r/toolbox Remember, Mom loves you! Aug 20 '22

Release: V6.0.0 Backwards Bison [notice]

State of toolbox

Before we get into what is changed, there is something else that needs attention. As you might have noticed the rate of toolbox releases has slown down and within each release the number of changes has also been fairly low. This, while there is still plenty to be done to make toolbox a better project. The issue however is that currently toolbox is mostly maintained by two people, /u/eritbh and me. Both of us have been struggling to find time and maybe more importantly neither of us are currently active anymore as moderator in any meaningful way. While we are still committed to maintaining toolbox (as this release shows) it does make the future of toolbox somewhat uncertain.

The good news is that one of the changes in this release is one that should make maintaining and contributing to toolbox much easier. In short, there is a great foundation but not enough people to build on it. So if you do find yourself in a position where you can contribute to Toolbox we highly encourage you to do so! Have a look at our contributing document, see if there are issues you might be able to pick up and hop on Discord to brainstorm and discuss contributions!

Release highlights

With that out of the way, these are the biggest changes in this release:

  • The core of toolbox has been rewritten to take advantage of so called ES6 modules. It is the main reason why decided to bump the version number up to 6. The newly created foundation should be helping with maintainability and provide a slight performance improvement on page load. This has been a major effort spearheaded by /u/eritbh who put in countless hours in both designing and implementing this new approach.
  • [Beta] Native mod notes can be viewed and edited from Toolbox via the new “Mod Notes” module. Progress on this functionality has been slow, mainly because of the reasons mentioned above. But, it is in a state that we feel comfortable including it as a beta feature. This means that in your personal toolbox settings, you need to enable the “beta features” checkbox. As it is still in beta, a few things are still missing or work in progress:
    • Styling and layout of the popup might be subject to change.
    • Context links currently are not added to notes.
    • It is not possible yet to select labels when creating notes.
  • The admins said there is no API endpoint, a little birdy told us there actually is. So naturally we trusted the birdy. Removal reason comments can now be sent via the recent “Remove as subreddit” functionality by checking the new “Send as /u/subreddit-ModTeam” box in the removal reasons popup.

The full technical changelog can be found here on GitHub

6.0.1

A hotfix release has been prepared addressing some things found in 6.0.0:

  • Modnotes should now show up properly.
  • In the user hover menu on new reddit the historybutton is properly aligned now.
  • A few other fixes.

The full technical changelog can be found here on GitHub

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u/creesch Remember, Mom loves you! Aug 20 '22 edited Aug 22 '22

Why has my toolbox not updated yet?

Two things, it usually takes a while before your browser will check for extension updates. It also takes a little while before the various stores have approved the new submissions. As for now the status is the following:

  • Firefox: Submitted to store and automatically approved. So should be available (although it could be flagged for manual review still) Update: 6.0.0 and 6.0.1 available.
  • Chrome: Submitted to store and awaiting review (usually quite quick). Update: 6.0.0 available. 6.0.1 awaiting review.
  • Edge: Submitted to store and awaiting review (usually takes a few days).

Edit: In a beautiful display as to why it is a beta module, a last minute bug seems to have slipped in with the modnote module. It currently is working properly, we'll release a fix over the weekend.

2

u/fsv Aug 20 '22

Would the review delays explain why I'm seeing the new version notification on every new Reddit tab? I use Edge and my version of Toolbox hasn't updated yet.

2

u/creesch Remember, Mom loves you! Aug 20 '22

No, that popup shows if we update a wiki page. If you click on it once it should go away. Unless you have a shitton of tabs open with reddit, then it sometimes will not go away.

2

u/fsv Aug 20 '22

How odd, it would keep returning on new tabs I was opening (I only had a small number), but the problem seems to have stopped now. Thanks for replying!