[BETA] Banterbox - Your shoutbox companion (Includes edit and scroll fix)

[Smeris]

BanterBox
Because the shoutbox deserves better. And so do you.

Hi everyone,

Let's be honest about the shoutbox. It works like shit. I'm sure y'all are all too familiar with the edit button not working well and scrolling is an absolute nightmare.

So I made a small browser extension that fixes it. It's called BanterBox. It's in beta, which means it works on my machine and I'd love to know whether it works on yours. Also, if you have any requests or idea's for features I'd love to hear them!

What it does​

• An emoji menu. There's a Kappa button in the shoutbox toolbar now. Click it, pick an emoji, and it goes into your message. People without BanterBox see it too ofcourse.
• Your own emojis. There's one global emoji list accessable to everyone. These are some very legacy emoticons that used to be popular on the forums. Please request some old ones here! but you can always add your custom ones.
• A privacy switch. The global emoji list is fetched from https://sb.smeris.me/ Turn the shared list off and BanterBox won't connect to it at all. Your own emojis keep working.
• Edit works again. The Edit button opens the edit box like it always should have. Enter saves, Shift+Enter starts a new line. No more opening new tabs!
• "Load more messages" stays put. Older messages load in the right place, and the button stays where you can find it.
• Matches your forum style. Core, Core Dark, any colour, the default style: the emoji menu follows whatever you picked.

Download​

Everything is on sb.smeris.me. The direct links:

• Chrome, Edge, Brave: banterbox-chrome.zip
• Firefox: banterbox-firefox-signed.xpi

The Chrome Web Store and Firefox Add-ons listings are coming later, so you can install them with one click. I'm already approved for Firefox, and once chrome is approved this program will exit beta phase. This means you won't have to manually update in the future.

How to install​

Spoiler: Chrome, Edge, Brave

1. Download banterbox-chrome.zip and unzip it somewhere
2. Go to chrome://extensions and switch on Developer mode (top right).
3. Click Load unpacked and pick the unzipped folder.
4. Reload Perpheads. The Kappa button is in the shoutbox toolbar.

Spoiler: Firefox

1. Download banterbox-firefox-signed.xpi.
2. Open the file in Firefox, or drag it onto a Firefox window.
3. Click Add.
4. Reload Perpheads. The Kappa button is in the shoutbox toolbar.
5. Click on the extension icon to modify settings.

If nothing shows up, go to about:addons → BanterBox → Permissions and allow it on perpheads.com.

The settings (emoji list switch, your own emojis, update notices) are behind the BanterBox icon in your browser's toolbar, not in the shoutbox.

Is this safe?​

BanterBox only runs on perpheads.com and doesn't collect anything about you. The code is all public, so you can read every line yourself, or get a friend who can to read it for you:
github.com/mgsmeris/banterbox

Found a bug?​

That's what the beta is for. Post it in this thread, open an issue on GitHub, or yell at me in the shoutbox.
Have fun, and Kappa responsibly.

 

[Clarky]

A couple suggestions if you want it more feature rich, thanks for this!!

- Maybe always try to have the emojis at their lowest size, I think it's like 16x16 or something like that
- Allow auto loading messages when hitting the bottom instead of having to click the button, if my memory serves me right, it functioned like that before it became really broken
- Allow for all community members to assign and save their chat colour by HEX, allowing the extension to override any concurrent text colour that ex-staff can no longer change
- Minimalistic shoutbox on every forum page you visit? Like having a chat button on Instagram web in the bottom left, clicking it will open and load everything so it's not a resource/bandwidth hog probably
- Hovering over the "+1" button could show who liked the message as a tooltip next to your cursor

Lmk if you need help with testing or whatever