Monday, March 2, 2015

First try: browser plug-in

What did I do: a plug-in (with both chrome and firefox version) that filters out articles with certain tags so they can't be seen when you are searching for some other tags.

Why did I do it: the blogging site was dominated by fangirls and I happened to know a few of them. They often complain about how checking articles under certain character tag becomes a traumatic experience because they see people or pairings they don't want to ever see again. I figured if so many people want a tag blocker, doing a tag blocker would be cool.

A bit more on the market research: the site was a Chinese version of tumblr, so I know if I can get someone popular to recommend my plug-in, that would mean a lot of exposure. I have a few followers who followed me for my anime analysis, and one of them is a very good fan fiction writer, who also knows a lot of fan fiction writers.

How did I do that: 
Core code: Javascript, for loop, getElementByTagName to extract the tag string then replace it, for loop again for removing items from document.
UI design: use a single line textbox for text input, and create buttons within the panel for each tag blocked, clicking on the buttons will remove the tag from block list.
Utility: the website uses lazy loading, to ensure the newly-loaded content will also be filtered, I used a MutationObserver and rerun the filter function when the page is changed
Chrome/Firefox integration: it's actually pretty much the same, but I would suggest starting with Chrome then port things to firefox just because Chrome has better debug support. Also, don't trust your professor when he said you can use some open source editor for writing HTML/Javascript, just use plain old Visual Studio, it works better than anything else.

A little proof:

1959 likes and 103 comments so far, left out other content because I really don't want to associate my anime account with my real life account.

TL,DR: made a plug-in to block articles with certain tags on a Chinese blogging site, got ~1000 likes within the first day.

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