Discussion: Switching to a Userscript

[silverwind]

So, I think we're pretty limited in what we can do through CSS and userstyles.org has a few annoyances too like seen in issues #79, #100, #105. I was pondering if we should set up a nice little landing page through GH pages and let users install a pre-built userscript from there. Any customization options could be done through a configuration button in the header which then would pop up a dialog to set color, backgrounds and anything else which comes to mind on the site itself.

Here's the pro's and con's I see with this switch:

• Pro: Customization can be set live on the site.
• Pro: We could update all clients automatically through Greasemonkey.
• Pro: We could do quite a few things which weren't possible in just CSS.
• Pro: We could do releases through an automated process with build systems like Grunt or gulp, instead of a single userstyles.org account, automatic minification and prefixing comes to mind.
• Con: It's not a style anymore.
• Con: It's quite a bit more work getting everything set up and learning the tools.

[ddavison]

hmmmmmmm... i'm trying to understand why you say "it's not a style anymore". if it's not a css stylesheet, what will it be?

[silverwind]

Still a stylesheet, but loaded from a string in JS. What I meant is that we can't host it at userstyles anymore then.

[ddavison]

pretty sure the mass of users installing it come from userstyles, is that really a good idea?

[Mottie]

I have mixed feelings:

• The animated loading icons are usually only visible for less than a second. So, even though my OCD would like the fix, I'm not sure it's worth switching this over to a userscript just for that. If we do end up adding a userscript, I would want to keep support for userstyles as well.
• I'm happy with the timeline now - yeah the line moves down while entering text in a new comment box, but it's not distracting.
• The background image issue may have a solution.. I didn't realize that you can nest the userstyles variables two layers deep (ref) - I think I'll end up making a select box with 3 options for background images: none, default, custom. Then include the "Provide your own" url input which would still require entering an empty string or a custom url in all situations (this sucks, but I don't think there's a way around that).

I'm not sure what else we might plan to do with a userscript, but I'm keeping an open mind.

[silverwind]

Nice work on figuring out the background stuff!

Regarding the userscript: I might just start a second repo for it, and make it an optional add-on to the userstyle. The script then could regulary pull in the style through ajax for updating purposes.

[silverwind]

I'll conclude this as providing an addon for extra features, while still leaving the style intact.