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v1.46.1
Ilmari Karonen
Ilmari Karonen
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The Stack Overflow Unofficial Patch (SOUP)

The Stack Overflow Unofficial Patch (SOUP) is a project to collect various minor client-side bug fixes, work-arounds and usability improvements for Stack Overflow and other Q&A sites on the Stack Exchange Network into a single user script.

The intent of SOUP is not to make any substantial or controversial changes to the Stack Exchange user interface, but to fix minor problems and omissions that the SE developers have overlooked or haven't got around to fixing yet. By combining these minor patches into a single user script, they become easier to install and maintain.

Installing

Installing as a user script

The easiest way to install SOUP is to use the Greasemonkey (for Firefox) or Tampermonkey (for multiple browsers) extension for managing user scripts. (Other Greasemonkey compatible user script extensions should also work.) After installing the extension, clicking the "download / install" button below should bring up a dialog asking you if you want to install SOUP. Answer "yes".

Download / Install

View source / GitHub repo / Stack Apps post

The "install" link above is for the stable branch of SOUP. If you like living on the edge, you can also install the development version, which gets all the latest fixes and updates as soon as they're written. Of course, it also gets all the latest bugs, too. If you do install the development version, please report any bugs or regressions you may find in it below!

SOUP has been mainly developed and tested on Firefox and Chrome. It may also run on other browsers with user script support (via Tampermonkey or other compatible extensions), but has not been fully tested on them. Any reports of cross-browser issues are welcome.

Installing as a browser extension

As of version 1.46, SOUP can now be installed directly as a browser extension on Firefox and Chrome, without the need for a user script manager, via the following links:

In particular, using SOUP as an extension on Firefox for Android is now possible and supported.

(An Opera extension may be available at a later date. In the mean time, Opera users may use the Chrome extension via Download Chrome Extension, or just use the user script version with e.g. Tampermonkey for Opera.)

Note that updates to the extension packages may take a few days to appear even after a new stable user script version is released, due to review and other delays.

Included fixes

SOUP v1.46.1 includes fixes or workarounds for the following issues.

The fixes highlighted in boldface include particularly major interface improvements or fix particularly severe or widespread issues. The choice of which fixes to highlight is unavoidably somewhat subjective, but in my personal opinion, these are the fixes you should actually install SOUP for — the rest are just icing on the cake.

CSS-only fixes

These are pure CSS fixes. They will be applied even if JavaScript is disabled on the site. Most of these are fairly minor, but sometimes pervasive, issues.

Site-specific CSS fixes

These pure CSS fixes are for issues specific to certain sites on the Stack Exchange network. Most of them are restricted to the affected site(s), but a few are applied globally, even though the issue they fix is only apparent on some sites.

Chat-only fixes

These fixes apply only to the Stack Exchange Network chat.

General fixes

Site-specific fixes

These non-CSS fixes are applied only on specific SE sites. There's a lot fewer of these, since the SE JavaScript framework is shared between all sites, whereas CSS is different for each site. Thus, these fixes generally involve either rare site-specific customizations, or simply design fixes that cannot be implemented in pure CSS.

Review fixes

These fixes apply to the post review interface. I've listed them separately here, since they include some of the more notable interface tweaks in SOUP.

HTTPS-only fixes

These fixes are only applied when using Stack Exchange over HTTPS. Note that HTTPS support for Stack Exchange is still experimental.

MathJax-related fixes:

These fixes apply only to sites using MathJax for LaTeX math rendering.

License

SOUP is distributed under the ISC license, a permissive BSD-style open source license.

In addition, permission is given to Stack Exchange, Inc. to make use of SOUP code in any way they see fit, including but not limited to incorporating all or parts of it within the Stack Exchange codebase, with or without credit.

This SOUP version includes a copy of the punycode.js library v1.2.4 by Mathias Bynens, distributed under the MIT license. The additional permissions granted above do not apply to this library.

Credits

SOUP is currently maintained by Ilmari Karonen. Some of the fixes are based on suggestions or earlier user scripts made by others; see the source code and/or the meta.SO links above for details.

Contributing

If you know a user script or stylesheet patch for SO or other SE sites that would be suitable for inclusion in SOUP, or an unfixed issue that you believe might be worth patching, please let me know (e.g. by posting a comment or an answer the SOUP page on Stack Apps).

If you'd like to help me out by contributing new fixes directly to SOUP, the SOUP wiki on GitHub has some useful tips. Any and all contributions will be appreciated!

See also

Ilmari Karonen
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