GoComics comments
I will be adding tips and advice for GoComics discussions here.
This first bookmarklet will load all comment replies on a GoComics page.
To set this up, drag the link below to your bookmarks (preferably your bookmark bar). For Microsoft Edge, add it to your "reading list" instead. I will write better instructions in the coming days.
Once the link is in your bookmarks, you can right-click to edit and rename it if the name I gave it doesn't suit you.
Once you get to a GoComics page with comments, click the speech balloon under the strip to show the comments, or open the page with a bookmark that opens the page with the comments visible, for example, this one: Dick Tracy by Joe Staton and Mike Curtis.
Once the comments are shown, click the bookmarklet on your bookmarks bar (or, for Edge, in your reading list) to show all replies to comments.
This August 30, 2018, update now gives a total for the number of comments, including replies. To update, delete the old bookmark and drag this new one to your bookmark bar or reading list.
This bookmarklet looks for URLs on the page (so you probably want to expand the replies first and wait for them to load) and it makes the URLs into live links. There are three types of URLs that it deals with.
Page links: All URLs are made into links that open by default into a new tab or window called "gclinks" (although you won't see that name). If you open a second link it will also open in that "gclinks" tab. If you don't want the link to open there, drag it up to your tabs or right-click and open it in a new tab or window.
Ideally, the URL would have been typed into the comment box with a blank line or a space before and after it, but most URLs will work correctly even if that rule is not followed.
Image links: The bookmarklet will try to replace any URL ending in .jpg, .gif, or .png with the image referenced by the URL. This image will be reduced if necessary to fit the comment width, but it can be clicked to open full-sized in the "gclinks" tab mentioned for non-image links.
If you want to put a GoComics strip from a previous day into your comment (use the GC open
YouTube links: If the URL appears to be a YouTube share link starting with youtu.be or a regular www.youtube.com link, the bookmarklet will attempt to display it on the comments page. The video will not show suggested other videos when it finishes. Any starting time listed in the URL will be ignored.
Eventually, this bookmarklet will be combined with the GC Index bookmarklet for those who want that. I still need to check the maximum length of a bookmark in various browsers.
For pages with a lot of comments and replies, it can be hard to find the ones you haven't read, since they can be scattered around the page. This bookmarklet will build a chronological index to all the comments (and replies) appearing on the page. It's best to wait until they are all loaded before clicking this bookmarklet because any that are not loaded will not be indexed.
Once your index is loaded there are two links for each comment. The first link is on the name of the person who made the post. Clicking the name will jump you down the page, directly to that post. The second link is on the time of the post (for example, "about 3 hours ago"). Clicking this link on any comment will highlight all of the comments and replies from that comment or later and will jump you down the page to the first one that appears on the page. Note that this is not always the earliest one posted, but it works best to position you there because then you can read and scroll down from that point to find the rest.
Follow the "Initial Setup" instructions above. This has been tested in the latest versions of Chrome, Opera, Firefox, and Edge.
Apparently, GoComics wants to discourage us from saving comic strips onto our hard disks, but some of us like to do it for our own reference, and we will find a way, so why not make it easier?
Follow the "Initial Setup" instructions above. Opera and Microsoft Edge allow for one-click saving.
For Opera and Microsoft Edge:
Save strip
Other browsers don't have the one-click download function that Opera and Edge have, so this alternative will open the picture of the strip in a new tab and you can save it from there. For certain setups, you may have to allow pop-ups so that it can open a new tab.
For other browsers (Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc.):
Open strip in new tab