conroy

Collapse Friend Blogs V2

Some time ago I created a Greasemonkey script called Collapse Friend Blogs. A few of you used it, and still use it today, but it had some shortcomings. I didn't make it as easy to install as I could have and it didn't really do all that we wanted from it. Over that last few days I've made some progress in solving those problems.

First I should explain what a Greasemonkey script is, and why you would want one. I'll let Paul Fenwick do that:


Get it ? Users like you and me can modify web pages so they are more to our liking with a little bit code either written ourselves or provided by other users. Greasemonkey allows this, and you can do much more than just removing things from a page as Paul did in his demo.

Now before I go into the installation process and system requirements I should show you what I've done with Greasemonkey, and why.

There's a page on SuicideGirls.com where you can see the most recent blog updates from each of your friends and bookmarked people. It's a useful way of keeping up with people and their various adventures, discoveries and troubles, but its been hidden away somewhat and I don't think many people use it any more. I'm sure there used to be a link to it on our profile pages somewhere, but I cant find it now. UPDATE: I've found the link in MYSG now. So its not a page that's likely to disappear.

So my first festive holiday gift to you, and yes, you get two, is a simple script to put a handy link to this page into the SG page header next to the logout button. Here's what it looks like:



With that there, it serves also as a reminder that I need to catch up, and saves me the effort of part typing the url or opening my bookmarks. But then, there's a problem with this page. It shows 20 of the most recent blog/journal entries of your friends on each page, and some of those are huge. I mean, look at this:


(blog content censored obv.)

While mat8drb and my other friends may write fascinating entries that I enjoy reading, I don't want to have to scroll past all that every time I peruse the blogs, and I do often return to the page to read older blogs if I didn't get through them all the last time. I needed a way of going through them more quickly to find one I hadn't already read.

So that's my second gift. Collapse Friend Blogs 2. Here's how the page looks now:


(blog content censored obv.)

And I can click on any post to expand it to full size. But CFB1 did that. Now when expanded I can collapse them again by double-clicking, and if I've scrolled through a couple of screens of text when I do it, the script will scroll me back up to the top of the now much shorter entry, so I can clearly see the next one. And If double clicking isn't your thing, then I've added a handy button to the top of each expanded post:



Now to install these two scripts and enjoy a festive holiday catching up with your friends via their blogs you will need to install Greasemonkey. Greasemonkey is an add-on for Firefox so make sure you're running Firefox 3.5 and then install Greasemonkey from here. If you're using another web browser you'll have to geek up a little and read the tech notes in the spoiler below.

Once installed, just follow these links to my new scripts at userscripts.org and after a couple of clicks you'll have them both installed and working.

Add Blogs Link to SuicideGirls.com

Collapse SuicideGirls Friends Blogs

Use one or both as you wish, neither depends on the other. If you have any problems or have ideas for improvement then comment below.

Now for a geek note on porting to other browsers that don't have Greasemonkey:

And with that, the longest blog post I've written in ages, you might want to consider installing my scripts to save yourself some scrolling.

Happy holidays everyone, I hope you enjoy these gifts!

Conroy.