Mudcat Browser Tools Autor: DaveRo

Adds these features to Mudcat pages:
Italicises threads posted to since last visit.
Scrolls thread to first new post (optional).
Persists previous user name and preselects preview.
Adds quoting and linking buttons below input area.
Adds text styling buttons alongside input area.
Saves and recovers text in case of failure to post.
Encodes non-displayable characters (optional).
Restyles the pages to make them more readable on a small device - all optional.
Moves the number of messages column to the left edge of the index page.
Moves the search box to the bottom of the index page.
Increases the font size of posts on the thread page.
Archives threads locally as to guard against loss of the Mudcat database.

Italicise threads
On the main index page any threads that have a latest message date later than when you last loaded the page will appear in italics.

Scroll to first new post
On the thread page if you have visited the page before, and there are more recent posts, it will scroll down to the first of these. If you've visited before but there are no more recent posts, it will scroll down to the thread subject. There is an option to suppress scrolling.

Persist username
If you are not signed in it will reuse whatever username you last used to preview or post. If you are not signed in and no username is stored you will get an alert.

Select preview
The preview box is pre-selected. Previewing the page before posting is obviously a good idea, and will capture the text so it can be recovered using the text recovery feature, even if you don't actually post it.

Quote button
The quote button generates a quote from a post. Select (highlight) the text you want to quote from one of the posts and click the button. It inserts the selected text into the post window, surrounded by blockquote and italic tags, which displays as:
<small>So-and-so wrote:</small>Text you selected

There is an option to omit the quoted user's name, so it appears simply as an indented italicised block:
Text you selected

Linkifier button
The linkifier button turns any URLs you typed in the post box into clickable links. To use it, type your post then click the button. It will linkify any URL that begins with www. or http:// or https://
Remember that guests can post a limited number of links - probably only one.

You can optionally specify the text to be displayed in place of the URL in two ways:
www.example.com|click_here
Note that the text following the | cannot include spaces: add underscores or hyphens as in the example if you want multiple words; underscores will be replaced with spaces.

www.example.com{{This is the Joe Bloggs' new website.}}
This method is better for longer pieces of text which contain spaces.

It won't linkify URLs that immediately follow an html tag, so if you add your own tags add a space between it and the URL. If you use one of the style buttons below to style a link, which adds tags, linkify before you style, or ensure there is a space before the link URL.

Style buttons
Select a piece of text and click to make it bold, italic, etc.

The Monospace button additionally maintains spacing by replacing all spaces with non-breaking spaces. So it can be used, for example, for ABC or other code.
Red is just an example colour. Edit the word 'red' to 'blue' or whatever.

Recover text
It recovers the last post you submitted - or tried to - in this thread. It stores the text when the submit button is pressed, including for preview. Only the last submitted text is stored so if the post fails it must be retried before submitting in another thread.

Encode non-displayable characters.
Although Mudcat previews all characters correctly, it does not store all of them, for example some accented letters found in Eastern European languages, in its database, so they display as '?'. The addon will optionally converts non-displayable letters and symbols into HTML '&-codes'. Three options are available:
No encoding - default.
Encode characters Mudcat normally cannot display.
Encode all non-ASCII characters (not usually required).

The encoder only encodes characters likely to be found in US and European text (up to Unicode u+26FF). It does not encode several languages, such as Chinese, or fancy emoticons.

The 'recover text' button can be used to recover the pre-encoded text for editing.

Move the 'number of messages' column to the left of the index page.
On small touch-screen devices you may need the zoom the index page to read it. This option moves the 'number of messages' column to the left hand edge of the thread index page so that it does not disappear off the right hand edge when you do this. It also makes the little 'd' link bigger by adding ^^ - making it easier to tap.

Move the search box to the bottom of the index page.
On small devices the search box may occupy a lot of the screen. This makes more threads visible without scrolling.

Increase the font size of posts on the thread pages.
This is for viewing mudcat on a phone or small tablet in portrait mode. It doubles the font-size of the posts, which should make them readable without zooming - which makes them go off the edge of the screen.

Archive threads locally (experimental)
You can specify that specific threads are to be archived: this might be of interest if you invest a lot of effort in posting lyrics, say, and would like to automatically keep a local copy of your posts and others' comments. Archiving requires installation of a separate program which actually writes the files, and some configuration. Contact me by email (addess on the addon page) if you want to try this.

Preferences
These preferences are accessible from the addons manager:
Whether to include the quoted user's name in a quote or just the highlighted text.
Whether to scroll a thread to the first unread post.
Whether to encode non-displayable characters.
Whether to move the 'number of messages' column to the left of the index page.
Whether to move the search box to the bottom of the index page.
Whether to increase the font size of posts on the thread pages.
Whether to archive threads and where to.

If you change a preference you may have to restart the browser for it to take effect.