FfVb (CPIggy Replacement) - Official Suggestions Thread

[DaFace]

I've been talking back and forth with the guy who is developing "FfVb," a Firefox extension to improve the ignore features of vBulletin and add a few new features. I mentioned to him that we had a number of users who really enjoyed Simplex's CPIggy, and that some of our users might be willing to help out with beta testing the software and giving suggestions on things that could be improved.

Anyway, he should be stopping by soon under the user "TyCam," so don't scare him off too quickly. For those of you who like some of the additional ignore features that CPIggy had, please use this thread to let him know what you think and give suggestions for improvements.

You can download the extension here:

http://www.tycamtech.com/extensions/firefox/ffvb/

I'll also mention that there's a donation form on the site if you like his work and would like to support it.

[TyCam]

Originally Posted by DaFace

Is it possible to use wildcards for the keyword search you added? I noticed that it seems to match whole-words, which is probably good (i.e. chief doesn't filter chiefs). But it might be nice to be able to use wildcards. Maybe. I dunno.

I haven't tried it out using the typical "*" though, so let me know if it's already in there and I just need to do it!

No... no wild cards.

It does use regular expressions though. I don't know if you've had any experience with that, but it's a really messed up form of wildcards for programmers.

Give me a little bit of time to think about it, I'm sure I can cook something up like that.

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by TyCam

No... no wild cards.

It does use regular expressions though. I don't know if you've had any experience with that, but it's a really messed up form of wildcards for programmers.

Give me a little bit of time to think about it, I'm sure I can cook something up like that.

Eh, I don't know how big of a deal it would be. You can always just add multiple versions of a word to the ignore list.

[StcChief]

Originally Posted by TyCam

No... no wild cards.

It does use regular expressions though. I don't know if you've had any experience with that, but it's a really messed up form of wildcards for programmers.

Give me a little bit of time to think about it, I'm sure I can cook something up like that.

Reg Expression sometimes are needed for patterned data

nice addition to Oracle

[Lzen]

I have been using the ffvb extension for a couple of months now. It works well for my purposes. Nice job, TyCam.

[Kerberos]

Whatever happened to Simplex3 or does he go by a different name? He was the motivator for CPIggy

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by Kerberos

Whatever happened to Simplex3 or does he go by a different name? He was the motivator for CPIggy

I think he was burnt out on the Planet in general for a while, but some combination of the downtime during the server switch, the fact that CPIggy broke with the switch, and who knows what else drove him away.

[Dartgod]

Originally Posted by TyCam

You are quite right. That was left out of the rewrite because I wanted to allow users to pick their own colour, but never did get to that.
Ok, I re-added it so if you go to your addons and run the update, it'll grab the latest version that will in fact highlight the threads.

I guess I don't understand what this feature is supposed to do.

I have updated my ignore list, so thanks a bunch for putting this out there!

[Lzen]

Originally Posted by Kerberos

Whatever happened to Simplex3 or does he go by a different name? He was the motivator for CPIggy

You can find him over at FatChatter.com. He goes by the handle, eBovine.

[TyCam]

Originally Posted by DaFace

Eh, I don't know how big of a deal it would be. You can always just add multiple versions of a word to the ignore list.

Well, since there is no real form of wildcard in the code, I'd have to do searches for those wildcards and convert them into the appropriate code that would essentially do the same thing.

Not a huge issue but could get tricky making it do exactly what you want.

Thanks to those with the kind words. I'm glad that you've been finding this useful.

(sorry for the late response, family time this week-end means taking the wife out today for mother's day)

[TyCam]

Originally Posted by DaFace

I've already suggested adding certain prefixes to ignore. If you get to the point that you'd like to give that a try and would like an unmodified vB style to work with, I can probably give you access to the default.

Had a busy week-end but it's in there now.
You can now filter threads by prefix. Just put the prefix name into the preferences window under "prefix filter list" and those threads will not be displayed on the page.

In the future I'd like to include context menus (right click on the prefix and have "add to ignore list" in the menu) but for now, it's a manual process of entering the word(s) into the preferences window.

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by TyCam

Had a busy week-end but it's in there now.
You can now filter threads by prefix. Just put the prefix name into the preferences window under "prefix filter list" and those threads will not be displayed on the page.

In the future I'd like to include context menus (right click on the prefix and have "add to ignore list" in the menu) but for now, it's a manual process of entering the word(s) into the preferences window.

Nice! Now I know where to send people when they complain about Royals and Cardinals threads.

[Simplex3]

Originally Posted by Kerberos

Whatever happened to Simplex3 or does he go by a different name? He was the motivator for CPIggy

Not that I think too many people actually give a crap, but I decided after too many years I was having the same conversation with the same people, over and over again. I spend a LOT less time posting these days. I probably should have started some self-aggrandizing piece of crap thread. My "I'm leaving forever, delete my account" moment was lost.

TyCam: I tried your Add-On and it only ignored the first post by a user on a given page. Also, how do you handle it if someone visits multiple boards that have users with identical user names?

[TyCam]

Originally Posted by Simplex3

Not that I think too many people actually give a crap, but I decided after too many years I was having the same conversation with the same people, over and over again. I spend a LOT less time posting these days. I probably should have started some self-aggrandizing piece of crap thread. My "I'm leaving forever, delete my account" moment was lost.

TyCam: I tried your Add-On and it only ignored the first post by a user on a given page. Also, how do you handle it if someone visits multiple boards that have users with identical user names?

First, let me say that it's a pleasure to meet you (cyberly). Your extension has actually taught me quite a bit.

Secondly, it's quite emberassing that you caught that. I was missing a single '.'
One single period that stopped my extension from ignoring people's posts properly. It's fixed now in the latest update (0.941).
This is why it's not ver 1.00 yet.

Sadly, right now it will ignore people on multiple boards if they share the same name. I've been wrestling with performance already as I have met some people with dozens of people in their ignore list. Once it starts getting high enough, it starts lagging the browser on load.

So I have yet to determine exactly how I'm going to increase the amount of information for it to parse (board name + user name) without adding to the problem at the same time.

I understand if you've put this stuff behind you, but if you'd be interested, you can have a peak at the meat of my extension in this file:
http://www.tycamtech.com/ffvb.txt

I'm hoping to clean up the preferences screen (put into tabs), and to add context menus (if I can) before releasing it out of beta.

[Simplex3]

Originally Posted by TyCam

First, let me say that it's a pleasure to meet you (cyberly). Your extension has actually taught me quite a bit.

Good to see it got one last bit of usefulness.

Originally Posted by TyCam

Secondly, it's quite emberassing that you caught that. I was missing a single '.'
One single period that stopped my extension from ignoring people's posts properly. It's fixed now in the latest update (0.941).
This is why it's not ver 1.00 yet.

Certainly not the end of the world.

Originally Posted by TyCam

Sadly, right now it will ignore people on multiple boards if they share the same name. I've been wrestling with performance already as I have met some people with dozens of people in their ignore list. Once it starts getting high enough, it starts lagging the browser on load.

So I have yet to determine exactly how I'm going to increase the amount of information for it to parse (board name + user name) without adding to the problem at the same time.

Typically this is a DOM manipulation or regex issue. Those are two very expensive operations. Chapter 6 of the owl book (http://regex.info/) has really great info on how to optimize a regular expression. Just be aware that the javascript regex engine isn't very efficient, so if at all possible just use standard replace and find operations. That will take you miles in performance.

Originally Posted by TyCam

I understand if you've put this stuff behind you, but if you'd be interested, you can have a peak at the meat of my extension in this file:
http://www.tycamtech.com/ffvb.txt

I'm hoping to clean up the preferences screen (put into tabs), and to add context menus (if I can) before releasing it out of beta.

I had already pulled your .jar apart and checked out your code.

I'm not a big tabbed interface fan and try to avoid it if possible. There are couple of other usability things I'd address first. Not being able to edit an entry is kind of a pain, for instance.

[TyCam]

Originally Posted by Simplex3

Typically this is a DOM manipulation or regex issue. Those are two very expensive operations. Chapter 6 of the owl book (http://regex.info/) has really great info on how to optimize a regular expression. Just be aware that the javascript regex engine isn't very efficient, so if at all possible just use standard replace and find operations. That will take you miles in performance.

I had already pulled your .jar apart and checked out your code.

I'm not a big tabbed interface fan and try to avoid it if possible. There are couple of other usability things I'd address first. Not being able to edit an entry is kind of a pain, for instance.

For the most part, I think a lot of the issues revolve around the loops, going through the list of users and thread id's and such. I need to find a better way and regex may just be the way to go. If I can store the info in a regular expression pattern.

I've been avoiding the tabbed interface myself but find that the preferences window is getting quite large. Either I split it into separate menu items or I tab it. I haven't decided on which option I like least yet.

And yes, no edit is a pain. XUL doesn't lend itself very well to that sort of thing. But it certainly can be done. I've just been more focused on making the higher priority stuff work first before the convenient lesser priority stuff.