CR Companion

CR Companion Status

2009-03-04T18:07:00.000-08:00

With the move to JS-Kit, CR Companion is dead in the water. It will notify you of new posts, and give you the title of the post you're associated with, but I recommend disabling it. I don't think it will cause any bad behavior, but don't want to spend the time on that right now.

Many are asking when CRC will reappear, and I'm sorry to say it may be awhile. I'm frustrated with the service we're getting from JS-Kit, and want to improve upon it. So instead, I'm spending my time right now getting a new commenting system up and running, one that I think will suit the CR community. If you're interested in that effort, please come join the discussion over at our google group CRSiteDev.

1.10 Update - Editor Fixes

2009-02-24T12:03:00.000-08:00

This version fixes several annoying bugs in the editor. My apologies for not seeing them - I haven't been posting enough to notice.

- switching to another non-haloscan tabbed browser caused the editor to freeze.
- Paste from other sources lost newlines.
- Entering a url that had a space at the beginning caused unexpected results (we now trim it).
- Urls that had embedded ampersands were converted to & entities, which haloscan choked on.

1.09 Update

2009-01-22T10:08:00.000-08:00

Leaving CRC's Post Comment window open when closing a CR comments tab put CRC into a CPU spiking state. This version provides a fix.

Big Kudos to Jay Sundahl for tracking down a reproducible scenario of this problem!

1.08 Available

2009-01-21T10:35:00.000-08:00

This version fixes CR Companion's interference with Google Toolbar.

1.07 Update

2009-01-13T22:53:00.000-08:00

This revision is a bug fix release in preparation for the move to JS-Kit's new format.

The following bugs have been fixed:

Spell checking was not on by default when composing a comment.
When pasting from another source, script tags were included.
The last four characters were intermittently omitted when posting (this one is a hopeful, as I've never been able to reproduce the problem).
The author rating filter's current setting was not saved across browser sessions.

Note: if you don't see 1.07 right away, try again later. Mozilla takes awhile to update their pages.

Happy Holidays!

2008-12-18T23:27:00.000-08:00

I'll be away from my development tools for a couple of weeks, so won't be able to fix any bugs for that time, but please, if you run into any, let me know!

May your solstice be bright, and hopefully a pleasant hiatus from gloom and doom.

Ken

1.06 Update

2008-12-17T19:45:00.000-08:00

This revision is almost entirely bug fixes:

Added "Don't Show Anymore" checkbox to Comment Successfully Posted dialog
Fixed Mac problem where settings didn't have a close button
Fixed problem where the editor went out of design mode when switching between tabs
Fixed problem where embedded semicolons in URLs were eaten by haloscan

It does add one small feature: the status area showing the number of comments now also shows the number of the topmost visible comment, to measure your progress.

1.05 Update

2008-12-16T21:29:00.000-08:00

CR just changed the blog's URL, which broke page title updating. This rev fixes that.

It also:

improves scrolling speed
fixes copy paste problems with wierd characters
fixes a problem of the sidebar switching when multiple threads were being updated simultaneously

1.03 Update

2008-12-13T17:47:00.000-08:00

I've put up an update that should fix both the "Communicating with Haloscan" problem, and the problem with polling being dropped.

Version 1.01 Now Available!

2008-12-02T17:32:00.000-08:00

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.

Importing/Exporting Author Ratings

2008-11-15T23:50:00.001-08:00

Aaron wrote:

I read CR on multiple computers. Is there a way to export/import my author settings from one browser to another?

I knew this would come up, but haven't wanted to invest the time in writing the code to make it pretty. It would be best to make them roamable, but to do so simply would require a server, and of course tinfoil starts buzzing the scalp when that word is mentioned.

In the meantime, here's the way to do it:

Enter the text 'about:config' in your Firefox url bar. This will take you to a page that looks like this:

Press the "I'll be careful, I promise" button. Then, in the text box that shows like this:

enter in 'crc'. The window should then look like this:

Right click on the preference 'extensions.crcompanion.authorRatings', and select 'Copy Value'. Then paste that text into a file, email, etc. You've now exported your ratings.

To import, do exactly the same process on the destination computer, but instead of saying 'Copy Value', say 'Modify', and paste the text you somehow got to this computer into the textbox that pops up. Press OK.

That's it. You will need to reopen any comment windows you had open to get the new authors.

Greasemonkey Users

2008-11-15T11:59:00.001-08:00

FYI: nullpointer points out that CR Companion and Greasemonkey kill files don't play well together. I'm not going to be supporting this scenario, sorry.

Feature Suggestions

2008-11-15T11:52:00.000-08:00

Thought I'd open a thread specifically for suggestions (hat tip schnaps).

Hash Error on Download

2008-11-14T11:34:00.000-08:00

Here's a handy tip from Function over on CR:

Function writes:
If you are getting file hash error when installing the firefox addon, you need to enable third party cookies for installation to succeed. Preferences > Privacy > Allow third party cookies.

You can disable them again after installation. I would suggest disabling them unless you have a very good reason not to.
Function | 11.14.08 - 2:35 pm | #

Some Tips on Rating Authors

2008-11-12T18:21:00.001-08:00

You can rate authors in three ways:

Click on the rating link that appears before "writes:" in their message. This will cycle through all possible ratings, from Unrated to Good to Very Good to Excellent to Irritating, and back to Unrated.

Right click anywhere within their message. A list of possible ratings appears at the bottom of the menu.

Right click on the author in the authors list to the right. Same list appears.

Announcing CR Companion

2008-11-10T13:26:00.000-08:00

CR Companion is a Firefox extension designed to help manage the ever increasing traffic in the comments section of Calculated Risk.

With it you can see who's posting, rate authors, and show only posts matching your ratings. You can also show only posts containing links, or posts containing specific text.

By clicking on an author's name, you can move to their closest post (backwards, if you hold the shift key down). This is convenient for seeing the posts of your favorite authors when you're in a hurry, and also provides a way to navigate back to a referenced post.

In addition, CR Companion includes the Mortgage Pig New Post Notifier (MPNPN). The MPNPN diligently scans the CR post horizon so you don’t have to. You’ll never have your genius ignored on a stale thread again, and you just might get there before Nemo.

I wrote CR Companion when the traffic on Calculated Risk began to spike, and other areas of my life suffered trying to keep up. I offer it to all of you as my small contribution to what has been a source of great solace, humor, and learning. I hope you find it useful.

To try it out, go to its page on the Firefox extension site. You'll see the following dimmed button:

CRC is in sandbox ("experimental") mode, which means it hasn't been extensively tested or reviewed. I’ve been using it for a bit on Firefox 3.03, and no longer see any obvious bugs, but YMMV. Because of this, for now you'll need to create a basic account on the Firefox site before downloading. Sorry for this inconvenience. As soon as (if?) CRC receives some positive feedback, it will get out of sandbox jail, and this won't be necessary.

Click on Log in, and follow the directions on creating a new account.

Once you've installed it and restarted Firefox, CRC's side panel should show up whenever a CR comments page appears, either in a tab or its own window.

Let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions or bug reports.

Happy browsing!