonality at 11:36 AM on November 4, 2006

Unfortunately, the metafilthy license says "No permission or license is granted to modify, merge, reverse engineer, disassemble, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software." so distributing a modified version sounds like a pretty bad idea to me.

Wether permission is granted or not does not mean you can't do it if no permission is needed. And it's not.
posted by delmoi at 4:39 PM on November 4, 2006

Oops, you said distributing. Yeah, you can't do that. But everyone can go modify their own files.

Most ff extensions that don't work in 2.0 only need to have their max version strings updated. It's kind of stupid, but there you go.
posted by delmoi at 4:40 PM on November 4, 2006

I didn't know the author of MetaFilthy had any problems being identified as the author of MetaFilthy; I thought the trouble came from mixing up said author with others, assuming the author was a regular MetaFilter poster, or whatever. bugbread seemed to be keeping the distinction clear, if I understand what's going on. Am I misunderstanding, and the dude who made MetaFilthy doesn't want to be identified by name at all anymore?
posted by cgc373 at 8:23 PM on November 4, 2006

cgc373, that's the exact same impression I was under, hence my referring to the author of MetaFilthy by Name A (in an attempt to conform with what I interpreted to be the author's wishes). After all, Name A is plastered all over the extension, so it's hard to think that the author is trying to keep Name A secret.

I'm thinking that perhaps the cat is out of the bag, so the author doesn't want Name A to be used, since other people will then use Name B to refer to him, and thus Name A and Name B will both appear in the same thread.

I posit that, if the author really really really wanted to avoid the whole problem, enough to put in a lot of unrewarding time and effort, he would do something like this:

1. Publicly state that he would no longer be making MetaFilthy
2. Create a new version of MetaFilthy, but with a different name, different color scheme, different arrangement of options, etc.
3. Post this new version (let's call it MeQuote, for example) on a Firefox extension page, not on the author's site.
4. In the "About..." section, write something like "Since the previous author of MetaFilthy decided to stop updating it, I've worked up my own version. It's a new extension, so it may still have some bugs, but hopefully it will do all the stuff that MetaFilthy used to do."

If the author used only Name C in everything related to MeQuote, and changed things sufficiently, and perhaps even intentionally seeded a bug or two in (which he could then remove in a few weeks with "MeQuote 2.0"), people would assume that the author of MeQuote was entirely different than the author of MetaFilthy, and after a while everyone would use MeQuote and MetaFilthy would disappear from everyone's memories.

Of course, that's a ton of completely unrewarding work. Still, unless some approach like that happens, people are still going to like MetaFilthy a whole lot (I love it), and are going to refer to the author by either Name A or Name B.
posted by Bugbread at 5:28 AM on November 5, 2006

Yeah, bugbread, but now your clever method can be linked directly and Name A, B, or C can be outed at the click of a mouse! How's a programmer supposed to maintain a little anonymity in the face of the Merciless Web?
posted by cgc373 at 7:18 PM on November 5, 2006

MRTech Local Install is another way to get the increment-version-number behavior of Nightly Tester Tools (and is an incredibly useful extension for a lot of other reasons.)
posted by Zed_Lopez at 10:00 AM on November 6, 2006