What is it?What is it?
Orkut is a friends network created by Google. A scrap is a message that you leave on your friend's scrapbook, or a message that he / she leaves on your's. When you see a scrap from a friend, and want to reply to it, the only way to do so is to click on his name, travel to his profile page, find the link to his scrapbook, then type in your message... which, in my humble opinion, is p-a-i-n, especially when you are on a scrapping spree.
This extension adds two links to every scrap seen on your scrapbook. One link allows you to reply to your friend from the same place (without going to his scrapbook). The other link is for the nosy among us - the ones who like to look at others' scraps - a direct link to his / her scrapbook. This is useful when you don't want to go to your friend's scrapbook through the normal route (profile page -> scrapbook).
Try it out
One way:
Install Orkut ScrapEasy firefox extension and restart the browser.
Another way:
Install Greasemonkey extension and restart firefox.
Click here to open Orkut ScrapEasy script. You'll see a button on the top right corner of your page, prompting you install the script. Click on it and install. If you didn't see the button, you didn't install Greasemonkey properly.
To test, logon to your Orkut account and go to your scrapbook. Along with the "delete" link next to every scrap, you should see two more links - "Reply" and "Scrapbook".
Read on.
Detailed Usage
Hopefully, you are seeing the links mentioned above. The Scrapbook link takes you to the scrapbook of the person who scrapped you.
The Reply link opens a text box below the scrap. Enter anything you want, and press the submit button next to the box. If you see a popup box that says "Message posted", you are safe. Cross check once by visiting the person's scrapbook (use the link above!), and making sure the message is indeed present. Note that, replying through this extension allows you to remain on your scrapbook (for the geekier lot, the magic of AJAX !). Oh, by the way, clicking on the Reply link again gets rid of the box.
If you happen to get an "Encountered an error" message after pressing the submit button, needless to say, something went wrong. It is most likely a temporary problem. Perhaps Orkut isn't in good health at that moment. In most cases, waiting for some time, refreshing the page, restarting the browser etc. are easy cures (hopefully, you won't see the error message at all).
Make sure you read the bugs section below, because there are some known bugs. They won't affect you much, but you should know better before you jump in and skew my extension's rating.
Bugs
1) The Reply box pushes the scraps a little to the right. I'm not sure how to fix it, but it doesn't create any problem. Life gets back to normal when you get rid of the box by clicking on Reply again.
2) On rare occasions, if you are really lucky, you get to see an error message when you post the scrap. This could be a problem with Orkut, or with the extension. Easiest remedy would be to go to your friend's scrapbook using the Scrapbook link and post without using this extension. If this fails, the problem is with Orkut. If it doesn't, you could try refreshing your browser, or waiting for some time before retrying. In the worst case, closing and reopening your browser should help. Don't worry, it is very unlikely that it is a permanent error.
If you encounter a problem, do mail me the exact scenario to address the issue in the next version.
Credits
Thanks to:
Greasemonkey compiler
Comments
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