BBCode (dKos mod)

About:
The 'BBCode (dKos mod)' Firefox extension - a modification of the BBCode extension (which kicks total arse) for use with the dKos (Daily Kos) website. This extension is so named to make sure that proper credit goes to the author of BBCode, Jed Brown (and other relied-upon works, such as Cusser's pastequote). I heard that the author of BBCode is working on updates to BBCode that might make this 'dKos mod' obsolete.

Install:
To install the 'BBCode (dKos mod)' extension to your Firefox browser, click on one of the following versions (of the plugin, below. Alternately, save the .xpi file and do a File -> Open using the menus in Firefox.

Version for Firefox 1.5 (untested!):

     Version 0.4.0f (11/29/2005) (had to fix install/config param, at least)

Most Recent Version:

     Version 0.4.0e (07/07/2005) (changed '<div class="blockquote">' stuff to plain old '<blockquote>')

Most Recent Stable & Tested Version:

     Version 0.4.0d (03/15/2005) (keybindings, image 'copying', blockquote paste)

New! See the Flash Demo of the new image pasting option (4.5 MB).

Bugs: Ctrl+I binding does not work on Linux/UNIX. Developing... (fixed)

Original version of the extension available here (no keybindings):

Version 0.3.7d (02/01/2005) (original)

You can probably install the updated version right over the old version, but if you have any trouble do the safe thing and uninstall the earlier version first.

Version 0.4.0d Features (added since original version, 0.3.7d):
Right-clicking on an image will produce a 'Copy Image Location (dKos)' menu option. You can then make your way to a dKos comment box and choose an 'Insert Image (paste)' from the dKos context menu. The inserted <IMG> tag will just reference the URL of the image location you copied. The cool part, methinks, is that the 'height' and 'width' tags for the image will be inserted for you if we're able to figure out what they are. The original tags from the place you copied the image will be honored first, and if not present, we'll try to figure out the natural height and width of the image. This is semi-important because the browser can render pages more quickly if it knows the sizes of the images. Also, since many of these images will be served from other sites which may be slow, we don't want to slow down DailyKos.com - image height and width tags help dilute this possibility. The only images we're not able to get the height and width for are background images. Yes - there is a 'Copy Background Image Location (dKos)' option also. I don't expect it'll be used that often, but some 'background' images are deceiving - they look like regular 'ol pics.

Most/all of these features will presumably be configurable in a future release. The keybindings are a little risky - I really don't know how they'll react on all the different platforms (Mac, Linux, etc.), but I really wanted them because I don't want to take my hands off the keyboard to click my mouse for the context menu. So, the keybinds are the biggest change in this revision, but I'm not sure if they'll stay or not, or maybe go into a separate build, etc.

Added keybindings to override default browser binding when operating in the context of a dKos Comment textbox. The are not listed in the menus, b/c I didn't want to clutter things:

Option	Key Binding
Bold	Ctrl+B
Italic	Ctrl+I
Underline	Ctrl+U
Strikethrough	Ctrl+S
Blockquote	Ctrl+Q
Blockquote (paste)	Ctrl+P

As mentioned above, new 'Blockquote (paste)' option to directly paste copied text into the comment box and have it set up as a dKos quote. This option will *not* be active if there is nothing on the clipboard. Let me know if you can think of a reason to have it active always. I just figured I'd try to follow Windows conventions regarding cutting/pasting. (We'll probably make this configurable, anyways, but still curious.)
Space chopping. If you double-click a word in the dKos comment box to bold it, the browser often selects a trailing space. This means that the trailing space gets formatted, say 'Bold', for instance (no big deal there), but the operation then chews up that space and you have to re-insert it, or move it to the outside (right) of the '</b>' formatting tag. It's a pain. Hopefully, not any more.
The dKos context menu will only show up when the dKos 'comment' box has the focus. So, if you right click while you are surfing www.somethingotherthanDailyKos.com, you will *not* see the dKos popup menu. Also, you will not see it if you are *just* surfing www.DailyKos.com - you will only see it when the comment box of dKos has the focus. So, even clicking in the 'Subject' line above the comment box will not produce the dKos menu, because this line does not allow you to format anything - so why have the menu?
If you choose one of the formatting options, say 'Bold', without having selected text in the comment box, the extension will still put down the '<b></b>' tags, and it will back the cursor up to be in-between those tags so you can continue typing.

There are some other behavioral things having to do with the Hyperlink and other options that we have to figure out how we want to use, how to make them configurable, etc. Open to any/all suggestions.

Goals of mod (achieved or otherwise):

Simplication of use.
Customize UI to dKos.

Changes:

Changed icons to dKos icons.
Added dKos-specific HTML formatting.
Removed some clipboard functions, and non-dKos-compatible functions like 'Image with title'.
Added warning message for <IMG> tag use.
Added strikethrough ('~~strikethrough~~') formatting in context menu.

Misc:
I modified/customized the BBCode extension to be compatible with the Daily Kos blog/community website. Though useful in its original form, there were a couple of features I wanted right away - such as dKos-specific blockquote ability. For better or worse, I removed a lot of the functionality of BBCode in this mod, so it is now very dKos-specific.

Mod author:
Peter Smith