"Reply" links on comments

Question

Screenshot

About

This user script adds a little "reply" link to each comment. Clicking this link will

1. fetch the rest of the comments, if some of them were hidden
2. show the "add comment" text box
3. pre-populate the text box with "@" and the name of the user you're replying to (removing spaces).

Be aware that there's no guarantee that the replied-to user will be notified of the comment -- all the @-reply caveats still apply (see the blog or the community faq for some information).

Download

install / update script – view source

Platform

I have tested this script in Chrome (Windows 7), Chromium (Fedora 14), and Firefox + Greasemonkey (both OSes).

Contact

This script is created by Benjamin Dumke-von der Ehe. Note that this is a free-time project of mine, and has nothing to do with my employment at Stack Overflow. See my profile for contact details; you can also often find me in the Tavern on Meta Stack Exchange chat.

Answer 1

bug
Clicking on the icon won't reveal the comment-box anymore.

One has to click the "add comment" link, for the comment box to appear, then click on the script icon to add the reply signature into the revealed comment-box.

Answer 2

I would like to suggest

1. Add stackapps.com to list of sites
2. Allow the common "upside-down" unicode characters that have become trendy lately (and some users are using in their names now).
3. Allow basic greek alphabet, since that also seems popular (lot of math and science symbols are greek)

Diff format, tested and working for me in Chrome:

--- 68252.user.js.orig  2011-08-13 11:15:22.000000000 -0700
+++ 68252.user.js   2011-08-13 11:51:49.000000000 -0700
@@ -15,6 +15,7 @@
 // @include        http://meta.answers.onstartups.com/*
 // @include        http://mathoverflow.net/*
 // @include        http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/*
+// @include        http://stackapps.com/*
 // @author         Benjamin Dumke
 // ==/UserScript==

@@ -82,7 +83,13 @@
                             ,'\u00e0','\u00e1','\u00e2','\u00e3','\u00e4','\u00e5','\u00e6','\u00e7'
                             ,'\u00e8','\u00e9','\u00ea','\u00eb','\u00ec','\u00ed','\u00ee','\u00ef'
                             ,'\u00f1','\u00f2','\u00f3','\u00f4','\u00f5','\u00f6'         
-                            ,'\u00f8','\u00f9','\u00fa','\u00fb','\u00fc','\u00fd'         ,'\u00ff').join('');
+                            ,'\u00f8','\u00f9','\u00fa','\u00fb','\u00fc','\u00fd'         ,'\u00ff'
+                            // upside-down lowercase from http://www.fileformat.info/convert/text/upside-down-map.htm
+                            ,'\u0250','\u0254','\u01dd','\u025f','\u0183','\u0265','\u0131','\u027e'
+                            ,'\u029e','\u0283','\u026f','\u0279','\u0287','\u028c','\u028d','\u028e'
+                            // basic greek http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_alphabet
+                            ,'\u0370-\u03FF'
+                            ).join('');

     var bad = new RegExp("[^" + goodletters + "\\w.'-]", "ig");

Answer 3

I've made a couple of fixes to make this work again. While I don't fork and ask for a merge, here it is a copy of my script for convenience, the modifications are indicated with comments. The matches of sites has been revised as well.

// ==UserScript==
// @name           stackoverflow-comment-reply
// @namespace      stackapps
// @description    Add "reply" links to comments
// @version        1.1c
// @match          *://*.askubuntu.com/*
// @match          *://*.mathoverflow.net/*
// @match          *://*.serverfault.com/*
// @match          *://*.stackapps.com/*
// @match          *://*.stackexchange.com/*
// @match          *://*.stackoverflow.com/*
// @match          *://*.superuser.com/*
// @match          *://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/*
// @author         Benjamin Dumke-von der Ehe
// ==/UserScript==

/* MOD: don't run if not SE and user not logged in */
if (!window.StackExchange || window.StackExchange.options.user.isAnonymous )
    return;

// Thanks to Shog9 for this idea for making the script work in both
// Chrome and Firefox:
// http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/46562
function with_jquery(f) {
    var script = document.createElement("script");
    script.type = "text/javascript";
    script.textContent = "(" + f.toString() + ")(jQuery)";
    document.body.appendChild(script);
};

with_jquery(function($) {

    $(document).ajaxComplete(function(){
        setTimeout(function () {
            $(".comments").each(put_reply_links);
        }, 100);
    });

    // event handler for a click on the reply links
    function reply() {
        /* MOD: changed the following 2 lines to detect the new Add Comment link */
        var commentlinkId = $(this).closest(".comments").next().attr("id");
        var commentlink = $('#'+commentlinkId + ' a.js-add-link')[0].click();
        var username = goodify($(this).prev().text().replace(/♦/, ""))
        var formid = commentlinkId.replace(/^.*-(\d+)$/, "add-comment-$1");
        var ta = $("#" + formid + " textarea")[0];
        var start = ta.selectionStart;
        var end = ta.selectionEnd;
        var shift = username.length + 3;
        ta.value = "@" + username + ": " + ta.value;
        ta.focus();
        ta.selectionStart = start + shift;
        ta.selectionEnd = end + shift;
    };

    function put_reply_links() {
        $(this).find(".comment:not(:has(.reply-link)) .comment-user").each(function () {
            /* MOD: // changed click by on(click) */
            $("<span class='reply-link' style='cursor:pointer;opacity:0.3' title='reply'> &crarr;</span>").on('click',reply).insertAfter(this); 
        });
    }

    $(".comments").each(put_reply_links);

    function goodify(s) {
        return s.replace(/ +/g, "");
    }   
});

Answer 4

bug

Unable to click on Comment. When i click on the icon then it doesn't show comment box.

Answer 5

bug
You need to open the comment box before clicking the arrow. If you need to click the comment box, I think starting tagging user from keyboard is quicker than move your mouse to click the arrow, then start typing the comment.

Answer 6

Any chance you could update this again? As noted by several others, clicking the reply link doesn't show the comment field, but if you manually click the "add a comment" link it works fine. So the thing is, if you have to manually click "add a comment", in most cases it's then easier to use Stack Exchange's tab completion feature than to click the reply button. My issue is that once I click "add a comment", I often forget to add the @mention I want at the beginning until I've already written some of my response, and if I go back to the beginning of my comment to add it, the tab completion no longer works.

Also, the last update was made about 4 years ago, and it's been broken since about 3 months after that.

All it needs to be able to do this is to have the following line added on a line after commentlinkId is defined and before ta is defined:

$("#" + commentlinkId + " a").click();

Also an update to the list of @match rules would be nice. This should work for all current Stack Exchange sites (including area51):

// @match          *://*.stackoverflow.com/*
// @match          *://*.serverfault.com/*
// @match          *://*.superuser.com/*
// @match          *://*.stackapps.com/*
// @match          *://*.stackexchange.com/*
// @match          *://*.askubuntu.com/*
// @match          *://*.mathoverflow.net/*