PROGRAM_IX
Member
Introduction:
I made this thing to solve one of my bugbears with this site - the way nested quotes get pruned. I completely understand why it's necessary to keep things clean and avoid crashes (allowing too many nested quotes has been known to implode forum software). Still, I didn't like the way I would often need to open a new tab in order to see the original context of a post. A Chrome extension idea later and here we are.
I've been using it myself on two different Linux Chromiums, and one Win7 Chrome, pretty much since I put it together. I was hemming and hawing about sharing it since it's so trivial and so simply implemented, but I figured if it's useful to me, it might be useful to others. Have at it, and let me know if there's anything confusing or broken.
How it works:
1) Install the thing.
2) Find a quote which makes no sense because the original post contained a quote.
Like this one:
3) Hover your mouse cursor over the circular chevron icon next to the name of the quoted person.
4) A little in-page popup (hidden div for you web folks) appears, rather like in this poorly-cropped image:
Click on the 'Dismiss' panel to close the popup, or hover over another post.
(This is also helpful in threads where people edit their posts a lot, or where the 'fixed' joke starts getting a little out of hand.)
5) Left click anywhere on the hovering post to get rid of it, or hover over another chevron to change to looking at that post.
Potential issues/FAQ if anyone ever asked any:
I can't click on any links because the post disappears!
Resolved in 0.3
I clicked on the post accidentally and now it won't come back!
Resolved in 0.2.
When I hover over another post, the first one disappears!
There's only one possible post at a time because I think that's neater, but theoretically you could have one for every quote on the page as you hovered over them. I'm not sure if the memory impact would be that bad. Why you would need that, I don't know.
Does this add an icon to my Chrome bar?
It does not, because it's too simplistic to need one. I didn't even think about one, it has the most generic icon ever right now. It would look terrible next to your address bar. Perhaps in the future it will have an options interface, but I'll probably hide that in the Extensions page. That's what the cool kids like Imagus do.
This makes my page seem to be refreshing, what's going on?
I'm pretty sure that problem comes from NeoGAF itself. A lot of ad things load after the initial load of the page (refresh this page and you'll see the refresh button go back and forth) so my extension is just showing that behaviour in a smaller area. You can see this pretty clearly with the Chrome developer console thing, there's a line where it does the GET on the NeoGAF page, then a GET for some NeoGAF resources required to display the page, and then a lot of stuff coming from 'pubmatic.com' and similar. You'll also see this name pop up in the bottom left of the Chrome tab where it shows what server it's loading from/waiting for at the moment. That is not coming from me.
Versions:
0.31 (Current): Fixed a CSS problem that was preventing the 'Dismiss' button acting like a button.
0.3/B]: Added a big 'Dismiss' button at the top of the div so that you can click freely within the popup (on links etc.)
0.2: Removed limitation of not being able to load the same post twice in a row (e.g. if accidentally closed). Should now be public on the Chrome Web Store.
0.1: First release.
Maybe/Wishlist Features (I'm not committing to any of these and you can't make me.):
- I'd love to have some configurable options for this. There's a method for user options within the extension framework, it should be fairly simple but I just need to spend time with it and maybe I'll have time for that soon.
- Different popup methods: mouse on to chevron to popup, mouse off to hide vs. current mouse on to popup, click 'Dismiss' to hide vs. something like Imagus (mouse on chevron to popup, only hide if mouse not on chevron OR popup).
- Different sizes for the popup. At the moment it takes up 50% horizontally and 40% vertically of the full browser space, which is me trying to ride the line between obvious and in the way, but people will always have their preferences on this stuff.
- Who knows, probably other things.
Boring background info/for the developers in the audience:
A few months ago I saw this lightning talk - really just a collection of slides - about how to build Chrome extensions, and like many other tutorials I thought I would take a cursory look, want to do something, and ultimately do nothing.
Not so. That very evening I created NeoHover in a couple of hours. If you have ever had an idea for a [simple] Chrome extension, I strongly encourage you to take a look through the first ten slides and see what you make of it. There should be enough info there to do something simple or funny or both.
I made this thing to solve one of my bugbears with this site - the way nested quotes get pruned. I completely understand why it's necessary to keep things clean and avoid crashes (allowing too many nested quotes has been known to implode forum software). Still, I didn't like the way I would often need to open a new tab in order to see the original context of a post. A Chrome extension idea later and here we are.
I've been using it myself on two different Linux Chromiums, and one Win7 Chrome, pretty much since I put it together. I was hemming and hawing about sharing it since it's so trivial and so simply implemented, but I figured if it's useful to me, it might be useful to others. Have at it, and let me know if there's anything confusing or broken.
How it works:
1) Install the thing.
2) Find a quote which makes no sense because the original post contained a quote.
Like this one:
3) Hover your mouse cursor over the circular chevron icon next to the name of the quoted person.
4) A little in-page popup (hidden div for you web folks) appears, rather like in this poorly-cropped image:
You can still move your mouse around freely, the hovering just activates the effect.
Click on the 'Dismiss' panel to close the popup, or hover over another post.
(This is also helpful in threads where people edit their posts a lot, or where the 'fixed' joke starts getting a little out of hand.)
5) Left click anywhere on the hovering post to get rid of it, or hover over another chevron to change to looking at that post.
Potential issues/FAQ if anyone ever asked any:
I can't click on any links because the post disappears!
Resolved in 0.3
Original answer: You can still right-click->new tab on any links/etc. in the hovering div, but left clicks of any kind will kill it. I'm thinking about ways to solve this neatly, while still making it easy to get rid of the hovering post.
I clicked on the post accidentally and now it won't come back!
Resolved in 0.2.
Original answer: You can't see the same post twice in a row. You have to hover over a different post, then come back to the first. I disabled this specifically because I didn't want people to do it accidentally as I did several times in early tests. I'll probably change it soon, but wanting to look at the same post again RIGHT after wasn't that common for me. Worst case, it will ultimately be an option somewhere.
When I hover over another post, the first one disappears!
There's only one possible post at a time because I think that's neater, but theoretically you could have one for every quote on the page as you hovered over them. I'm not sure if the memory impact would be that bad. Why you would need that, I don't know.
Does this add an icon to my Chrome bar?
It does not, because it's too simplistic to need one. I didn't even think about one, it has the most generic icon ever right now. It would look terrible next to your address bar. Perhaps in the future it will have an options interface, but I'll probably hide that in the Extensions page. That's what the cool kids like Imagus do.
This makes my page seem to be refreshing, what's going on?
I'm pretty sure that problem comes from NeoGAF itself. A lot of ad things load after the initial load of the page (refresh this page and you'll see the refresh button go back and forth) so my extension is just showing that behaviour in a smaller area. You can see this pretty clearly with the Chrome developer console thing, there's a line where it does the GET on the NeoGAF page, then a GET for some NeoGAF resources required to display the page, and then a lot of stuff coming from 'pubmatic.com' and similar. You'll also see this name pop up in the bottom left of the Chrome tab where it shows what server it's loading from/waiting for at the moment. That is not coming from me.
Versions:
0.31 (Current): Fixed a CSS problem that was preventing the 'Dismiss' button acting like a button.
0.3/B]: Added a big 'Dismiss' button at the top of the div so that you can click freely within the popup (on links etc.)
0.2: Removed limitation of not being able to load the same post twice in a row (e.g. if accidentally closed). Should now be public on the Chrome Web Store.
0.1: First release.
Maybe/Wishlist Features (I'm not committing to any of these and you can't make me.):
- I'd love to have some configurable options for this. There's a method for user options within the extension framework, it should be fairly simple but I just need to spend time with it and maybe I'll have time for that soon.
- Different popup methods: mouse on to chevron to popup, mouse off to hide vs. current mouse on to popup, click 'Dismiss' to hide vs. something like Imagus (mouse on chevron to popup, only hide if mouse not on chevron OR popup).
- Different sizes for the popup. At the moment it takes up 50% horizontally and 40% vertically of the full browser space, which is me trying to ride the line between obvious and in the way, but people will always have their preferences on this stuff.
- Who knows, probably other things.
Boring background info/for the developers in the audience:
A few months ago I saw this lightning talk - really just a collection of slides - about how to build Chrome extensions, and like many other tutorials I thought I would take a cursory look, want to do something, and ultimately do nothing.
Not so. That very evening I created NeoHover in a couple of hours. If you have ever had an idea for a [simple] Chrome extension, I strongly encourage you to take a look through the first ten slides and see what you make of it. There should be enough info there to do something simple or funny or both.
