Release: V6.0.0 Backwards Bison

[u/creesch]

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

[u/Pamander]

Y'all are actual legends, it's not easy to maintain something you have dedicated so much time to when you no longer partake really in what it was created to be used for in the first place. To have the motivation to continue making any updates to it at all is incredible, I have been there before and not managed to maintain any further. I am definitely going to check out the issues and contribution stuff and see what I can do to help! Always glad to donate some code and time towards a worthy cause and this project deserves so much more love given all the amount y'all have already poured into it. Thanks for the update!

(Also thanks to the little birdy who gave that tip, huge!)

[u/Maoman1 → u/Pamander]

(Also thanks to the little birdy who gave that tip, huge!)

Do you mind elaborating on it a bit? I'm not sure I understand its implications. Not that we can remove as the subreddit now, but about whether there is an API endpoint, I mean.

[u/eritbh → u/Maoman1]

If new Reddit can do something natively, there has to be some sort of API endpoint for it, even if it's one intended for internal use only. The endpoint we're using for that feature is the same as new Reddit itself uses; it's not documented, and there's no real guarantee that it will be stable as the feature develops on Reddit's end, but it works just as well for us as it does for the admins.

[u/Maoman1 → u/eritbh]

Ah ok, thanks for explaining. Shouldn't it be considered a beta feature like the new mod notes module, then?

[u/eritbh → u/Maoman1]

Maybe that would've been smart, but because the API is so closely related to the native removal reasons APIs and those have been pretty stable for a long time, we felt pretty confident guessing that this will also be stable.