Tools to Spiff Up Your LJ-Browsing Experience
I like gizmos, and I'm a big believer in the customization and personalization of things in general. I'm very satisfied with my LJ experience at the moment, and I thought I'd share some of the tools I've found. [ETA: Now with Part Two]
A word of caution: Some of these things I use every day, and some I'm only faintly familiar with. I am not endorsing any of them. As with anything you install, please research it enough to satisfy yourself that it's not going to, you know, blow up your machine.
Greasemonkey Scripts:
"Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows you to customize the way webpages look and function." In order to install these scripts, you'll need both the Firefox browser and the Greasemonkey extension.
[ETA: Even if these don't work right out of the box with LJ clones (InsaneJournal, GreatestJournal, JournalFen, etc), most of them can be made to work by editing either the "Included Pages" or the code itself.]
Entry Pages & Comments:
Userinfo:
Friends Page:
Contextual:
Message Center:
Bookmarklets:
I love bookmarklets a lot, and I love a lot of them. There are a couple of Firefox extensions that help with real estate issues. The Toolbar Thinger lets you add toolbars; in my case I used it to add another row of bookmarklets. Then I use Favicon Picker 2 to label the bookmarklets with icons instead of text, so that each one takes up only 16 pixels.
These work for me in Firefox; I don't know about other browsers.
Firefox Extensions:
In order to install these extensions, you need the Firefox browser. And I'd like to point you toward atrata's list of fannish Firefox extensions, which includes a lot of cool things that I won't repeat here.
Other:
Last but not least, the LJ client Semagic (Windows). While it's not exactly a browsing tool, it did birth this very post, and I couldn't very well leave it out.
[ETA: On to Part Two]
A word of caution: Some of these things I use every day, and some I'm only faintly familiar with. I am not endorsing any of them. As with anything you install, please research it enough to satisfy yourself that it's not going to, you know, blow up your machine.
- Greasemonkey Scripts
- Entry Pages & Comments
- Userinfo
- Friends Page
- Contextual
- Message Center
- Bookmarklets
- Firefox Extensions
- Other
Greasemonkey Scripts:
"Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows you to customize the way webpages look and function." In order to install these scripts, you'll need both the Firefox browser and the Greasemonkey extension.
[ETA: Even if these don't work right out of the box with LJ clones (InsaneJournal, GreatestJournal, JournalFen, etc), most of them can be made to work by editing either the "Included Pages" or the code itself.]
Entry Pages & Comments:
- Shrunk Comments
I love this thing. It squashes comment threads by resizing icons to 50 px tall, which saves on real estate and makes entry pages so much tidier. Icons expand to full size on mouseover. Works on default comment pages, not customized. (See My_LiveJournal_Style below to force uncustomized pages.)
There is an upgrade, Smart Comments, but it doesn't seem to be working for me. - My_LiveJournal_Style
Generally speaking, I dislike custom comment pages. You can enable the "view comment pages in your journal style" option, but that applies only to links clicked through from your friends page. This fixes the url no matter where you came from.
Actually, it fixes it a little too well, because it changes ALL pages to ?style=mine, not just comment pages. That's no good for me because I want to see other people's layouts on their recent page and calendar page and tags page and so forth, I just don't want to have to figure out a new user interface every time I try to leave a comment. I edited it to run only on comment pages, and I'll show you what worked for me, but I take no responsibility if it screws up your script. Caveat ...something. What's Latin for "coder," hmm?
I added this line to function do_it:
function do_it () {
if( document // Basic sanity
&& document.documentElement
&& document.documentElement.tagName == "HTML"
&& document.contentType == "text/html"
&& document.body
&& (location.pathname ||'').indexOf('.bml' ) == -1 // not a form
&& (location.search ||'').indexOf('style=') == -1 // not styled
&& (location.pathname ||'').indexOf('.html' ) != -1 // entry page
) return do_redirect();
do_rewrite_links();
return;
}
And I added this line to function do_rewrite_links:
function do_rewrite_links () {
var eachlink;
for ( var i = 0; i < document.links.length; i++ ) {
eachlink = document.links[i];
if (
( /\.livejournal\.com$/i).test(
eachlink.hostname || '')
&& (eachlink.pathname || '').indexOf('.bml' ) == -1
&& (eachlink.search || '').indexOf('style=') == -1
&& (eachlink.pathname || '').indexOf('.html' ) != -1
) {
eachlink.search = withMyStyle(eachlink.search);
}
}
return;
}
I also added my own journal's url to the list of excluded pages because it caused a pointless reload, but that's not a big deal. - Thread Unfolder with "Unfold all"
Allows you to unfold threads in place without reloading the whole page. Super! It works on default comment pages; I'm not sure about customized. Instead of:
you get:
- New Comments
Adds "New" next to comments you haven't seen yet. I think maybe some other script I have installed might be interfering with it, because it works sporadically for me. - Anonymous posting warning
Instead of the usual comment box, with its callous disregard of the fact that you've been accidentally logged out:
this hollers at you to pay attention:
- ScrollToY
I haven't played with this much, but it seems brilliant. It sets a within-the-page vertical "bookmark." So if you have to stop in the middle of reading a fic, just set your ScrollToY bookmarklet, and the next time you load that page it will automatically scroll down to where you left off. - Killfile-ish Scripts
I know nothing about these, I don't know where the data is stored, I haven't tried them. Just saying they exist: killfile, TrollBridge, Twit.
Userinfo:
- Always link to full LiveJournal userinfo
Appends "?mode=full" to profile links. - Friend-Of Unhide
Apparently your site scheme matters; it doesn't work for me with Dystopia, but does work with Vertigo. I hesitate to even talk about this because here there be dragons, but oh well, make of it what you will. If you prefer an online tool, there's the friend-of demythologizer.
Friends Page:
- Clean Friends
Resizes large images so they won't stretch out your friends page and force you to scroll horizontally. I edited it to decrease the img max-width from 600 to 400px. - Collapse Redux
I just got this; don't know how useful I'll find it. I'm always on the lookout for ways to keep track of which posts I've seen and which I haven't. This collapses the contents of entries to just their subject line, it remembers your settings through page reloads, and you can toggle whether you want the default to be expanded or collapsed.
Contextual:
- Better User Popup
I find this script so much more useful than LJ's official contextual hover menu. I don't want a friending link there, but I do want lots of navigational links.
This screenshot will look different from the script you install because I edited some of the links, changed the colors and fonts, and removed the default userpic. - ljwho
I haven't tried this out yet with users other than myself, but the prospect is kind of exciting. There are several LJ annotation thingers out there, but this looks like the best bet, not least because it swears that "everything is stored on your own hard drive." It's billed as a way to store users' real names, but I'm more interested in using it for other information. Like, I don't know, making note of people's temperaments, when those personality-typing memes make the rounds. Or, sometimes I lose track of who's who when two people have similar usernames. Or just, like, "ooh! this is the person who wrote that really cool meta referencing pond algae that one time! maybe watch this journal?"
This screenshot will look different from the script you install because I edited the appearance of the link. [ETA: More on that here.]
Message Center:
- Tracking Subscriptions and Notifications Metadata
Displays the entry subjects and the time the subscription was last active. - Pin Messages
Keeps you from accidentally deleting important messages.
Bookmarklets:
I love bookmarklets a lot, and I love a lot of them. There are a couple of Firefox extensions that help with real estate issues. The Toolbar Thinger lets you add toolbars; in my case I used it to add another row of bookmarklets. Then I use Favicon Picker 2 to label the bookmarklets with icons instead of text, so that each one takes up only 16 pixels.
These work for me in Firefox; I don't know about other browsers.
- style=mine (Scroll down)
View an individual page in your LJ style. - format=light
View an individual page in light format. Edit the above style=mine bookmarklet to replace "style=mine" with "format=light."
[ETA: Or copy/paste from nostariel's comment below.] - named anchors (Scroll down)
Makes anchors visible. On entry pages, great for finding direct links to each #cutid. - Resize Window to Narrow
Resizes your browser window into a column to make reading fic easier. I edited it for my personal preferences like this:
javascript:window.resizeTo(500,screen.availHeight);window.moveTo(350,0); - Scroll Page
When reading fic, these auto-scroll the page for you, leaving your hands free. (... And I don't mean free to do that. I swear, you people are the biggest bunch of pervs I've ever had the pleasure of knowing.) I like the "very slow" speed; it's slower than my mouse scroll function. - ScrollToY
Use with the ScrollToY greasemonkey script, above, to set a within-the-page vertical "bookmark" to mark your place in long posts. - LJ faq search
I made this from the very handy Make Search Bookmarklet Tool. You can use it to make more if you want, for interests, usernames, etc.
javascript:Qr=document.getSelection();if(!Qr){void(Qr=prompt('LJ faq search:',''))};if(Qr)location.href='http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqsearch.bml?q='+escape(Qr) - LjSEEK search
Another one I made by tweaking the Make Search Bookmarklet Tool.
javascript:Qr=document.getSelection();if(!Qr){void(Qr=prompt('LjSEEK search:',''))};if(Qr)location.href='http://www.ljseek.com/'+escape(Qr)+'.html' - Open as URL
Opens a url from highlighted text; it will even guess at the url if the text isn't in the proper format. Not LJ-specific, but just too useful to not mention. - go to referrer
"Like clicking Back, but works even after opening a link in a new window." Sometimes when authors don't provide links to all the parts of multi-chapter stories, I wind up lost in a new tab with no idea how to proceed.
Firefox Extensions:
In order to install these extensions, you need the Firefox browser. And I'd like to point you toward atrata's list of fannish Firefox extensions, which includes a lot of cool things that I won't repeat here.
- Uppity
A nifty little doodad. It moves you up the directory tree of the url you're browsing. Great for breaking out of links that lead you to ?mode=reply when what you really want to do is read the comments.
- LiveJournal Hook
After I installed this I began having weirdo icon issues, accidentally posting with inappropriate icons all the time. I finally figured out that this extension has a "randomize icon" feature that gets enabled by default. Dude, that is not the kind of feature that you want turned on by default. I disabled LiveJournal Hook then, so I can't comment further on its usefulness. - dragdropupload
I don't actually use this one on LJ, but I'm mentioning it because it makes uploading art so much quicker and less fiddly. You don't have to browse for files to upload; just grab them and drag them into your website's upload box. - Firefox Showcase
Another one that I don't use much on LJ specifically, but fannishly in general. When I'm drawing and I have a whole bunch of tabs open with different reference materials, I can use this to look at them all at the same time. - Firefox View, IE View, and/or IE Tab
How does your layout look in another browser? Switch back and forth between Firefox and IE.
Other:
Last but not least, the LJ client Semagic (Windows). While it's not exactly a browsing tool, it did birth this very post, and I couldn't very well leave it out.
[ETA: On to Part Two]