Instance Meta

Saw that someone else did one of these and figured I should give an overview of where the server/services are at.

We currently do not accept donations and don't plan to change that in the near future.

Total Monthly Expenses: $25 (hosting)

Other Yearly Expenses: $23 (domain)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/1419160

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/1418762

I've made a number of improvements since the last time I was posting about my extension. The update is now available on both Firefox and Chrome web stores.

For questions / support: !instance_assistant@lemmy.ca

TLDR: See the respective download pages on Firefox & Chrome. The screenshots and features list are mostly self-explanatory.

Note on versions:

• Firefox has a more recent 1.2.1 version, because my build script missed some files while uploading v1.2.0. It doesn't look like Chrome had this issue.
• I'm uploading v1.2.2 to both stores today, which will bring the two missing features to Chrome as well. After 1.2.2, all browsers should have the same features. See below for details.

So how is this different from other similar extensions?

You may have noticed the extension's name changed to be more generic (and include Kbin 🥳). I'm trying to make this a more well-rounded extension, and that means I've incorporated some features from the other extensions, in my own way.

Lemmy Links, Kbin Links, and the other forks:

This is a great extension that replaces links on your page with versions that go to your home instance. However, in order for this to work, it needs to recursively check every element on your page whenever DOM content (the stuff the browser is reading) changes. This is somewhat resource intensive, and while testing I ran into lag and freezing issues. As such, I decided to not include this functionality in the same way.

Instead, I've added a right click context menu that does the same thing. This way the user can pick which links they want the extension to convert, and it's a lot more efficient resource wise. While it's an extra click, I felt this was a reasonable compromise. However, I'm open to feedback!

NOTE: The context menu is available on Firefox, and it will be available in Chrome in about a week, depending on when they approve my update.

Lemmy Home Instance Helper

This is another extension which checks if you are logged in to an instance, and it creates a button to the search page if you are not. As my extension creates a button on any foreign instance, the search page is only helpful when a community hasn't been loaded into your home instance yet (ex. because you're the first one to try accessing it).

To deal with this, my extension modifies the "Community not found" pages with more instructions, as well as buttons to trigger the fetch process or to open the community elsewhere. See this screenshot for an example. Again, open to feedback!

As always, I'd love to collaborate with other people while building this. I'm still cleaning up my code, but feel free to look at the GitHub. If this extension gets popular, I will definitely need help for translations and for things like getting the extension on Safari (I don't have a recent Apple device to sign the extension with).

Note on permissions:

• The current versions request "Access to all sites". This is because the extension needs access to any page that contains "/c/", "/m/", or "/post/" in order to create the sidebar buttons. While the extension only looks for those pages, it will show up as "Access to all sites" when installing. Once I have a proper welcome message and settings page, I plan on making this permission optional so you can just use the popup menu if you would like.

Summary of Recent Changes:

• Added support for Kbin
• Fixed issue where button wouldn't load when navigating to a community within Lemmy (available on Firefox, should be on Chrome in a week).
• (NEW) Right-click context menu on Lemmy/Kbin community links to let you open them directly. You can test them out here: https://lemmy.ca/post/1282303 (available on Firefox, should be on Chrome in a week)
• (NEW) Information and buttons added to "Community Not Found" error pages to let you fetch the community or open it elsewhere.
• Updates to sidebar button to state the current selected instance and provide more detailed instructions as a dropdownList
• Refactored the code to remove more unnecessary permissions.
• Another pile of bugfixes, UI improvements, and better wording for instructions.

Future Plans:

• This is complete and will be in v1.2.2. ~~Bringing over the new changes to Google Chrome. Since chrome requires Manifest 3, I still need to iron out some issues with the service workers. The missing features are all related to the background processes that are running on the Firefox version~~
• Pushing to other browsers: Microsoft Edge & Opera are still reviewing v1.2.0. Unfortunately, I don't have any immediate plans for Safari, as I don't have a device that can sign the extension. I am looking into getting help for that.
• Setting up a proper Welcome page, Settings page, and Options menu to allow users to turn off features that they don't like. This will also let me make "access to all sites" optional.
• Finishing the translations' setup so that people can contribute other languages to the extension.
• Adding an option to save your own instances to the popup, for those that have multiple home instances.

Right click the link icon between the person's handle/username, and the federated/language icon. Click copy.

Did you hear about that exploit? The one that got lemmy.world hacked? Does it affect here?

I doubt someone would really try it with here since this instance is so small, but I don't know how big of a security issue the exploit is.

Here's an update from lemmy.world https://lemmy.world/post/1287082 (I don't know how to do instance specific links)

We should be fine now, so registrations have been re-opened.

We're closing registrations for a bit so I can make sure the service is stable with the people we already have.

If things are well, I don't expect registrations to remain closed for more than 3 days or so.

cross-posted from: https://thesimplecorner.org/post/53987

LemmyTools 0.1.2

New for 0.1.2:

• Auto-Expand and Click&Drag to expand lemmy images!
• Hide Lemmy Sidebars - More space for images on feed
• Auto unblur NSFW images option
• Option to enable old.Reddit (from https://github.com/soundjester/lemmy_monkey) - Thank you!
• Hover to activate lemmy Toolbar
• Significant UI changes
• Reworked easy button for offsite

Fixes

• Fix for '#' breaking easy subscribe button
• Fix for script breaking other sites due to poor isLemmy implementation.
• Fixed memory allocation issue with eventHandlers
• Various UI bug fixes (not showing all communities, settings menu display, etc...)

Script Features:

• Adds “Easy Subscribe” button to remote instance communities.
• Adds a collapsible sidebar on the side of screen that shows a searchable list of your subscribed communities.
• Adds link back to home instance and a community browser.
• Adds an options menu to configure LemmyTools settings.

Feature for future releases:

• When off site collect a list of communities and display in sidebar for easy subscription. (beginning implementation 0.1.2)
• Create communities grouping function.
• Sort sub list by recently visited
• Create addon for firefox/chrome.

Installation and Configuration:

1 - Browser must have a Userscript addon (Tampermonkey, Greasemonkey, Etc...). Tested with Greasemonkey.

2 - Download either the .JS file or install from greasyfork.

3 - Set home lemmy instance via options page once script is loaded (and manually edit the homeInstance variable for the offsite home instance fix.

This script is all done by a complete amateur for fun. Enjoy and feel free to fork it!

Get it here: Github or GreasyFork

Please submit issues to the github for feature requests and problems: Github LemmyTools Issues

I noticed that when I sort by active or hot, it looks like the results have been staying completely the same for a past week or so, even when new posts are being made and getting comments and votes. Even on the "all" page, active and hot appear to be stuck. I checked a few other Lemmy instances, and their active and hot sorts seem to be fine, so I don't think it's a bug in the software.

This tool will let you find communities from all over the fediverse.

To add a community:

• Find the community you want on lemmyverse
• Click the link (has the box with an arrow pointing out of it)
• Copy the URL of the page it sends you to
• Navigate back to https://lemmy.comfysnug.space
• Go to the search page
• Paste the URL into the search bar
• Click Search

Often times, it should show up as a search result. If not, hard refresh the lemmy page and search a second time. This is necessary if the server didn't know about the community before to actually show the result, since federation does take some time.

I figured you guys should probably know what you're signing up for before getting too far.

I'm a hobbyist and new to running my own services. This server is running on a smol vultr instance that also hosts my pleroma and thelounge instances, so I'm not looking to accept too many new members; especially because I'm too broke to upgrade for the time being.

I expect to use slightly more strict rules here than I do for my pleroma instance in terms of moderation, but honestly I hope that such things won't be needed at all.