Version 1.01 Now Available!

I've been working on adding some new features to CR Companion, and now have a version ready for public consumption. Here's a list of the new features:

Comment Editor

CRC now includes an editor that makes it easy to bold, italicize, and insert links into your comments. It also saves your comment until it has been successfully posted, even if your browser crashes. No more 'damn Haloscan', or missing closing tags. The editor is in its own panel, so you won't lose your reading context in order to respond to someone.

You can now also select text you want to quote from someone's comment, and have it inserted (italicized and with a reference byline) in your response.

Dynamic Refresh

CR Companion now watches Haloscan for you, and adds new comments dynamically, making the comments section feel more like a good chat room. Visual notification gives you that live CNBC feeling. Sorry, no whoosh.

Clearer Window Titles

I don't know about you, but I often forget what thread I'm looking at, or lose track with a couple of tabs open. Not anymore - tabs and floating windows are now automatically assigned the title of the original post.

Filter Text History

Now filter words you've typed in the past are available in a drop down, completable list.

Filter Text Search Improved

Previously, when you typed text in the search box, it only matched exactly (including spaces), rather than the more useful google style of separate keywords. That's been fixed. Now individual words are searched for separately.

If you want to keep a phrase together, put quotes around it. And if you want to eliminate partial word matches, you can use the special dollar character [Ed: I'd write the symbol out, but it keeps messing up my post!] to denote the beginning or end of a word.

Reuse of an Open CR Window

When you click on the pig (you did try clicking, didn't you?), now CR Companion will try to find an existing window or tab to refresh and activate, rather than popping up a new one. Gets rid of clutter.

Show Quoted Comment

Since Haloscan lacks threading, and I'm reading fast, I often have to scroll back to get more context about quoted comments.

With this feature, you just select some text from the quote, and the Show Quoted Comment command will show you the original, without losing your context.

Also, when a comment's byline is included in the quote, it automatically becomes a mouse over link you can click, so you don't need to select anything. Conveniently, the 'Insert Quote' feature of the editor generates this byline for you.

"Pig Scared the @%#&! out of Me!"

I've done several things to address this. First, the sound itself has been quieted so it's not so loud relative to videos, etc. I've also added an individual option for each sound to shut it off (you may want that for the new comment notifier). And finally, I've added a handy mute button that shuts all CR Companion sounds off.

[Update: to set individual sounds on and off, click the settings button on the toolbar]

Oh, BTW, can anyone identify the mortgage pig's sound?

Banned Phrases

Someone asked CR if there was a way to have specific comments suppressed if they contained phrases like 'financialtrader.blogspot' in them. Great idea. Now you can select some text, and add it to the list of banned phrases.

You should know that the following phrases have been added:

• financialtraders.blogspot.com
• marketwarnings.com
• www.fakepaycheckstub.com

Dim Filtered Comments

Maybe you worry about missing things in a thread, or don't want to lose the great flow of this place. Now you can choose to have filtered comments dimmed rather than removed, so they can still be read, and yet easily ignored.

Here's a link:

CR Companion

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: please note that this is once again 'experimental' code. I have been using it myself for awhile now without incident, but I'm not a prolific comment poster, so that area of the code may not be well exercised at first. Others have not reported problems against the current version. Please let me know immediately if you experience any problems.