MeTa post: I'm deploying a new (backwards compatible) URL...

Great. For people who want the posts' titles on the front pages, it is now trivial to hack up a script to provide them.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 9:17 PM on February 1, 2007

I've written a GreaseMonkey script, Mefi Titles 2, that adds the encoded titles to the front pages.

One thing I noticed is that the encoding process loses a lot of punctuation - e.g. Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us -> Web-20-The-Machine-is-Using-UsAllegations of rape-as-torture at Abu Ghraib surface on YouTube. -> Allegations-of-rapeastorture-at-Abu-Ghraib-surface-on-YouTube If the reason for encoding is to help Google searches, then those encodings will screw... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 2:26 PM on February 4, 2007

#Rhomboid: having %-entities in URLs is fugly to the extreme

I don't care if you think "%"s in the URLs is "fugly". Practically nobody looks at them so it doesn't matter if they are "fugly".

If the URI's can encode something meaningful then let them do it.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 6:41 PM on February 4, 2007

MeTa post: I would like to have a way to hide some of the...

#wryly: a button that would leave the title, but make the front-page part of the question invisible.

You do know that the "title" does not appear on the front page.

This functionality is easy to do Greasemonkey (and puts the responsibility of remembering what is collapsed on the client, not the MeFi server).

To get all the funtionality you want, Matt would have to include the title on the... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 12:36 PM on January 9, 2007

MeTa post: Um. If someone admits in an FPP that most of the...

So I post this story. Then haters immediately attack it indirectly by demanding that it must be removed and others attack me (the poster) or the little girl (and not her message).

[maybe if the haters had attacked my writeup it would have had more meaning]

Since then both of my YouTube links, The Coolest 8 Year Old In The World Talks About O'Reilly, and Bill O'Reilly takes on YouTube, rose to be the top 2 video links at Technorati.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 10:21 PM on December 17, 2006

MeTa post: I really don't understand this site anymore. I...

Here is one of mogabog's justly removed post. What is the other?
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 7:44 PM on December 14, 2006

MeTa post: I believe this AxMe is shilling for her business....

Actually the Ask Mefi Guidlines do not explicitly say that you can not promote a commercial activity through a question. Maybe they need to be updated.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 12:05 PM on November 24, 2006

#jessamyn: I'll try to make the faq more explicit.

By "faq" I hope you mean Ask MetaFilter Guidelines which is distinct from the FAQ.

When you try to ask a question there is stuff on that page to keep down bad questions and a demand to read the Guidlines page.

A new question asker can read through both pages and not realize that asking a question to promote a business will result in... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 5:02 PM on November 24, 2006

MeTa post: Please bring back the img tag....

#jessamyn: I'd like to see more active adoption of a greasemonkey script that allows you to show linked images inline,

Such a script is easy to write, but 1) it doesn't solve any of the security problems, and 2) it prevents images from not being shown in line - e.g. NSFW link, CLICK ONLY IF YOU ENJOY NECROPHILIA!!!!.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 11:46 AM on November 16, 2006

#http://example.com/ceilingcat.gif.: if there was a hacker-safe way to turn on inline images

A hacker safe methods for images is just to only allow those that contain no search parameters (i.e. the stuff after a "?").

Sure some sites might only serve images in the form http://foo.com/img?id=666 and such images would not be displayable.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 12:11 PM on November 16, 2006

#Armitage Shanks

What are you talking about. The 'security issues' that caused Matt to turn off images was that he had the site coded such that a <img =http://www.metafilter.com/...> could simulate button clicks of a mefi page. There is no secret information on pages to be dynamically encoded into an external url, and even that is not possible cause people can't post the javascript to do the encoding.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 12:38 PM on November 16, 2006

MeTa post: I don't mean to sounds like a complete luddite,...

The site changes break all sorts of greasemonkey scripts. I haven't bothered to update my scripts yet until the site settles down.

Normally a greasemonkey script runs after a page loads. If what was a page-load now happens via AJAX the script will have to be changed to detect the AJAX and re run itself.

This is a pain for general scripts that run for several sites (of which MEFI is just one).
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 8:53 AM on October 23, 2006

#mathowie: Should I site owner worry about greasemonkey support? I tend to think no. About the most I could do is give gm script authors some heads up

Well I'm a scriptwriter that writes scripts, some of which do things like open tabs that server-side javascript cannot do.

If you encourage scripters then they can junk up the purity of MeFi to satisfy people like:#five fresh fish: I need to be able to Shift+Click the... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 5:03 PM on October 23, 2006

MeTa post: Woot, we're back up. Sorry about the downtime....

I expect all the new FPPs to be well thought out and correctly spelled because people have had a day to think about them and have not hit Post in a fit of drunken finality
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 5:37 AM on September 14, 2006

MeTa post: (I am not a programmer so I have no Idea how hard...

I wrote this greasemonkey script a short while back and mentioned it in metatatalk.

it automates opening a FPP and all of its links. It puts a red Omega in the at the end of each FrontPagePost. When you click the Omega, it opens the article in a new window and opens all of its links in new tabs.

It is helpful to run the heavy-links script to warn against auto opening a lot of heavy links.

posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 5:31 PM on August 2, 2006

whoops, here is the correct link to my greasemonkey script
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 5:36 PM on August 2, 2006

MeTa post: I've tried clicking on this thread four or five...

My computer seems to be infected with some evil that takes over my cursor and as far as I can tell "clicks" to close a window (FireFox defeats this if more than one tab is open) then it activates the "Windows Start Menu" but mostly doesn't do anything there. Sometimes this "cursor virus" activates the "shut down" dialog and I tell it not to.

I think it may be trying to activate "Windows Explorer" and do something nasty.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 11:40 PM on July 18, 2006

MeTa post: I run a Greasemonkey script that highlights...

Mousing over seems to work fine for me.

Yeah, but to mouse requires an action just to discover something. Wouldn't it be nicer if the link showed you if it was heavy or not and you didn't have to mouse over to discover that?
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 10:20 PM on July 6, 2006

Here is another GM script automates opening a FPP and all of its links. It puts a red Omega in the at the end of each FrontPagePost. When you click the Omega, it opens the article in a new window and opens all of its links in new tabs.

It is helpful to run the heavy-links script to warn against auto opening a lot of heavy links.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 6:29 PM on July 11, 2006

MeTa post: I'm looking for a GIF or PNG I've seen posted to...

.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 10:21 AM on June 21, 2006

MeTa post: David Pogue replies in David Pogue is the rudest...

but he didn't address why he deleted my comment from his blog.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 9:06 PM on June 1, 2006

MeTa post: John DeLappe, discussed here, responds to his...

hmmm. The entire sidebar entry seems to be missing now.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 5:26 AM on June 1, 2006

MeTa post: Does anyone know why MeFi has almost doubled its...

MSNBC has at least on one page, a little box labled "links" that include the following links:• All Music
• Arts & Letters Daily
• Boing Boing
• Internet Movie Database
• Joe Bob Briggs
• Jump the Shark
• Lost Remote
• Metafilter

• Pop Culture Junk Mail
• Reality Blurred
• Romenesko
• Television Without Pity
• TV... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 3:14 PM on April 29, 2006

MeTa post: Slightly better CSS: Could the CSS for useful...

Matt didn't seem very enthusiastic when I proposed something like this before.

I wanted him to allow something like <div class='tquote'> or <blockquote class='tquote'> to pass through the input filter and be styled correctly.

To see how it would look, cut and paste the following code into the reply window and see how it looks in the instant preview.

<b>Joe Clark </b>said: <div... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 1:00 PM on April 21, 2006

#mathowie: so that all instances of blockquote might match the one above

The problem is that there is a fair semantic distinction between blockquoting an extended passage from a web page vs. blockquoting somebody's comment (which in itself may quote some comment).

You currently don't style the <quote> tag, but you do pass it through. "quote" is supposed to be an inline quote as opposed to blockquote which is... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 1:39 PM on April 21, 2006

Another advantage of making a semantic distinction between blockquotes and commentquotes is that with just a little javascript you can control whether commentquotes are displayed.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 2:14 PM on April 21, 2006

Given only one type of quote, I would vote for a single left verticle border. Just keep the margin and padding small enough so you can embed them without looking silly

Like this example

where it seems there

is too much spacing

around

the edges.

There should really not be any right adjustment.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 2:41 PM on April 21, 2006

If you add a left vertical bar to make blockquotes more visable then you don't need such big margins/padding to make them stand out.

In that case maybe people would start using them for userquotes. My Comment script lets people set what they want to wrap userquotes in.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 3:14 PM on April 21, 2006

#Roger Dodger: I can't believe nobody has tried posting MonkeySaltedNuts example.

I said to look at it in live preview cause input filters strip out the <div>s.

Well it seems like the filters are not stripping out the </div>s which causes the uglitude.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 4:25 PM on April 21, 2006

Chuckles:
>MonkeySaltedNuts: If you add a left vertical bar ...
>
>That sounds terrible! What is wrong with this userquote style?

Because if you want to userquote someone userquoting it doesn't extend, and you have to come up with some non standard syntactic device. Leftbar blockquotes/divs nest nicely.

You don't have to use them if you don't want to or don't... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 4:46 PM on April 21, 2006

cortex: we have seen a number of html tags prohibited ... less fundamntal impact on the look of discourse here than would an automated user-quote feature.

There are already several "automated user-quote" scripts and these features are available to everybody including noobs.

I've been on numerous serious mailinglists and most participants learn to trim their userquotes even if they include embeddings.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 5:26 PM on April 21, 2006

Ethereal Bligh: I'd prefer attribution, but it's more trouble than I've found I want to go to.

If you can use my firefox/greasemonkey script then attribution is just a button click. You can even style the attribution somewhat and I welcome suggestions for other ways to style it.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 5:48 PM on April 21, 2006

Chuckles: "Could've fooled me"
seems to think that any tree structure can be linearized without brackets.

Yes such linearization is nice, should be strived for, and in simple cases can be aided by context.

But more complex cases that are converted to simple (unbracketed) order just introduces confusing ambiguities.

Maybe Chuck wants to argue that more than one embedding is beyond... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 6:46 PM on April 21, 2006

Firas: can't blockquote just be styled with a slight left padding and italics

If you want a blockquote to be styled italic then hand or automatic wrap it because italic should not hold for every blockquote. Some automatic user quoters let you give a default "italic" wrapper to mean "quote".

However yes as of now, MeFi adds no blockquote style and the default margins/padding are ugly and way too big. A left... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 7:31 PM on April 21, 2006

mathowie: style up the stock blockquote, yay or nay?
YEA because it is so lacking and big. Vertical lines can reduce the need for bogus whitespace.

mathowie: suddenly people are wanting to use it to create a threaded discussion board when that wasn't the question.

I don't think anybody here (I guess you think mainly me) wants to make MeFi into a threaded board.

I just... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 8:28 PM on April 21, 2006

mathowie: The excess whitespace is from line breaks, not the CSS.

You are talking about only the vertical excess whitespace. The horizontal excess white space is caused by relying on the the default CSS to layout a 'blockquote'.

I can partially circumvent extra vertical whitespace by avoiding line breaks. Nothing now can prevent the horizantal whitespace.

Tight styiling of a blockquote may prevent... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 9:59 PM on April 21, 2006

MeTa post: Is there a way to jump from one comment (anchor)...

Here you go, jk. It was trivial to add to my comment script. This version has the comment script stuff commented out. I seem to be having some strange interaction.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 5:39 PM on March 28, 2006

#matthewr: Doesn't work for me, I'm afraid.

How doesn't it work? Do you get any error messages in the JavaScript Console? Do pressing "j" and "k" do nothing?

I still need to fix it to take account of the current scroll position.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 5:50 PM on March 28, 2006

#31d1: bloglines and gmail have j going down, not up, as you have. Could you reverse it?

A new version of jk reverses my take on j & k.

Also it uses the current window scroll position to decide what comment to scroll to. Let me know if I've made some fencepost or other error with this.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 7:07 PM on March 28, 2006

MeTa post: Oh great #1, care to explain the server issues?...

Are you using the same server as Slashdot?

Every once in a while this weird thing happens. Internal links get their host appended. E.g. mefi links are normally something like: /mefi/50248right now they appear as: http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/50248
At the same time Slashdot has gone from //linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/20/163216
tohttp://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/21/2245243
This simultanious switching of Mefi... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 7:32 PM on March 21, 2006

hmmm. metafilter and slashdot have just switched back to using hostless internal links.

/mefi/34936

//slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/23/1249235

sure looks like they are doing something in tandem.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 5:54 AM on March 23, 2006

as of now, MeFi and slashdot have again switched to including hosts in their internal links.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 11:51 AM on March 26, 2006

as of now, MeFi and slashdot have again switched to including hosts in their internal links.

Now back to hostless.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 8:04 AM on March 27, 2006

MeTa post: Matt, can you add some more class to your comment...

First the DIV quote issue:

My script can append the underlying HTML of part of somebody's comment to the reply box – i.e. it preserves formatting HTML and A links. With this ability, the best way to quote this HTML is to wrap it in something like <div style='padding-left: .4em; border-left: thin solid;'>…</div>. This gives clean displays of quoting quotes of quotes. This wrapper works fine in live preview, but doesn’t make it into the real preview. Since you... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 10:46 AM on March 18, 2006

also, if div is out, something like <blockquote class='reply'> would work equally as well.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 10:52 AM on March 18, 2006

#matthewr: could you test for the site subdomain ... It'd also be nice if you could deselect a comment

Sure I can site class the selection color. Do other people want it?

But why do you want to deselect a comment (other than to avoid the color clashes)? I think always being able to scroll to the last selected comment is useful and accidental clicks could defeat this.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 12:35 PM on March 18, 2006

#matthewr: what are "Natural Motherhood principles"

Sorry, that is a term I invented in working on another project to describe DOM changes that preserve existing DOM structure. I don't think it has made it to the web.

It is an analogy between changing the children of a DOM node and how the children of say a human mother can change.

First the children of a mother are only... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 1:39 PM on March 18, 2006

#orthogonality: I write this as the first person to produce a third-party script for MetaFilter.

I'm sorry, but I can't find the script you are referring to. Can you post a link?

Also, why do you use the term third-party? My understanding is that the first party is MeFi site scripts and the second party is browser user-scripts.

Who is your 2nd party? Do you think that a website that runs a script over... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 8:41 PM on March 18, 2006

yeah #Plutor and #kindall you are kinda right. From a user perspective all user-scripts are 3rd party.

I was thinking from a script perspective in which there are only site-scripts and user-scripts.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 11:03 PM on March 18, 2006

MeTa post: Pony: In addition to "Post Comment" or...

ummm. Why is this needed?

If I've typed something into the comment box (giving a live preview), I find if I reload the page (without posting) what I've put in the comment box is preserved.

Or does this only work with Firefox.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeySaltedNuts at 2:26 PM on March 8, 2006