Surfing the Tumblr Wide Web · Saturday December 1, 2007
update 12/01/07: Tumblr v3 Follower Mode is finally ready. The write-up’s available on my tumblelog.
update 11/01/07: Tumblr v3 rocks, but totally breaks this script. I’ll have it fixed shortly, once I have both hands available for typing.
update 9/24/07: Now there’s a screencast.
Now for the “Why”, and then the “What”.
About a week ago, I logged into my Tumblr dashboard and noticed that Cameron was no longer following my little tumble.
Right there in my Dashboard, though, was a link to Cameron’s post explaining why:
Why? Well, because I craft my website to look it’s best, and when people read it via the Tumblr Dashboard, they lose that. I want my website to be just that: a website, not another tumblelog you follow.
So I’ll look at each of your sites. I’ll look at your content, your design, the sidebar, the footer, everything. Because making and maintaining a website is an art, and it deserves to be treasured.
Made a lot of sense, although I was pretty sure the dashboard was actually sparing people the pain of seeing my “design”. I’ve improved it a little since then, but it’s still not something to be treasured. Cameron’s and many other tumbles I follow, however, are better experienced by visiting.
But following tumbles through the Dashboard is not without its advantages:
- Access to your Feeds, Settings, and Goodies (duh)
- See who’s following you I’ve found most of the feeds I follow this way
And most importantly:
- Following a tumble lets them know they have an audience among their fellow tumblrs
So I stuck with the Dashboard.
Briefly.
Then I ran into a problem that I’m sure other tumblrs have experienced. The number of tumbles I was following reached the critical mass at which I was no longer able to keep up with them through the Dashboard without more navigational calisthenics than I wanted.
My first approach to managing the inflow was to subscribe to all of my followed tumbles in Google Reader. Since Dashboard was never meant to be (and I hope never intended to be) a full RSS reader, using GReader gave me a better experience viewing posts1. It had one major drawback, though: incredibly slow updates. At least compared to Dashboard, which makes perfect sense since Tumblr can’t be expected to update RSS feeds continuously, nor can Google be expected to be constantly grabbing them.
Then I decided to see if I could use Firefox and Greasemonkey to have my “following tumbles in Dashboard” cake and eat it, too.
Thus was born the Tumblr Follower Mode script.
Features:
Twisty knobs to make the Dashboard’s Followers2 and Followed blocks collapsible. Position is saved for future sessions. (That’s right. I only have 22 followers. They’re really cool followers, though, so I’ve got that going for me.)
Fresh Posts Indicators a.k.a. asterisks. These are updated each time the Dashboard (any page of it) is loaded or refreshed. On the first loading after installation they’ll all be marked as fresh, but I thought that was better than the other option, which was none of them. Besides, you’ve probably missed a few posts while reading what I’m now realizing is a much longer article than I anticipated.
Next Fresh Tumble link when viewing any tumble (not just one you follow, although I do follow CrispyTeriyaki’s — Hi Crispy!). Click on the discreet little triangle the left of the Dashboard (or Add to Friends or ReBlog) graphic and you’ll be taken to the next tumble you follow that had new posts as of the last Dashboard page loading. When you’ve seen them all, the link will disappear.
Ironically, Cameron has cleverly found a way to keep the Dashboard graphic from loading, which keeps the script from adding the link to his tumble. I’ve added specific code to update the freshness stamp when you visit him, but I’m respecting his clear preference that no third party add elements to his page.
When using this script, I’d suggest that you only click on tumble links in the Dashboard and not individual post links. Going to an individual post will cause that particular tumble to be marked as fresh, whether it has other new (to you) posts or not. If this is a problem for a lot of people, I’ll consider a rewrite.
Let me know what you think.
update: I added what in hindsight was obviously needed. Now you can tell if there are fresh tumbles even if you’ve collapsed your Friends/Followed block. A little red asterisk will appear in the block header when a fresh tumble is detected, and clicking on it will start your Tumble to Tumble surf. Now you can hide your Friend’s posts and pictures, and still know when and who it’s time to visit.
update: I’ve fixed the bug where the fresh tumble indicator (red asterisk) caused the twisty knob on the friends block to stop working until the indicator had been cleared (by visiting all fresh tumbles).
1 One side benefit of this is that I can tag them all and provided a shared page feed for anyone that’s interested.
2 This is a partial implementation of my earlier suggestion regarding some tumblrs objection to “being friends”. If you’d prefer it say “Friends”, just set the variable “unFriendly” to 0 in the script. :-)
— Rod Knowlton
Feedback or requests?
Nice to know that you’re trying to get this script to work with the newest version of Tumblr. This script is incredibly useful and I have to admit that I’ve missed it since the upgrade to v3.
— FilthyFrags · Nov 4, 02:18 PM · #