[TechGuy]

I'm all for adding server-side functionality, although I'm not sure exactly how the security would work, I'm sure it can be done.

[LauraMJ]

Ent, it works very well! Love all the links and shortcuts you included!




Now can you update the one Ciberblade made for my forum? Please? Pretty Please?

[TheShooter93]

Glad to hear it's possible server side and that you guys like Ent's updates.

[Ent]

Originally Posted by TechGuy

I'm all for adding server-side functionality,

Great news!
What functionality would you have in mind?

Originally Posted by TechGuy

although I'm not sure exactly how the security would work, I'm sure it can be done.

Having had a little more time to think about it since my first hurried post (making dozens of 16x16px images doesn't use a lot of brain power), I suspect you could just use the same session cookies as you've already using for the site. You're not using encryption or anything fancy for the main site, so there's no real reason to make things any harder for the add-on.

[TechGuy]

That's true, Josiah -- as long as people understand that they need to stay logged in for the extra features to work.

[Ent]

I reckon most people can figure that much out, especially among the helpers. Most of us have a decent level of technical know-how.

I seriously hope I haven't taken on too much here. Chrome development is proving harder to understand than I'd anticipated.

[TechGuy]

What format would be best to output the user-specific data? Just simple line breaks, or XML format?

[Ent]

I'd think either XML or JSON.

Information that would be useful would be
a count of pending PMs, or Boolean value for whether there are any PMs (such as already gives the notification in the top right corner).
Thread Title and URL for each subscribe thread with one or more new posts. (such as already exists in New Subscribed Threads under "My Account").

I'm now confident that I could get both kinds of notification into an add-on on either browser.

[TechGuy]

That sounds great, Josiah! I'll see what I can come up with.

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, I suspect you won't need both a count of new PMs and a boolean of whether or not there are new PMs... if UnreadPMs > 0 then...

Let me know if I'm misunderstanding your request, though

I'm going to work on doing it as XML if that's OK. I figure that might be best for any future use / development.

[Ent]

I don't think you'd need both, it just depends on whether you want the addon to display "You have 2 unread PMs." or just "You have unread PMs."

[TechGuy]

Check this out, Josiah. Note that results are cached for 1 minute to prevent running too many database queries. The top timestamp shows when the results were generated, not necessarily the time of the most recent request.

http://forums.techguy.org/xmluserstats.php

[TechGuy]

This is a problem with the subscribedthreads part -- it's not showing the proper threads. I'll work on that soon, but hopefully this will give you a good start in the meantime.


Edit: I think the subscribedthreads bug is fixed now.

[Ent]

Is there any way that it could only give the subscribed threads where <unread> is greater than 0? I could of course strip them out client-side, but it seems to make it easier and lower network overhead not to send the details of a bunch of threads with no new info anyway.

Or is there a reason you'd want them displayed?

[TechGuy]

Up to you - I just figured I'd give you as much data as possible to do with as you wish. Could be useful, depending on how you choose to display the data either now or in the future. :-)

[Ent]

Because the Chrome extension interface must be built with pure HTML, I can't create the submenus used in the firefox addon. Ironically, this means that the functional overlap between the two extensions is almost 0.

This isn't as polished as I'd like it to be, but I don't anticipate having a great deal more time to spend on it in the immediate future. Obviously if you spot specific bugs I'll try to fix them.