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A comment on Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on Wikipedia.

Re:Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on... by fapjacks on Monday April 23, 2018 @05:14AM (#16901783)
That preview window has been a lifesaver. Honestly, as someone with ADD (or ADHD or whatever it's called these days), Wikipedia is a fucking minefield. I regularly have many Wikipedia articles open in sometimes ten or twenty different windows, each with anywhere from twenty to fifty tabs (I open a new window to delineate a completely new tangent, or if opening a new tab will cause the tab icons to disappear, otherwise I open a new tab in the current window -- I like tabs and make heavy use of Session Buddy and The Great Suspender). The preview window has really cut a lot of the extraneous BS out of my evening-destroying rabbit holes. I figured it was probably a difficult thing to develop, but if anyone involved with its creation passes by this lowly post, please know that you have my sincerest gratitude for making such a meaningful, useful tool.
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Re:Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on... by azeirah on Monday April 23, 2018 @07:36AM (#16902454)
Wikipedia's a minefield for people with ADD, yep.

But oddly enough, I found that Stackoverflow's "hot questions" or whatever thing is equally distracting.

I'm on a professional software developer network, and then I see a super interesting and legitimate question aaaaaannnddd... I'm in a rabbithole.

Don't know if it's helpful or not for you, but I found an extension that limits the maximum amount of tabs you can have open at a given moment, I set it to 3-4, it forces me to decide what link I do or do not want to click on. Makes me conscious of my unconscious browsing habits, might be useful for you too: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/max-tabs-web-...

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Re:Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on... by fapjacks on Monday April 23, 2018 @08:01AM (#16902610)
Oh, yes, SO's hot network questions is a hardcore distraction for me, too. Even for things I really don't care about! Like all those workplace drama questions (do so many people really think going to HR is going to do them any good at all?). The extension you linked is a very interesting concept, something I hadn't thought about using before. But I like the idea of paying a little bit of thought up front to help keep things from exploding down the line. Thanks!
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Re:Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on... by baud147258 on Monday April 23, 2018 @10:33AM (#16903698)
SO's hot network questions was so bad that I enabled my ad-blocker on SO and added a custom rule to hide that part of the page. At least now when I go to find an answer on SO without falling in a 30-60 min rabbit hole.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on... by pimlottc on Monday April 23, 2018 @11:03AM (#16903991)
Please post this rule, it would be very helpful.

What’s frustrating is that this has been brought up as an issue on StackExchange and rejected as WONTFIX.

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Re:Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on... by baud147258 on Monday April 23, 2018 @11:25AM (#16904218)
I'm using uBlock origin. The rule is:

  stackoverflow.com###hot-network-questions
I've used the selector tool of uBlock to do it.

Edit: more on this: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/222721. Linked in one of the answer is an extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sidebaroverflow/lh...

There are also other solutions on that page.

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Re:Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on... by Roujo on Monday April 23, 2018 @11:25AM (#16904223)
These rules work for me, using uBlock Origin:

    stackoverflow.com###hot-network-questions
    stackoverflow.com###feed-link
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on... by jgtrosh on Monday April 23, 2018 @09:19AM (#16903131)
The extremist view in this sense is that tabs in general are a bad model for navigation. If all the pages you choose to visit are first-level citizens in your environment (windows) then you think about them more actively. A browser like https://surf.suckless.org simplifies the browser abstraction well in these regards. I have found it is nearly impossible to get common browsers to work without tabs. This kind of endeavour probably begets a correct window manager like https://i3wm.org
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Re:Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on... by kqr on Tuesday April 24, 2018 @03:26AM (#16910612)
I strongly agree. I had to stop using Surf because of its ancient rendering engine which butchers a lot of the sensible parts of the modern web, but I do miss the tabless part of it.

Edit: Also because it does not have Pentadactyl. My dream browser would be tabless and with sensible and powerful Vim bindings. Ideally built on an engine of Common Lisp too...

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Re:Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on... by jgtrosh on Tuesday April 24, 2018 @06:58AM (#16911476)
Have you looked at luakit? It's also based on webkit2gtk but it's extensible with Lua; I love the simplicity of suckless tools but when a functionality that seems good must be patched in it rarely ends well.

Also regarding Vi keybindings check out vimb maybe?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on... by icc97 on Monday April 23, 2018 @10:44AM (#16903799)
> Like all those workplace drama questions

They're like a soap opera for geeks

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Re:Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on... by failrate on Tuesday April 24, 2018 @12:18AM (#16909814)
Omg, do you remember the milk boiled in electric kettle incident? That's the only time I've seen something get posted to Workplace and then have follow up questions go to (iirc) Interpersonal Skills and then Physics.
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Re:Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on... by chatmasta on Monday April 23, 2018 @08:28AM (#16902757)
Been there. That's why I rarely comment on StackOverflow; it could easily become an addiction, and I can't exactly add it to /etc/hosts like I can other distractions!
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Re:Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on... by kreetx on Monday April 23, 2018 @10:37AM (#16903723)
Clearly you have too much free time at work ;-)

Just kidding, know how those rabbitholes are.

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Re:Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on... by spiralx on Tuesday May 01, 2018 @11:39AM (#16967949)
As another person with ADHD I've found the Tabs Outliner extension works best for me - it allows you to view tabs in a tree, label/group them, search for tabs, open/close tabs/groups/windows in one go, and most importantly the tree of tabs persists across sessions, so it can be used for bookmarking, suspending, organising and locating tabs depending on your usage - you can export it as HTML, and for a fee you can have it backed up on Google Cloud.

My work tree has somewhere over 500 items and my home one has several times that many, but it's easy to find things and keep them for later :)

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Re:Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on... by mrtksn on Monday April 23, 2018 @09:44AM (#16903309)
Back in the day I learned Javascript to create a Firefox extension called budaneki[1] that does basically that. It got quite popular but I abandoned it later since I no longer needed and didn’t have a business model.

Today I’m very happy with the Safari on MacOS as you’re can preview links. I like the Wikipedia implementation a lot, but as a Safari, I’m already used to have it everywhere.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/budaneki/

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Re:Why it took a long time to build the tiny link preview on... by jdlrobson on Monday April 23, 2018 @01:34PM (#16905562)
<3 message received from //everyone// involved in its creation. Thanks!
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