UPDATE 6/19/08: FarkThis! broken in FireFox 3.0, see bottom of page for details
You know the routine. You're looking at a hilarious news story, you have the perfect headline in mind, and your fingers can't type fast enough to get the link submitted to Fark. Unfortunately, by the time you cut-and-paste the url, open a new tab and browse to the submission form, pick the right topic, source, and link type and hit "submit", someone else has beaten you to the punch by 17 seconds. ARGH!!!
Well..okay, I'm usually late submitting links to Fark by about 1-2 hours not 17 seconds, but I'm lazy. All those manual steps of link submission are just too much, so I made "Fark This!": a Firefox extension that helps streamline the process.
Fark This! adds a new option the right-click menu in Firefox. Selecting the "Fark This!" menu item causes the Fark submission form to automatically load in a new (or re-used) window or tab.
When the Fark submission form is opened, some of the fields are filled in as much as possible. I tried to do this in a way that is easy to use and helpful, without being over helpful.
Automatic actions include:
I can't stand it when something that's supposed to be helpful is too smart, and does things I don't want it to do automatically. Fark This! is configurable so that you can decide what you want it to do.
The possibly annoying functions "the sun is there" insertion and "florida" topic selection can be disabled
Fark This! can be configured to pop-up the fark submission form in a new window, or a tab. Also, Fark This! by default will search through all open windows/tabs for a window that already contains the fark submission form. If one exists, then that window or tab will be re-used. If desired, you can configure Fark This! to always open a new window or tab by disabling the "re-use" option.
If you frequently submit links from websites that don't have a "source" tag in the Fark submission form, you can add these domains to a custom list. When Fark This! opens the submission form, it will automatically insert your custom "source" text into the "other source" field of the submission form.
This is the alpha version of this tool, and on top of that, my testing capability is limited. I expect to find issues once other people start using it.
There are a few things that I know need work
Any feedback or problem reporting is greatly appreciated. Please email me and I will do my best to resolve the issue
I much appreciate the helloworld howto at roachfiend. Much of the basic directory structure and the installation files are derived from this work.
It looks like someone at Fark changed the perl script for the submission form. The new perl script doesn't allow one to pre-fill in the form's fields via the URL, and this breaks pre-0.5 versions of Fark This! In order to work around the new behavior, I had to change the way I pre-fill in the form (I now use the DOM after the submit page has loaded)
If you are running the earlier versions (0.3 or 0.4) I'm pretty sure you'll notice they don't pre-fill in the form any more. You'll have to update to 0.5 to make this all work again. You could do a "find updates" in the Tools->Extensions menu, but I have personally noticed some kind of caching in Firefox, so you might not see the update right away. If you want it now, just click on the install link at the top of this page.
First significant update in a while. Version 0.5 was rushed in order to get running again after Fark's submission form changed, and as a result some bugs slipped through. These have been cleaned up.
Thanks to fellow T'Fer 40below, I can now claim MAC OSX compatability. In order to get the pop-up menu, try CTRL-clicking if you have a MAC. Email me if you have any questions.
I've also added a couple new options. You can now set a default topic and link-type. These new features are disabled by default, so you'll have to check them out in Tools->Extensions->FarkThis Options.
Last but not least, I've updated the source list to match the current Fark submission form. Some sources still don't work (like newsweek or sunspot...WTF is sunspot anyway???)
I've been extreemely busy lately, and I haven't had much chance to do anything. That being said, I needed to qualify Fark This! with Firefox 2.0. I didn't need to make any changes, but I couldn't resist throwing in one new feature. If you check the options dialog, you can now change the location of the "farkthis" menuitem in the context menu.
It isn't the easiest thing to use. Enter a number and the menuitem will be dropped in the context menu correspondingly. HOWEVER, there are MANY hidden menuitems in the context menu. A number from 1-20 will pretty much still leave it at the top of the menu. It *is* actually dropping in the list, but it's dropping below hidden menuitems, so it doesn't look like anything is changing. If you enter a number of ~100 the menuitem should show up in the bottom of the list
For now, you'll have to use trial-and-error to find the position that puts it where you want. I could certainly make this easier to use, but I just don't have time right now. Next release...
I've also taken this opportunity to update the source list. Most notably, YouTube will be automatically detected now.
I apologize to anyone who updated to FF 3.0 and are experiencing problems with FarkThis! I've known about the install issue for some time, but I just haven't had any time to fix the problem. I'm on vacation for the next 1.5 weeks, and I'm really hoping to get a chance to fix it during that time. I'll post a follow-up as soon as I get it fixed.
As always, I plan on updating the source list at the same time. I wanted to add one other feature, but I seriously doubt I'll get to it. The source list update is the most tedious, and I'm about 1/2-way through it.