mvr update: new version and Chrome support

2-minute read
mvr

Last September, I started working on a browser plugin to navigate reddit.

I had been using RES for a while now and really like their keyboard navigation. However, I don’t use 90% of the other features in RES (and don’t really think I would ever use most of them). While a powerful plugin, it’s a bit bloated for what I need.

Every so often, I like to try out different browsers for a bit. I don’t really like the monopoly Chrome generally enjoys, but I always find myself coming back to it. I do a lot of web development, so their dev tools are pretty important to me. I don’t want to talk about browsers, however. My point here is that I was using Safari as my main browser for a bit (say what you want about support, but it does feel really snappy on a Mac). For a few reasons, RES no longer supports Safari, so I started missing those keyboard controls.

In the interim, I did notice that reddit is very close to having the minimum features I’d want in just day to day browsing. You can expand posts in-line, upvote posts, save posts… with the mouse.

That gives this project three goals:

  1. Provide the major “missing features” of reddit.
  2. Cross browser support (it’s just some basic JS and CSS).
  3. Be small.

In the initial version, I just supported Safari. With this release, I’ve added Chrome support. Firefox should be next (I do not have a timeline for this).

Keep in mind that I do not plan to implement everything or even most of what is in RES. This is not a port of RES to Safari, either. This plugin is meant to add the bare minimum of what I consider necessary to making reddit “viable” to browse with ease.

GitHub: https://github.com/gjbianco/mvr Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mvr/khpjlkbgdpdbjmcoobijkbfjjhaolioo Safari: coming soon