Small list of userscripts that improve the Kbin experience

I've been trying out several userscripts for Kbin recently, which have made the website way more enjoyable than it already was. I wanted to share them with my fellow Kbin users.

To use these scripts, you'll need an userscript manager. I use Greasemonkey on my PC on Firefox myself, and Tampermonkey on my phone. You can find recommendations for your browser on the Greasy Fork home page.

These are the scripts that I've been using:

There are many more interesting scripts on Greasy Fork, like this alternative sidebar.

After installing scripts you like, I recommend checking the settings of the scripts and change the settings to whatever you prefer. The settings can often both be found under the little cog icon on the right side of the page, just like the official Kbin settings.

Feel free to share you favorite userscripts or add-ons and enjoy!

E: @minnieo, the creator of Kbin Kibby Avatars, just shared this very nice userstyle for the side bar to make it look even better.

E2: The author of both Kbin Usability Pack and the Kbin Subscription Panel, @Perry, just fixed the issue I was having with the "alternative sidebar". It is working as intended now and it has some very nice extra functionality and settings. It also works perfectly on mobile. I would recommend trying out both and see which one you like most.

Arotrios,
Arotrios avatar

These are awesome - thank you!

Perry,
Perry avatar

like this alternative sidebar which I unfortunately couldn't get to work as intended.

Oh, what problems did you run into? I haven't pushed that many updates lately because I thought it was fairly stable, but perhaps there are still some bugs for certain configurations?

Thinking out loud, there might be some compatibility issues with Greasemonkey specifically. I'm personally using Tampermonkey, but I know that Greasemonkey have a tendency of being a bit troublesome sometimes. I did have to fix a few bugs related to Greasemonkey for the Kbin Usability Pack a while ago.

Anyway, please give me a shout and I'll see if I can get a fix out.

Boabab,
Boabab avatar

I wasn't expecting that the author would show up here, hi!

The problem I run into is that it won't load the list of magazines. It just says Failed to load subscriptions with a spinning load-icon on top. Your sidebar looks really good on the screenshots, though!

Your comment made me re-enable your script again to investigate the issue a bit deeper. I opened up the console and it seems like the URL that is used to request the list is not valid:

Screenshot

Thank you for reaching out and looking into it. I really appreciate that!

Perry,
Perry avatar

Oh, it seems like there might actually have been a Firefox issue. Or rather, me apparently not knowing how to use fetch() properly.

See if it works better now: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/469139-kbin-subscriptions-panel

You can click on the cog icon in the upper right to see if you have the current version installed (2.6)

Boabab,
Boabab avatar

That fixed the issue, it's working perfectly now! I really like the extra functionality of it!
I will edit the post and add it to the recommendations. Thank you very much for the quick response!

WeDoTheWeirdStuff,

The floating subs is awesome. Thanks for sharing these

AnonymousLlama,
AnonymousLlama avatar

Cheers for the link. Several of those things are in active development and I'm hoping we can get them out soon. I'm keen for collapsing comments and replies, but there's also an active discussion about moving the comment reply box to the top, where I think it definitely should live.

Over the next few weeks I'm hoping we can smash out lots of UI improvements

Boabab,
Boabab avatar

That's exciting! Scripts like these are really awesome and are not only a great way for users to tinker with the site to their liking, they are also some sort of feedback and an idea box for you guys (I noticed you contribute to the code of Kbin). But although scripts can be awesome, it's even better when they are not "needed" because the functionality is build right into the site itself. Not to say I dislike the current vanilla experience. It's already very good!

Thank you for your contributions, you guys are awesome!

AnonymousLlama,
AnonymousLlama avatar

No worries. There's a few people working through updates and new features, the better we can improve the site, the more enjoyable it'll be (and hopefully be people just starting will be enticed to stick around 🦙)

I personally like almost all the scripts / functionally that those userscripts touch on, they're a great starting point. Hoping in the next big push we'll get even more new functionally in

Boabab,
Boabab avatar

I agree. One of the things that I really love about open source projects that gain popularity like this, is that the community can get really involved with the process of development and it can allow the project to evolve noticeably fast. It's quite the opposite of a large corporation where all small decisions are made by having a lot of meetings, with a lot of people that are only looking for the highest profit margin. I'm looking forward to see what the future of Kbin might hold.

fryman,

Yes! Collapsing comments! Thank you.

thebullgod,
thebullgod avatar

Thanks for sharing! This is awesome!

Kaldo,
Kaldo avatar

Dunno if it's a weird interaction with other userscripts but the floating subs is kinda weirly overlapping the header bar and generally looks out of place. I also don't see how to pin it, and it seems to refresh the subscribed list all the time instead of caching until I refresh.

I love the idea though, hope it gets an update soon!

Boabab, (edited )
Boabab avatar

That's weird, I don't have that issue myself. The only small bug that I've noticed in the floating subs bar, is that it makes the rest of the website slightly less centered when opened. But that resolves itself when I close it again. You could try doing a full (cache) refresh of the webpage (Ctrl+F5). Sometimes that fixes those kind of issues.

E: You could of course also give the alternative sidebar a try. I really like that that sidebar groups magazines/communities with the same name together. However, it wouldn't load my magazines on my system. It just kept spinning a loading icon. Maybe it does work for you, it's worth a try!

Kaldo,
Kaldo avatar

This is how it looks to me, you can also see the bug with your "OP" tag being displayed multiple times for some reason as well. Tried refresh, tried re-enabling it, still the same. I'm on firefox so might be due to that, dunno.

minnieo,
minnieo avatar

In my userstyle for this script, i make it so it's pushed from the top, maybe it will help? try it out.

Boabab,
Boabab avatar

Check the thread again, I edited it. The other sidebar I mentioned, which previously didn't work on my machine, has been fixed and I even prefer it over the already awesome Floating bar. It might work around your issue.

Kaldo, (edited )
Kaldo avatar

Oh yeah I like the other one much more, thanks!
edit: Short update - I really wish I could show favorites instead of recently viewed as a separate group but other than that, the sidebar works and performs well!

Boabab,
Boabab avatar

I'm on Firefox as well, so I don't think that is the issue. This is how it looks on my side Example.

This are the settings that I use:

settings1
settings2

About the double OP tag: I just noticed that bug too in another thread, but now it seems to be gone again. Maybe it's a one time thing. It's a bit buggy in these early stages anyway, hopefully it will get fixed.

AnonymousLlama,
AnonymousLlama avatar

The subs panel was discussed a while back but personally I'm super invested in it. I'm pushing to have it introduced in the next build.

Even though there's a lot of things in the sidebar, I think having a dedicated "here's your magazines" section is super handy. A lot of the new functionally requires most of the other contributors also to agree on it. I find it's easier to introduce a basic function (e.g. a list of magazines) and then adding extra functionally on it like sorting and searching in subsequent tickets.

Always keen to hear from users about what they would find useful / helpful

joeygibson,
joeygibson avatar

Thanks! I already had kES installed, but I just got the floating subs list, and I kind of like it.

Boabab,
Boabab avatar

You're welcome! I really like the sidebar as well! It makes it way easier to see which Magazines I'm subscribed to and to quickly switch to them. Since I've installed that userscript I've been visiting separate Magazines a lot more, instead of just scrolling through my home page.

KUP also goes great with KES so far, they complement each other nicely. Best thing to me about KUP is the inline previews of articles. That was one of my favorite features of RES back on Reddit, so I'm excited to see an equivalent on Kbin :)

joeygibson,
joeygibson avatar

I'm just thrilled that I discovered last week that TamperMonkey works with Safari, and all four of these scripts installed into it without issue.

Boabab,
Boabab avatar

I didn't even know Safari has extension support nowadays. Great to hear it all works without issue, it's such an improvement!

heyfluxay,

Thanks for sharing!

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