I, Geek

Though slashdot itself shows highly rated comments, sometimes I wish I would just see the 5 rated funny comments (just for kicks). Same is the case for reddit also. I wish I had an extension that does just this. This is another in my todo list.

I have been using this extension for a while to crawl websites and I find that it is missing some features:

• The main problem is with URL manipulation. For example, if I want to filter out some URLs based on multiple matching criteria, I simply cannot do it with current capabilities. Filter based on string or based on current URL is not sufficient to achieve it. When one is crawling with a depth of 2 or more, this becomes, quickly, a serious problem to comfortably and productively use scrapbook. I end up going through the big list and de-select items.
• Another problem is the disabling of pause/skip button while it is fetching the page. I find that this is also a problem. There are cases when it simply hangs during the middle of fetching a page and there is no way to come out of it. The only way is press the abort key thus spoiling the task altogether.
• The next problem is a consequence of the above two issues. After all is done and things are in progress, there is no way to save the list of selected URLs so that I can again continue in case something goes bad amid.

I am not a javascript kiddie and that is what is keeping me from making the changes. But learning javascript with a proper requirement in mind (i.e. to solve the above issues) will make for a good learning experience. So I have decided to go for it. In a couple of months, I will bring this out.