Tildes ReExtended has been updated and is also back on the Chrome Web Store again
Howdy everyone! In talklittle's fundraiser I pledged I would fix all outstanding issues of Tildes ReExtended before 2023 is over should we reach 200 donors. Well the 200 donors mark was hit pretty quickly, so after over a year of inactivity I've gotten back to it and brought Tildes ReExtended up to speed again.
Most of the work so far has been on getting the codebase up to par with my current preferences, but there is also a new feature and some bug fixes. Namely: the long-awaited Hide Topics feature with 4 different ways of selecting topics to automatically hide. The content scripts will run as soon as the HTML is available, meaning there should be less stuff popping in or out, the Hide Votes was also fixed so it now hides the correct votes again (yay edge cases Edit: I just noticed another edge case doesn't work :^) fuck). And also the extension is about 3.5 times smaller in size now (245KB -> 70KB). :D
If you don't know what Tildes ReExtended is, it's basically the Tildes equivalent of the Reddit Enhancement Suite extension. Commonly requested features that can be implemented client-side (like the Hide Votes feature) and quality of life utilities like the Jump To New Comment and Back To Top buttons.
Hope you like it!
Giving the Chrome Web Store a second chance
A number of years ago now as I was publishing a new version of Tildes ReExtended to the Chrome Web Store, their automated review process denied the new version without providing any reason that made sense, and weirdly threatening to take down the extension if the problems weren't addressed. After a wasted effort trying to talk to Google support, I decided to say fuck it and just remove it from CWS. Leaving the only way to install the extension for Chromium users being needlessly complicated and a pain in the ass.
So with 2.0.0 I've decided to give CWS a second chance, initially I had more to say about it but I'm just gonna leave it out.
If you're new to Tildes and like what you see, please consider donating! Tildes is a non-profit community site driven by its users' interests and any amount of support ensures it can keep going. Thank you! 💖
I stumbled across the new extension on Chrome's Web Store yesterday, and I already installed it.
Like I said yesterday, it's seamless and easy to use. You did a good job. Thank you!
Is it possible to request a setting to randomly assign colors to usernames (I believe this is how Extended worked?) with the ability to override with the specific labels in ReExtended? That way I can easily enable it and follow conversations, but if I want to highlight certain users with their own labels then I can set them in ReExtended.
Definitely agreed on it being seamless, easy to use and appreciate your work on it!
Sure can do. :)
It doesn't look like it's available for Firefox on Android. Is that something that would be difficult to enable, at some point?
I don't know, I am so confused about Firefox and extensions on Android because someone got another one of my extensions working on it even though I didn't check the checkbox for Android compatibility. I don't have an Android device to test it myself so I can't really help. :(
On Firefox Nightly and Fennec, there's something called Extended Add-On Support. It allows you to create collections of addons on the Firefox addons marketplace and sync them to your phone. Of course, some don't really work that well, considering they're made for a computer interface. Those addons that use popups as a UI? Well now they're full screen webpages on your phone. However, stuff like Consent-O-Matic works well since you don't usually have to interact with its UI.
Since your addon just changes up the UI a bit, and since Tildes is already pretty mobile-friendly, it actually works really well. I've been trying it since yesterday but I haven't enabled all the included features so maybe there's something broken there ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Looks like that workaround can only be done with the nightly build of Firefox.
But, since @swchr seems to indicate it is functional on Android, I'd say to enable the compatibility flag in the store until/unless someone reports something is broken.
The workaround will also work on Beta, and the f-droid build Fennec.
By the way... I was going to message you about this, but that seemed a bit presumptuous, and now you've posted this very handy topic... ;)
Would it be a lot of work to get the extension to automatically synchronise across multiple devices? That was always something that frustrated me with RES: that I would add a user note in RES on one computer, but it wouldn't show up on another computer with RES installed.
I know I could just export the settings from one instance of ReExtended and import them to the other instance, but it would be hard to manage updates I make on both computers.
How hard is it to add a multi-device synchronisation function?
This should already work using your Google Account or Firefox Account depending on your browser. The extension uses sync storage where the browser automatically manages syncing it between devices. If you're not logged in then it only saves it locally. I think the only case where this doesn't work is syncing between desktop Firefox and Android Firefox (I don't know about Chrome extensions on Android).
I have no desire to implement something like that myself because it would require a server to do the syncing and a privacy policy because I would then be handling user data, which also causes extra scrutiny in the review process that I really don't need. :P
Would you be open to doing so on Firefox? By all accounts their sync is considered secure and well audited (it's open source).
If you use Firefox, your sync data will go to Mozilla, not Google.
No, I absolutely agree. But with Firefox sync you're not giving any data to Google, and nothing to Mozilla either apart from some metadata.
I switched to Firefox for many reasons at the beginning of the year (mostly because ublock Origin works on FF mobile), and that's another nice side effect. Mozilla is a lot more trustworthy for account syncing than Chrome.
Only real thing that makes me not fully cut out chrome is translation functions. There are some that work on desktop (not as well as Chrome, but close), but none of those are on the official mobile add on store.
I'm not bothered by it, but... I added ReExtended to Chrome on my desktop then checked my Android device where I'm logged in to my Google account. The label I added to your name does not display when I view this page on my phone.
The labels work fine on the desktop though - thank you for creating this!
Did you manually force a sync? I don't know how long the time is between syncs but I remember the MDN documentation mentioning it could be something like 10 minutes. If it still doesn't sync then I guess it simply doesn't work for mobile? Can't really do much about that!
I'm ok with it not being on my phone, just letting you what happens just for curiosity's sake.
On Chrome on my phone, Sync is turned on. I did try logging out of tildes and back in, refreshing the screen of course, and also I turned on the Saving Web And App Activity setting on my phone's Chrome settings. Not sure how to force a sync, but I'll look at it again in a few hours to see if it changes and update this comment either way just to let you know.
Again, I think this extension is great and I don't need it on my phone - really appreciate your work on it, and making it available on Chrome again. I turned off all my vote displays and that works excellently (desktop only but that's ok). Very grateful to have that feature as well.
promised update: about 9 hours later so whatever sync was needed should've happened by now... on Chrome/Android, votes still show and user tags do not display. Doesn't matter to me, but since you don't have an Android to test on I thought you'd like to know.
Just commenting to save for later so I can install when I'm on my PC
You can also use Tildes' bookmarks feature instead.
I always forget to check these unfortunately haha, my reddit "saved" tab is a wasteland of things I've saved and forgotten over the years.
Can this be installed with hermit?
I was hoping someone who uses Hermit would reply, but since it hasn't happened yet. If you can install extensions with Hermit, I guess it should work? :P
I think it might be possible, they have instructions for configuring / creating UserScripts. I'll try it when I get a chance!
I tried out the plugin a bit. Some of you have a star next to your usernames now. (I like this one: ★)
It would be nice if there were a way to turn the user labels feature on, but only use the user label editor to change them. (The [+] button adds a bit of clutter, particularly within a comment body.)
Since I only plan to use one label, ideally it would just toggle on and off.
Wham!
I've been using this extension since I saw this post, and have really enjoyed it.
I was mainly interested in it as a way to hide votes on my comments and posts. Ended up also hiding votes on other peoples comments, since I realized that I often use votes as a shortcut to assess a comment instead of actually reading it.
Nice!
Maybe add a list of features to the README and the text descriptions in the Chrome store? They are a bit bare. But you can get it from the screenshot.
How is it 2023 and Google still doesn't have Markdown for anything, urgh. Or even just a subset of HTML with
<ul>and<li>so lists don't look absolutely horrendous.Anyways, added. Will show up in the next publish. :)
Thanks for this, not seeing much difference here so far but if it's gonna be the new RES, i'm down.
Could we have a feature of easier hiding/ignoring posts?
I'm a huge blocker and hider of stuff i'm not interested in, and the default action of hitting More actions, then ignore posts is super janky and long winded en-masse. Would be great!
I had started working on a miscellaneous features category a few days ago (but I hadn't made an issue for it yet), and one of those would be to move the Ignore button to a more convenient place. It's coming!
Awesome, thanks in advance.