[-] cynber@lemmy.ca 6 points 9 months ago

That t-shirt would be cool, but don't have time to properly test our extension before then

I'm looking forward to December when I'll have time to work on it. I'll try to attend some office hours, I didn't know that was an option

[-] cynber@lemmy.ca 6 points 10 months ago

I agree, instance assistant (our extension actually!) handles this, but it would be much better to have it exist natively.

[-] cynber@lemmy.ca 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I've been working on the !instance_assistant@lemmy.ca extension :)

RES initially helped me get into Reddit, so hopefully this helps people get into Lemmy as well

35
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by cynber@lemmy.ca to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

What are some good rules to follow when handling people who want to collaborate on a project that is on your personal repo?

It looks like GitHub doesn't allow fine control of permissions unless it is an organization repo. I looked around and a lot of other projects (specifically browser extensions) still live on the main dev's account. I don't have any reason to doubt the people who want to help, but it might be nice to know what the best practices are.

Should I add everyone as a collaborator? This runs into the issue above where I can't limit permissions.

Should everyone push contributions from their forks? In that case, how would people work together on a particular feature.

39
submitted 11 months ago by cynber@lemmy.ca to c/programming@programming.dev

What are some good rules to follow when handling people who want to collaborate on a project that is on your personal repo?

It looks like GitHub doesn't allow fine control of permissions unless it is an organization repo. I looked around and a lot of other projects (specifically browser extensions) still live on the main dev's account. I don't have any reason to doubt the people who want to help, but it might be nice to know what the best practices are.

Should I add everyone as a collaborator? This runs into the issue above where I can't limit permissions.

Should everyone push contributions from their forks? In that case, how would people work together on a particular feature.

[-] cynber@lemmy.ca 4 points 11 months ago

You could try from this

https://lemmy.world/post/1289432

Ideally try for a smaller size, else it takes time to load and wastes people's data

[-] cynber@lemmy.ca 5 points 11 months ago

Sounds good! This was my first dive into browser extensions as well. It's not too bad once you go over the basics. If you give it a try, see the contributing page on the repo's wiki for some resources on how to get started with browser extensions.

A super short summary is:

  • manifest.json is the entry point, it links to HTML files (which represent things like the popup, sidebar) and scripts (which do most of the work)
  • the background script runs all the time (see background.js), and the content scripts run on specific pages (ex. There's one for Lemmy community pages, one for error pages)

If you DO give it a try, we were part way through migrating features from the LemmyTools userscript and that might be a good place to start. I wasn't familiar with userscripts so I didn't make much progress, and can't get back to it for a little while. The issues page of the repo should have LemmyTools related features tagged. If any details are missing, let me know and I'll add them in :)

[-] cynber@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I personally find a lack of downvotes to be annoying and harmful. People don't go through the trouble of reporting problem content, and it usually leads to poor quality inflammatory content rising to the top.

If you're new and haven't really set up yet, explore other instances. You can find one that aligns with what you want out of Lemmy without jumping through hoops.

If you have set up, there are account migration tools for you. They just aren't perfect yet

[-] cynber@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago

Sorry to those that have already seen this. I'm trying to space out the posts so it's not in a large clump in your feeds. People have different subscription lists, so I'm trying to reach those that haven't seen it yet.

These are the last 4 posts :)

[-] cynber@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago

Sorry to those that have already seen this. I'm trying to space out the posts so it's not in a large clump in your feeds. People have different subscription lists, so I'm trying to reach those that haven't seen it yet.

These are the last 4 posts :)

25
submitted 1 year ago by cynber@lemmy.ca to c/lemmyapps@lemmy.world

Hi everyone, I'm excited to announce one more release before I take a short break. I have some other stuff starting up, so I won't be pushing out new features as fast, but I'll still be around to manage the project. (more at the end)

Links:


โ“ What is Instance Assistant?

If you're new to Instance Assistant, it is a browser extension with a collection of tools and features to simplify your browsing experience on Lemmy and Kbin. It is available on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge; you can also install it from the releases page on GitHub.

For a full list of features, please see the GitHub homepage: https://github.com/cynber/lemmy-instance-assistant


โญ What's new in v1.2.5?

  • Redirect posts to your home instance!: Post pages now have a redirect button that will find the same post on your home instance(1). You don't have to hunt it down yourself anymore.
  • Posts related to this webpage buttons in popup & sidebar
    • Make a post: You can now create a post from any webpage! Click the 'Make a Post' button in the extension popup or sidebar to generate a draft post with autofilled title, URL, and body contents. Afterwards, just select a community and hit post. (This currently works for both Lemmy & Kbin, but custom frontends are untested while they develop). Try it here: https://lemmy.ca/post/4478560
    • Open Posts: This will find any posts about the webpage/article/video that you are looking at. Use it to see if something has already been posted, or to find related discussions about it. When there are multiple posts, it will ask before opening them all. (see note on risks and why it doesn't count automatically)
  • Post an image: You can now right-click on an image, anywhere on the web, and hit "Post this image". It will open a new tab and autofill the title, image link, and add the page URL to the body as "Source: URL". Try it here: https://lemmy.ca/post/1282303
  • Reorganizing popup:
    • I fixed the issue where the popup would still display a button after removing all instances from the list.
    • The number of default instances in the popup was reduced to 4
  • Added settings:
    • You can now hide onboardining guides to make the interfaces less wordy
  • General styling changes, wording improvements, and bugfixes

(1) This is an important feature to me because this little annoyance was part of why I set out to create the extension in the first place. Thanks to some help from @zero_gravitas, I was able to use the Lemmy API to grab the post details, and then run a search for it on your home instance. While most posts should only bring one result, there is a chance that there are multiple posts by the same user, in the same community, with the same title. If this is an issue, I'll make this search more specific.


๐Ÿ—ฃ๏ธ My questions for you:

Improving 'post to Lemmy'

  • Right now the 'Post to Lemmy' button does a very basic search in the page meta tags for information. This works for most websites, but it is not perfect. What websites do you usually post from, and is the extension doing a good job of replicating how you format the post? Please share both good and bad examples, so we can fix what isn't working and keep what is.

Improving Post search

  • Having the extension automatically count the number of posts and display it in the icon would be pretty nice, since then you would know about any posts for the news article / blog / video that you are looking at. However, there are privacy implications with this since it needs to send the URL to your home instance to do the search.
  • I would like to add the option to whitelist specific websites, so the user can choose what browsing data they want to find posts for. Is this something you would list to use? What websites would you whitelist?

Anything else?

Please share any issues that you find. Lemmy and Kbin instances have a lot of variation in how things are structured, so there are bound to be some bugs that I haven't found yet. If you have any ideas for new features, please share them too! I'm always looking for new ideas to add to the project.


๐Ÿ”ฎ Cool ideas being discussed for the future

  • Account switcher & ability to save login info to extension
  • Reddit migrator tools
    • multireddit input should convert subscriptions to official Threadiverse replacements, or large related communities
    • embeds on Subreddit sidebars to search for similar community
    • button on post pages to cross-post to home instance
  • Prepping for Firefox Mobile app, now that they are opening mobile up to all extensions!
  • Keyboard hotkeys, possibly collaborating with someone that already implemented something similar

For the most up to date information, see the issues or the project road map


๐Ÿ’› Finally

Thank you for all the suggestions and feedback so far! I'm really happy to see that people are using the extension and finding it useful. I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do with it in the future.

Like I said above, I won't be as active over the next few months in terms of getting new features out. The extension is now in good shape, and it covers most of the important use cases. There's still lots of cool stuff we can do with it, so please contribute ideas and expertise! When I get a chance, I'll pop in and grab a few more issues.

Cheers :)

43
submitted 1 year ago by cynber@lemmy.ca to c/technology@lemmy.ml

Hi everyone, I'm excited to announce one more release before I take a short break. I have some other stuff starting up, so I won't be pushing out new features as fast, but I'll still be around to manage the project. (more at the end)

Links:


โ“ What is Instance Assistant?

If you're new to Instance Assistant, it is a browser extension with a collection of tools and features to simplify your browsing experience on Lemmy and Kbin. It is available on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge; you can also install it from the releases page on GitHub.

For a full list of features, please see the GitHub homepage: https://github.com/cynber/lemmy-instance-assistant


โญ What's new in v1.2.5?

  • Redirect posts to your home instance!: Post pages now have a redirect button that will find the same post on your home instance(1). You don't have to hunt it down yourself anymore.
  • Posts related to this webpage buttons in popup & sidebar
    • Make a post: You can now create a post from any webpage! Click the 'Make a Post' button in the extension popup or sidebar to generate a draft post with autofilled title, URL, and body contents. Afterwards, just select a community and hit post. (This currently works for both Lemmy & Kbin, but custom frontends are untested while they develop). Try it here: https://lemmy.ca/post/4478560
    • Open Posts: This will find any posts about the webpage/article/video that you are looking at. Use it to see if something has already been posted, or to find related discussions about it. When there are multiple posts, it will ask before opening them all. (see note on risks and why it doesn't count automatically)
  • Post an image: You can now right-click on an image, anywhere on the web, and hit "Post this image". It will open a new tab and autofill the title, image link, and add the page URL to the body as "Source: URL". Try it here: https://lemmy.ca/post/1282303
  • Reorganizing popup:
    • I fixed the issue where the popup would still display a button after removing all instances from the list.
    • The number of default instances in the popup was reduced to 4
  • Added settings:
    • You can now hide onboardining guides to make the interfaces less wordy
  • General styling changes, wording improvements, and bugfixes

(1) This is an important feature to me because this little annoyance was part of why I set out to create the extension in the first place. Thanks to some help from @zero_gravitas, I was able to use the Lemmy API to grab the post details, and then run a search for it on your home instance. While most posts should only bring one result, there is a chance that there are multiple posts by the same user, in the same community, with the same title. If this is an issue, I'll make this search more specific.


๐Ÿ—ฃ๏ธ My questions for you:

Improving 'post to Lemmy'

  • Right now the 'Post to Lemmy' button does a very basic search in the page meta tags for information. This works for most websites, but it is not perfect. What websites do you usually post from, and is the extension doing a good job of replicating how you format the post? Please share both good and bad examples, so we can fix what isn't working and keep what is.

Improving Post search

  • Having the extension automatically count the number of posts and display it in the icon would be pretty nice, since then you would know about any posts for the news article / blog / video that you are looking at. However, there are privacy implications with this since it needs to send the URL to your home instance to do the search.
  • I would like to add the option to whitelist specific websites, so the user can choose what browsing data they want to find posts for. Is this something you would list to use? What websites would you whitelist?

Anything else?

Please share any issues that you find. Lemmy and Kbin instances have a lot of variation in how things are structured, so there are bound to be some bugs that I haven't found yet. If you have any ideas for new features, please share them too! I'm always looking for new ideas to add to the project.


๐Ÿ”ฎ Cool ideas being discussed for the future

  • Account switcher & ability to save login info to extension
  • Reddit migrator tools
    • multireddit input should convert subscriptions to official Threadiverse replacements, or large related communities
    • embeds on Subreddit sidebars to search for similar community
    • button on post pages to cross-post to home instance
  • Prepping for Firefox Mobile app, now that they are opening mobile up to all extensions!
  • Keyboard hotkeys, possibly collaborating with someone that already implemented something similar

For the most up to date information, see the issues or the project road map


๐Ÿ’› Finally

Thank you for all the suggestions and feedback so far! I'm really happy to see that people are using the extension and finding it useful. I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do with it in the future.

Like I said above, I won't be as active over the next few months in terms of getting new features out. The extension is now in good shape, and it covers most of the important use cases. There's still lots of cool stuff we can do with it, so please contribute ideas and expertise! When I get a chance, I'll pop in and grab a few more issues.

Cheers :)

44
submitted 1 year ago by cynber@lemmy.ca to c/technology@lemmy.world

Hi everyone, I'm excited to announce one more release before I take a short break. I have some other stuff starting up, so I won't be pushing out new features as fast, but I'll still be around to manage the project. (more at the end)

Links:


โ“ What is Instance Assistant?

If you're new to Instance Assistant, it is a browser extension with a collection of tools and features to simplify your browsing experience on Lemmy and Kbin. It is available on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge; you can also install it from the releases page on GitHub.

For a full list of features, please see the GitHub homepage: https://github.com/cynber/lemmy-instance-assistant


โญ What's new in v1.2.5?

  • Redirect posts to your home instance!: Post pages now have a redirect button that will find the same post on your home instance(1). You don't have to hunt it down yourself anymore.
  • Posts related to this webpage buttons in popup & sidebar
    • Make a post: You can now create a post from any webpage! Click the 'Make a Post' button in the extension popup or sidebar to generate a draft post with autofilled title, URL, and body contents. Afterwards, just select a community and hit post. (This currently works for both Lemmy & Kbin, but custom frontends are untested while they develop). Try it here: https://lemmy.ca/post/4478560
    • Open Posts: This will find any posts about the webpage/article/video that you are looking at. Use it to see if something has already been posted, or to find related discussions about it. When there are multiple posts, it will ask before opening them all. (see note on risks and why it doesn't count automatically)
  • Post an image: You can now right-click on an image, anywhere on the web, and hit "Post this image". It will open a new tab and autofill the title, image link, and add the page URL to the body as "Source: URL". Try it here: https://lemmy.ca/post/1282303
  • Reorganizing popup:
    • I fixed the issue where the popup would still display a button after removing all instances from the list.
    • The number of default instances in the popup was reduced to 4
  • Added settings:
    • You can now hide onboardining guides to make the interfaces less wordy
  • General styling changes, wording improvements, and bugfixes

(1) This is an important feature to me because this little annoyance was part of why I set out to create the extension in the first place. Thanks to some help from @zero_gravitas, I was able to use the Lemmy API to grab the post details, and then run a search for it on your home instance. While most posts should only bring one result, there is a chance that there are multiple posts by the same user, in the same community, with the same title. If this is an issue, I'll make this search more specific.


๐Ÿ—ฃ๏ธ My questions for you:

Improving 'post to Lemmy'

  • Right now the 'Post to Lemmy' button does a very basic search in the page meta tags for information. This works for most websites, but it is not perfect. What websites do you usually post from, and is the extension doing a good job of replicating how you format the post? Please share both good and bad examples, so we can fix what isn't working and keep what is.

Improving Post search

  • Having the extension automatically count the number of posts and display it in the icon would be pretty nice, since then you would know about any posts for the news article / blog / video that you are looking at. However, there are privacy implications with this since it needs to send the URL to your home instance to do the search.
  • I would like to add the option to whitelist specific websites, so the user can choose what browsing data they want to find posts for. Is this something you would list to use? What websites would you whitelist?

Anything else?

Please share any issues that you find. Lemmy and Kbin instances have a lot of variation in how things are structured, so there are bound to be some bugs that I haven't found yet. If you have any ideas for new features, please share them too! I'm always looking for new ideas to add to the project.


๐Ÿ”ฎ Cool ideas being discussed for the future

  • Account switcher & ability to save login info to extension
  • Reddit migrator tools
    • multireddit input should convert subscriptions to official Threadiverse replacements, or large related communities
    • embeds on Subreddit sidebars to search for similar community
    • button on post pages to cross-post to home instance
  • Prepping for Firefox Mobile app, now that they are opening mobile up to all extensions!
  • Keyboard hotkeys, possibly collaborating with someone that already implemented something similar

For the most up to date information, see the issues or the project road map


๐Ÿ’› Finally

Thank you for all the suggestions and feedback so far! I'm really happy to see that people are using the extension and finding it useful. I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do with it in the future.

Like I said above, I won't be as active over the next few months in terms of getting new features out. The extension is now in good shape, and it covers most of the important use cases. There's still lots of cool stuff we can do with it, so please contribute ideas and expertise! When I get a chance, I'll pop in and grab a few more issues.

Cheers :)

64
submitted 1 year ago by cynber@lemmy.ca to c/firefox@lemmy.ml

Hi everyone, I'm excited to announce one more release before I take a short break. I have some other stuff starting up, so I won't be pushing out new features as fast, but I'll still be around to manage the project. (more at the end)

Links:


โ“ What is Instance Assistant?

If you're new to Instance Assistant, it is a browser extension with a collection of tools and features to simplify your browsing experience on Lemmy and Kbin. It is available on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge; you can also install it from the releases page on GitHub.

For a full list of features, please see the GitHub homepage: https://github.com/cynber/lemmy-instance-assistant


โญ What's new in v1.2.5?

  • Redirect posts to your home instance!: Post pages now have a redirect button that will find the same post on your home instance(1). You don't have to hunt it down yourself anymore.
  • Posts related to this webpage buttons in popup & sidebar
    • Make a post: You can now create a post from any webpage! Click the 'Make a Post' button in the extension popup or sidebar to generate a draft post with autofilled title, URL, and body contents. Afterwards, just select a community and hit post. (This currently works for both Lemmy & Kbin, but custom frontends are untested while they develop). Try it here: https://lemmy.ca/post/4478560
    • Open Posts: This will find any posts about the webpage/article/video that you are looking at. Use it to see if something has already been posted, or to find related discussions about it. When there are multiple posts, it will ask before opening them all. (see note on risks and why it doesn't count automatically)
  • Post an image: You can now right-click on an image, anywhere on the web, and hit "Post this image". It will open a new tab and autofill the title, image link, and add the page URL to the body as "Source: URL". Try it here: https://lemmy.ca/post/1282303
  • Reorganizing popup:
    • I fixed the issue where the popup would still display a button after removing all instances from the list.
    • The number of default instances in the popup was reduced to 4
  • Added settings:
    • You can now hide onboardining guides to make the interfaces less wordy
  • General styling changes, wording improvements, and bugfixes

(1) This is an important feature to me because this little annoyance was part of why I set out to create the extension in the first place. Thanks to some help from @zero_gravitas, I was able to use the Lemmy API to grab the post details, and then run a search for it on your home instance. While most posts should only bring one result, there is a chance that there are multiple posts by the same user, in the same community, with the same title. If this is an issue, I'll make this search more specific.


๐Ÿ—ฃ๏ธ My questions for you:

Improving 'post to Lemmy'

  • Right now the 'Post to Lemmy' button does a very basic search in the page meta tags for information. This works for most websites, but it is not perfect. What websites do you usually post from, and is the extension doing a good job of replicating how you format the post? Please share both good and bad examples, so we can fix what isn't working and keep what is.

Improving Post search

  • Having the extension automatically count the number of posts and display it in the icon would be pretty nice, since then you would know about any posts for the news article / blog / video that you are looking at. However, there are privacy implications with this since it needs to send the URL to your home instance to do the search.
  • I would like to add the option to whitelist specific websites, so the user can choose what browsing data they want to find posts for. Is this something you would list to use? What websites would you whitelist?

Anything else?

Please share any issues that you find. Lemmy and Kbin instances have a lot of variation in how things are structured, so there are bound to be some bugs that I haven't found yet. If you have any ideas for new features, please share them too! I'm always looking for new ideas to add to the project.


๐Ÿ”ฎ Cool ideas being discussed for the future

  • Account switcher & ability to save login info to extension
  • Reddit migrator tools
    • multireddit input should convert subscriptions to official Threadiverse replacements, or large related communities
    • embeds on Subreddit sidebars to search for similar community
    • button on post pages to cross-post to home instance
  • Prepping for Firefox Mobile app, now that they are opening mobile up to all extensions!
  • Keyboard hotkeys, possibly collaborating with someone that already implemented something similar

For the most up to date information, see the issues or the project road map


๐Ÿ’› Finally

Thank you for all the suggestions and feedback so far! I'm really happy to see that people are using the extension and finding it useful. I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do with it in the future.

Like I said above, I won't be as active over the next few months in terms of getting new features out. The extension is now in good shape, and it covers most of the important use cases. There's still lots of cool stuff we can do with it, so please contribute ideas and expertise! When I get a chance, I'll pop in and grab a few more issues.

Cheers :)

85
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by cynber@lemmy.ca to c/youshouldknow@lemmy.world

Why YSK: It's a free and open source browser extension we have been working on, which might make it easier to use Lemmy & Kbin. This update in particular brings a few features that make the sites a lot easier to use, in particular the ability to jump from a post on one instance to the same post on another. Since the URL doesn't have any identifiers aside from the post ID number, there hasn't been an easier way to do this. Original cross post below:



Hi everyone, I'm excited to announce one more release before I take a short break. I have some other stuff starting up, so I won't be pushing out new features as fast, but I'll still be around to manage the project. (more at the end)

Links:


โ“ What is Instance Assistant?

If you're new to Instance Assistant, it is a browser extension with a collection of tools and features to simplify your browsing experience on Lemmy and Kbin. It is available on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge; you can also install it from the releases page on GitHub.

For a full list of features, please see the GitHub homepage: https://github.com/cynber/lemmy-instance-assistant


โญ What's new in v1.2.5?

  • Redirect posts to your home instance!: Post pages now have a redirect button that will find the same post on your home instance(1). You don't have to hunt it down yourself anymore.
  • Posts related to this webpage buttons in popup & sidebar
    • Make a post: You can now create a post from any webpage! Click the 'Make a Post' button in the extension popup or sidebar to generate a draft post with autofilled title, URL, and body contents. Afterwards, just select a community and hit post. (This currently works for both Lemmy & Kbin, but custom frontends are untested while they develop). Try it here: https://lemmy.ca/post/4478560
    • Open Posts: This will find any posts about the webpage/article/video that you are looking at. Use it to see if something has already been posted, or to find related discussions about it. When there are multiple posts, it will ask before opening them all. (see note on risks and why it doesn't count automatically)
  • Post an image: You can now right-click on an image, anywhere on the web, and hit "Post this image". It will open a new tab and autofill the title, image link, and add the page URL to the body as "Source: URL". Try it here: https://lemmy.ca/post/1282303
  • Reorganizing popup:
    • I fixed the issue where the popup would still display a button after removing all instances from the list.
    • The number of default instances in the popup was reduced to 4
  • Added settings:
    • You can now hide onboardining guides to make the interfaces less wordy
  • General styling changes, wording improvements, and bugfixes

(1) This is an important feature to me because this little annoyance was part of why I set out to create the extension in the first place. Thanks to some help from @zero_gravitas, I was able to use the Lemmy API to grab the post details, and then run a search for it on your home instance. While most posts should only bring one result, there is a chance that there are multiple posts by the same user, in the same community, with the same title. If this is an issue, I'll make this search more specific.


๐Ÿ—ฃ๏ธ My questions for you:

Improving 'post to Lemmy'

  • Right now the 'Post to Lemmy' button does a very basic search in the page meta tags for information. This works for most websites, but it is not perfect. What websites do you usually post from, and is the extension doing a good job of replicating how you format the post? Please share both good and bad examples, so we can fix what isn't working and keep what is.

Improving Post search

  • Having the extension automatically count the number of posts and display it in the icon would be pretty nice, since then you would know about any posts for the news article / blog / video that you are looking at. However, there are privacy implications with this since it needs to send the URL to your home instance to do the search.
  • I would like to add the option to whitelist specific websites, so the user can choose what browsing data they want to find posts for. Is this something you would list to use? What websites would you whitelist?

Anything else?

Please share any issues that you find. Lemmy and Kbin instances have a lot of variation in how things are structured, so there are bound to be some bugs that I haven't found yet. If you have any ideas for new features, please share them too! I'm always looking for new ideas to add to the project.


๐Ÿ”ฎ Cool ideas being discussed for the future

  • Account switcher & ability to save login info to extension
  • Reddit migrator tools
    • multireddit input should convert subscriptions to official Threadiverse replacements, or large related communities
    • embeds on Subreddit sidebars to search for similar community
    • button on post pages to cross-post to home instance
  • Prepping for Firefox Mobile app, now that they are opening mobile up to all extensions!
  • Keyboard hotkeys, possibly collaborating with someone that already implemented something similar

For the most up to date information, see the issues or the project road map


๐Ÿ’› Finally

Thank you for all the suggestions and feedback so far! I'm really happy to see that people are using the extension and finding it useful. I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do with it in the future.

Like I said above, I won't be as active over the next few months in terms of getting new features out. The extension is now in good shape, and it covers most of the important use cases. There's still lots of cool stuff we can do with it, so please contribute ideas and expertise! When I get a chance, I'll pop in and grab a few more issues.

Cheers :)

48
submitted 1 year ago by cynber@lemmy.ca to c/technology@beehaw.org

Hi everyone, I'm excited to announce one more release before I take a short break. I have some other stuff starting up, so I won't be pushing out new features as fast, but I'll still be around to manage the project. (more at the end)

Links:


โ“ What is Instance Assistant?

If you're new to Instance Assistant, it is a browser extension with a collection of tools and features to simplify your browsing experience on Lemmy and Kbin. It is available on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge; you can also install it from the releases page on GitHub.

For a full list of features, please see the GitHub homepage: https://github.com/cynber/lemmy-instance-assistant


โญ What's new in v1.2.5?

  • Redirect posts to your home instance!: Post pages now have a redirect button that will find the same post on your home instance(1). You don't have to hunt it down yourself anymore.
  • Posts related to this webpage buttons in popup & sidebar
    • Make a post: You can now create a post from any webpage! Click the 'Make a Post' button in the extension popup or sidebar to generate a draft post with autofilled title, URL, and body contents. Afterwards, just select a community and hit post. (This currently works for both Lemmy & Kbin, but custom frontends are untested while they develop). Try it here: https://lemmy.ca/post/4478560
    • Open Posts: This will find any posts about the webpage/article/video that you are looking at. Use it to see if something has already been posted, or to find related discussions about it. When there are multiple posts, it will ask before opening them all. (see note on risks and why it doesn't count automatically)
  • Post an image: You can now right-click on an image, anywhere on the web, and hit "Post this image". It will open a new tab and autofill the title, image link, and add the page URL to the body as "Source: URL". Try it here: https://lemmy.ca/post/1282303
  • Reorganizing popup:
    • I fixed the issue where the popup would still display a button after removing all instances from the list.
    • The number of default instances in the popup was reduced to 4
  • Added settings:
    • You can now hide onboardining guides to make the interfaces less wordy
  • General styling changes, wording improvements, and bugfixes

(1) This is an important feature to me because this little annoyance was part of why I set out to create the extension in the first place. Thanks to some help from @zero_gravitas, I was able to use the Lemmy API to grab the post details, and then run a search for it on your home instance. While most posts should only bring one result, there is a chance that there are multiple posts by the same user, in the same community, with the same title. If this is an issue, I'll make this search more specific.


๐Ÿ—ฃ๏ธ My questions for you:

Improving 'post to Lemmy'

  • Right now the 'Post to Lemmy' button does a very basic search in the page meta tags for information. This works for most websites, but it is not perfect. What websites do you usually post from, and is the extension doing a good job of replicating how you format the post? Please share both good and bad examples, so we can fix what isn't working and keep what is.

Improving Post search

  • Having the extension automatically count the number of posts and display it in the icon would be pretty nice, since then you would know about any posts for the news article / blog / video that you are looking at. However, there are privacy implications with this since it needs to send the URL to your home instance to do the search.
  • I would like to add the option to whitelist specific websites, so the user can choose what browsing data they want to find posts for. Is this something you would list to use? What websites would you whitelist?

Anything else?

Please share any issues that you find. Lemmy and Kbin instances have a lot of variation in how things are structured, so there are bound to be some bugs that I haven't found yet. If you have any ideas for new features, please share them too! I'm always looking for new ideas to add to the project.


๐Ÿ”ฎ Cool ideas being discussed for the future

  • Account switcher & ability to save login info to extension
  • Reddit migrator tools
    • multireddit input should convert subscriptions to official Threadiverse replacements, or large related communities
    • embeds on Subreddit sidebars to search for similar community
    • button on post pages to cross-post to home instance
  • Prepping for Firefox Mobile app, now that they are opening mobile up to all extensions!
  • Keyboard hotkeys, possibly collaborating with someone that already implemented something similar

For the most up to date information, see the issues or the project road map


๐Ÿ’› Finally

Thank you for all the suggestions and feedback so far! I'm really happy to see that people are using the extension and finding it useful. I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do with it in the future.

Like I said above, I won't be as active over the next few months in terms of getting new features out. The extension is now in good shape, and it covers most of the important use cases. There's still lots of cool stuff we can do with it, so please contribute ideas and expertise! When I get a chance, I'll pop in and grab a few more issues.

Cheers :)

26
submitted 1 year ago by cynber@lemmy.ca to c/main@sh.itjust.works

Hi everyone, I'm excited to announce one more release before I take a short break. I have some other stuff starting up, so I won't be pushing out new features as fast, but I'll still be around to manage the project. (more at the end)

Links:


โ“ What is Instance Assistant?

If you're new to Instance Assistant, it is a browser extension with a collection of tools and features to simplify your browsing experience on Lemmy and Kbin. It is available on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge; you can also install it from the releases page on GitHub.

For a full list of features, please see the GitHub homepage: https://github.com/cynber/lemmy-instance-assistant


โญ What's new in v1.2.5?

  • Redirect posts to your home instance!: Post pages now have a redirect button that will find the same post on your home instance(1). You don't have to hunt it down yourself anymore.
  • Posts related to this webpage buttons in popup & sidebar
    • Make a post: You can now create a post from any webpage! Click the 'Make a Post' button in the extension popup or sidebar to generate a draft post with autofilled title, URL, and body contents. Afterwards, just select a community and hit post. (This currently works for both Lemmy & Kbin, but custom frontends are untested while they develop). Try it here: https://lemmy.ca/post/4478560
    • Open Posts: This will find any posts about the webpage/article/video that you are looking at. Use it to see if something has already been posted, or to find related discussions about it. When there are multiple posts, it will ask before opening them all. (see note on risks and why it doesn't count automatically)
  • Post an image: You can now right-click on an image, anywhere on the web, and hit "Post this image". It will open a new tab and autofill the title, image link, and add the page URL to the body as "Source: URL". Try it here: https://lemmy.ca/post/1282303
  • Reorganizing popup:
    • I fixed the issue where the popup would still display a button after removing all instances from the list.
    • The number of default instances in the popup was reduced to 4
  • Added settings:
    • You can now hide onboardining guides to make the interfaces less wordy
  • General styling changes, wording improvements, and bugfixes

(1) This is an important feature to me because this little annoyance was part of why I set out to create the extension in the first place. Thanks to some help from @zero_gravitas, I was able to use the Lemmy API to grab the post details, and then run a search for it on your home instance. While most posts should only bring one result, there is a chance that there are multiple posts by the same user, in the same community, with the same title. If this is an issue, I'll make this search more specific.


๐Ÿ—ฃ๏ธ My questions for you:

Improving 'post to Lemmy'

  • Right now the 'Post to Lemmy' button does a very basic search in the page meta tags for information. This works for most websites, but it is not perfect. What websites do you usually post from, and is the extension doing a good job of replicating how you format the post? Please share both good and bad examples, so we can fix what isn't working and keep what is.

Improving Post search

  • Having the extension automatically count the number of posts and display it in the icon would be pretty nice, since then you would know about any posts for the news article / blog / video that you are looking at. However, there are privacy implications with this since it needs to send the URL to your home instance to do the search.
  • I would like to add the option to whitelist specific websites, so the user can choose what browsing data they want to find posts for. Is this something you would list to use? What websites would you whitelist?

Anything else?

Please share any issues that you find. Lemmy and Kbin instances have a lot of variation in how things are structured, so there are bound to be some bugs that I haven't found yet. If you have any ideas for new features, please share them too! I'm always looking for new ideas to add to the project.


๐Ÿ”ฎ Cool ideas being discussed for the future

  • Account switcher & ability to save login info to extension
  • Reddit migrator tools
    • multireddit input should convert subscriptions to official Threadiverse replacements, or large related communities
    • embeds on Subreddit sidebars to search for similar community
    • button on post pages to cross-post to home instance
  • Prepping for Firefox Mobile app, now that they are opening mobile up to all extensions!
  • Keyboard hotkeys, possibly collaborating with someone that already implemented something similar

For the most up to date information, see the issues or the project road map


๐Ÿ’› Finally

Thank you for all the suggestions and feedback so far! I'm really happy to see that people are using the extension and finding it useful. I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do with it in the future.

Like I said above, I won't be as active over the next few months in terms of getting new features out. The extension is now in good shape, and it covers most of the important use cases. There's still lots of cool stuff we can do with it, so please contribute ideas and expertise! When I get a chance, I'll pop in and grab a few more issues.

Cheers :)

37
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by cynber@lemmy.ca to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

Hi everyone, I'm excited to announce one more release before I take a short break. I have some other stuff starting up, so I won't be pushing out new features as fast, but I'll still be around to manage the project. (more at the end)

Links:


โ“ What is Instance Assistant?

If you're new to Instance Assistant, it is a browser extension with a collection of tools and features to simplify your browsing experience on Lemmy and Kbin. It is available on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge; you can also install it from the releases page on GitHub.

For a full list of features, please see the GitHub homepage: https://github.com/cynber/lemmy-instance-assistant


โญ What's new in v1.2.5?

  • Redirect posts to your home instance!: Post pages now have a redirect button that will find the same post on your home instance(1). You don't have to hunt it down yourself anymore.
  • Posts related to this webpage buttons in popup & sidebar
    • Make a post: You can now create a post from any webpage! Click the 'Make a Post' button in the extension popup or sidebar to generate a draft post with autofilled title, URL, and body contents. Afterwards, just select a community and hit post. (This currently works for both Lemmy & Kbin, but custom frontends are untested while they develop). Try it here: https://lemmy.ca/post/4478560
    • Open Posts: This will find any posts about the webpage/article/video that you are looking at. Use it to see if something has already been posted, or to find related discussions about it. When there are multiple posts, it will ask before opening them all. (see note on risks and why it doesn't count automatically)
  • Post an image: You can now right-click on an image, anywhere on the web, and hit "Post this image". It will open a new tab and autofill the title, image link, and add the page URL to the body as "Source: URL". Try it here: https://lemmy.ca/post/1282303
  • Reorganizing popup:
    • I fixed the issue where the popup would still display a button after removing all instances from the list.
    • The number of default instances in the popup was reduced to 4
  • Added settings:
    • You can now hide onboardining guides to make the interfaces less wordy
  • General styling changes, wording improvements, and bugfixes

(1) This is an important feature to me because this little annoyance was part of why I set out to create the extension in the first place. Thanks to some help from @zero_gravitas, I was able to use the Lemmy API to grab the post details, and then run a search for it on your home instance. While most posts should only bring one result, there is a chance that there are multiple posts by the same user, in the same community, with the same title. If this is an issue, I'll make this search more specific.


๐Ÿ—ฃ๏ธ My questions for you:

Improving 'post to Lemmy'

  • Right now the 'Post to Lemmy' button does a very basic search in the page meta tags for information. This works for most websites, but it is not perfect. What websites do you usually post from, and is the extension doing a good job of replicating how you format the post? Please share both good and bad examples, so we can fix what isn't working and keep what is.

Improving Post search

  • Having the extension automatically count the number of posts and display it in the icon would be pretty nice, since then you would know about any posts for the news article / blog / video that you are looking at. However, there are privacy implications with this since it needs to send the URL to your home instance to do the search.
  • I would like to add the option to whitelist specific websites, so the user can choose what browsing data they want to find posts for. Is this something you would list to use? What websites would you whitelist?

Anything else?

Please share any issues that you find. Lemmy and Kbin instances have a lot of variation in how things are structured, so there are bound to be some bugs that I haven't found yet. If you have any ideas for new features, please share them too! I'm always looking for new ideas to add to the project.


๐Ÿ”ฎ Cool ideas being discussed for the future

  • Account switcher & ability to save login info to extension
  • Reddit migrator tools
    • multireddit input should convert subscriptions to official Threadiverse replacements, or large related communities
    • embeds on Subreddit sidebars to search for similar community
    • button on post pages to cross-post to home instance
  • Prepping for Firefox Mobile app, now that they are opening mobile up to all extensions!
  • Keyboard hotkeys, possibly collaborating with someone that already implemented something similar

For the most up to date information, see the issues or the project road map


๐Ÿ’› Finally

Thank you for all the suggestions and feedback so far! I'm really happy to see that people are using the extension and finding it useful. I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do with it in the future.

Like I said above, I won't be as active over the next few months in terms of getting new features out. The extension is now in good shape, and it covers most of the important use cases. There's still lots of cool stuff we can do with it, so please contribute ideas and expertise! When I get a chance, I'll pop in and grab a few more issues.

Cheers :)

66
submitted 1 year ago by cynber@lemmy.ca to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

Hi everyone, I'm excited to announce one more release before I take a short break. I have some other stuff starting up, so I won't be pushing out new features as fast, but I'll still be around to manage the project. (more at the end)


โ“ What is Instance Assistant?

If you're new to Instance Assistant, it is a browser extension with a collection of tools and features to simplify your browsing experience on Lemmy and Kbin. It is available on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge; you can also install it from the releases page on GitHub.

For a full list of features, please see the GitHub homepage: https://github.com/cynber/lemmy-instance-assistant


โญ What's new in v1.2.5?

  • Redirect posts to your home instance!: Post pages now have a redirect button that will find the same post on your home instance(1). You don't have to hunt it down yourself anymore.
  • Posts related to this webpage buttons in popup & sidebar
    • Make a post: You can now create a post from any webpage! Click the 'Make a Post' button in the extension popup or sidebar to generate a draft post with autofilled title, URL, and body contents. Afterwards, just select a community and hit post. (This currently works for both Lemmy & Kbin, but custom frontends are untested while they develop). Try it here: https://lemmy.ca/post/4478560
    • Open Posts: This will find any posts about the webpage/article/video that you are looking at. Use it to see if something has already been posted, or to find related discussions about it. When there are multiple posts, it will ask before opening them all. (see note on risks and why it doesn't count automatically)
  • Post an image: You can now right-click on an image, anywhere on the web, and hit "Post this image". It will open a new tab and autofill the title, image link, and add the page URL to the body as "Source: URL". Try it here: https://lemmy.ca/post/1282303
  • Reorganizing popup:
    • I fixed the issue where the popup would still display a button after removing all instances from the list.
    • The number of default instances in the popup was reduced to 4
  • Added settings:
    • You can now hide onboardining guides to make the interfaces less wordy
  • General styling changes, wording improvements, and bugfixes

(1) This is an important feature to me because this little annoyance was part of why I set out to create the extension in the first place. Thanks to some help from @zero_gravitas, I was able to use the Lemmy API to grab the post details, and then run a search for it on your home instance. While most posts should only bring one result, there is a chance that there are multiple posts by the same user, in the same community, with the same title. If this is an issue, I'll make this search more specific.


๐Ÿ—ฃ๏ธ My questions for you:

Improving 'post to Lemmy'

  • Right now the 'Post to Lemmy' button does a very basic search in the page meta tags for information. This works for most websites, but it is not perfect. What websites do you usually post from, and is the extension doing a good job of replicating how you format the post? Please share both good and bad examples, so we can fix what isn't working and keep what is.

Improving Post search

  • Having the extension automatically count the number of posts and display it in the icon would be pretty nice, since then you would know about any posts for the news article / blog / video that you are looking at. However, there are privacy implications with this since it needs to send the URL to your home instance to do the search.
  • I would like to add the option to whitelist specific websites, so the user can choose what browsing data they want to find posts for. Is this something you would list to use? What websites would you whitelist?

Anything else?

Please share any issues that you find. Lemmy and Kbin instances have a lot of variation in how things are structured, so there are bound to be some bugs that I haven't found yet. If you have any ideas for new features, please share them too! I'm always looking for new ideas to add to the project.


๐Ÿ”ฎ Cool ideas being discussed for the future

  • Account switcher & ability to save login info to extension
  • Reddit migrator tools
    • multireddit input should convert subscriptions to official Threadiverse replacements, or large related communities
    • embeds on Subreddit sidebars to search for similar community
    • button on post pages to cross-post to home instance
  • Prepping for Firefox Mobile app, now that they are opening mobile up to all extensions!
  • Keyboard hotkeys, possibly collaborating with someone that already implemented something similar

For the most up to date information, see the issues or the project road map


๐Ÿ’› Finally

Thank you for all the suggestions and feedback so far! I'm really happy to see that people are using the extension and finding it useful. I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do with it in the future.

Like I said above, I won't be as active over the next few months in terms of getting new features out. The extension is now in good shape, and it covers most of the important use cases. There's still lots of cool stuff we can do with it, so please contribute ideas and expertise! When I get a chance, I'll pop in and grab a few more issues.

Cheers :)

32
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by cynber@lemmy.ca to c/foss@beehaw.org

Hi everyone, I'm excited to announce one more release before I take a short break. I have some other stuff starting up, so I won't be pushing out new features as fast, but I'll still be around to manage the project. (more at the end)

Links:


โ“ What is Instance Assistant?

If you're new to Instance Assistant, it is a browser extension with a collection of tools and features to simplify your browsing experience on Lemmy and Kbin. It is available on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge; you can also install it from the releases page on GitHub.

For a full list of features, please see the GitHub homepage: https://github.com/cynber/lemmy-instance-assistant


โญ What's new in v1.2.5?

  • Redirect posts to your home instance!: Post pages now have a redirect button that will find the same post on your home instance(1). You don't have to hunt it down yourself anymore.
  • Posts related to this webpage buttons in popup & sidebar
    • Make a post: You can now create a post from any webpage! Click the 'Make a Post' button in the extension popup or sidebar to generate a draft post with autofilled title, URL, and body contents. Afterwards, just select a community and hit post. (This currently works for both Lemmy & Kbin, but custom frontends are untested while they develop). Try it here: https://lemmy.ca/post/4478560
    • Open Posts: This will find any posts about the webpage/article/video that you are looking at. Use it to see if something has already been posted, or to find related discussions about it. When there are multiple posts, it will ask before opening them all. (see note on risks and why it doesn't count automatically)
  • Post an image: You can now right-click on an image, anywhere on the web, and hit "Post this image". It will open a new tab and autofill the title, image link, and add the page URL to the body as "Source: URL". Try it here: https://lemmy.ca/post/1282303
  • Reorganizing popup:
    • I fixed the issue where the popup would still display a button after removing all instances from the list.
    • The number of default instances in the popup was reduced to 4
  • Added settings:
    • You can now hide onboardining guides to make the interfaces less wordy
  • General styling changes, wording improvements, and bugfixes

(1) This is an important feature to me because this little annoyance was part of why I set out to create the extension in the first place. Thanks to some help from @zero_gravitas, I was able to use the Lemmy API to grab the post details, and then run a search for it on your home instance. While most posts should only bring one result, there is a chance that there are multiple posts by the same user, in the same community, with the same title. If this is an issue, I'll make this search more specific.


๐Ÿ—ฃ๏ธ My questions for you:

Improving 'post to Lemmy'

  • Right now the 'Post to Lemmy' button does a very basic search in the page meta tags for information. This works for most websites, but it is not perfect. What websites do you usually post from, and is the extension doing a good job of replicating how you format the post? Please share both good and bad examples, so we can fix what isn't working and keep what is.

Improving Post search

  • Having the extension automatically count the number of posts and display it in the icon would be pretty nice, since then you would know about any posts for the news article / blog / video that you are looking at. However, there are privacy implications with this since it needs to send the URL to your home instance to do the search.
  • I would like to add the option to whitelist specific websites, so the user can choose what browsing data they want to find posts for. Is this something you would list to use? What websites would you whitelist?

Anything else?

Please share any issues that you find. Lemmy and Kbin instances have a lot of variation in how things are structured, so there are bound to be some bugs that I haven't found yet. If you have any ideas for new features, please share them too! I'm always looking for new ideas to add to the project.


๐Ÿ”ฎ Cool ideas being discussed for the future

  • Account switcher & ability to save login info to extension
  • Reddit migrator tools
    • multireddit input should convert subscriptions to official Threadiverse replacements, or large related communities
    • embeds on Subreddit sidebars to search for similar community
    • button on post pages to cross-post to home instance
  • Prepping for Firefox Mobile app, now that they are opening mobile up to all extensions!
  • Keyboard hotkeys, possibly collaborating with someone that already implemented something similar

For the most up to date information, see the issues or the project road map


๐Ÿ’› Finally

Thank you for all the suggestions and feedback so far! I'm really happy to see that people are using the extension and finding it useful. I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do with it in the future.

Like I said above, I won't be as active over the next few months in terms of getting new features out. The extension is now in good shape, and it covers most of the important use cases. There's still lots of cool stuff we can do with it, so please contribute ideas and expertise! When I get a chance, I'll pop in and grab a few more issues.

Cheers :)

[-] cynber@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

From what I've experienced with my extension, every update has to go through a review process. Firefox is pretty fast, chrome takes a few days and edge takes a while (opera hasn't finished reviewing my first version, so I stopped trying with them).

The only time I failed a review was early on when my build script choked and I submitted an empty file to Chrome (whoops). So I can't really tell how good those reviews are, but I'm not planning on testing them. I just know that they exist

[-] cynber@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago

have control of your local network

traffic of a particular kind

Could you give an example of what this looks like? I'm sure I'll have friends sending me similar articles / YouTube videos. Would be nice to have a simple and accurate analogy

[-] cynber@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago

Ah I must have gotten it confused with the lifetime ultra, which was $100

view more: โ€น prev next โ€บ

cynber

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