Additional useful buttons for our M.SE editor

Question

Do you hate the guys trying to optimize every single part of a process? I'm one of those. Believe me, it's even harder for me. When I sit next to someone watching him writing something, taking the hand off the keyboard to mark a portion of text with the mouse, make a right-click just to copy&paste... I could explode.

Although, I'm quite fast with our SE editor, there are some things which could be further optimized. One big first step was the Image Uploader. But there is another thing I always liked to have. A fast way to insert links to the online documentation of Wolfram. If you look at the URL style of e.g.

http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/ref/Plot.html

you see, that Plot can be exchanged with most other Mathematica functions and it works, because most of them have a reference page. Now wouldn't it be awesome if we had an additional button on the editor toolbar which when clicked transforms the marked text PlotStyle into PlotStyle? This won't work for all functions but I'm sure, it helps quite a lot.

Another thing is, I'm the theta kind of guy. While I can at least live with the θ guys, I absolutely hate the \[Theta] ones. I think everyone agrees that the last option is the least readable. If there would be another editor button which just replaces the FullForm greek characters of a marked text, I'm sure this would be used very much and would help the readability of the code on our site.

Question: Is there a way to extend the editor on our main site?

Answer 1

Quick installation for the impatient. Choose your browser below:

• Chrome or Vivaldi – Install from the Chrome Web Store.
• Firefox – Install Greasemonkey, then click here: m_toolbar.user.js
• Safari – Install NinjaKit, reload the page, then click here: m_toolbar.user.js. Extra instructions for MacOS 10.14 below.

Detailed instructions for any browser are below.

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I hereby proudly present a browser user-script (userscript) which adds the required functionality to the editor of mathematica.stackexchange.com. This script is the slightly changed version of the Ask Ubuntu Toolbar Buttons which only exists due to the incredible work of Nathan Osman.

Additionally, I added a button which is maybe rarely used, but when it is used, it saves a lot of tedious html-tag typing. With it you can insert shortcuts easily. Just click the button and insert the short-keys separated by space. Therefore, when you type Ctrl C in the dialog you get Ctrl+C.

Installation

Chrome

Chrome users can download this extension directly in the Google Chrome Webstore.

Additionally, the script can be found on GitHub where you can have a look at the code or download it. To install it, please use this direct link to

• m_toolbar.user.js

and install it into your browser. I have tested the script in Linux and Mac OSX.

In Chrome you install it by storing the file m_toolbar.user.js locally onto your hard-drive. Then you go in Chrome to Menu->Tools->Extensions and drag&drop the file there. After a reload of the SE page, the buttons should appear.

Safari

In Safari (I tried OSX 10.6 and 10.8) one easy way is to use NinjaKit, which is an extension that lets you install user scripts.

First, download the file NinjaKit.safariextz and install it by double-click. After that you should see a ninja-star-like button in Safari

where you can manage your user scripts.

Safari 13: The following workaround using "Extension Builder" does not work anymore.

MacOS 10.14: Extensions such as NinjaKit are depreciated as of MacOS 10.14. Use the workaround detailed here to get around this problem. You may need to re-enable NinjaKit every time you restart Safari using the Safari menu Develop > Show Extension Builder.

Second, click on the link to m_toolbar.user.js. You should see a pop-up like this

A click on Install finishes everything up. Another click on the ninja star button shows you now the installed Mathematica script

If clicking on the above link to m_toolbar.user.js doesn't work, try the following:

1. Download m_toolbar.user.js](https://github.com/halirutan/SE-Editor-Buttons/raw/master/src/m_toolbar.user.js) as a text file.
2. Click the NinjaKit button then NinjaKit's "Add new script" button.
3. Copy the downloaded m_toolbar.user.jsand paste it into the "Add new script" window, overwriting the skeleton script that's already there.
4. Click the Save button at the very bottom of the window. (The name of the script embedded in the copied .js will automatically be used for the name.)

Other browsers

For other browsers please read the existing article on stackapps about how to install user scripts.

Update:

8. July 2013

• Issue concerning Canceled dialog-boxes and empty input fixed
• Updated tool-tips for a better English. Thanks to m_goldberg for the help.

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23. October 2013

• The dependent jquery.livequery.js is now loaded from googlecode
• Introduced another button for the stripping of In[3]:= and Out[3]= marks. For this you have to select the complete codeblock where the I of In is the first letter in the selection. Pressing the button removes the marks and comments out the output.
• Added \[Element] to the list of replaced glyphs
• Buttons-style is now more consistent with the webpage.

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27. October 2013

• ssch was so nice to extend the list of unicode characters by all characters of the Listing of Named Characters which have a unicode representation.

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28. October 2013

• ssch extended the In[]/Out[] cell label remover to work with several in- and outputs. Additionally, it can handle all kinds of Forms (like FullForm or Short)
• I moved the code into an official repository which is linked under the section Installation above.

21. April 2015

• The Toolbar can now officially be downloaded in the Google Chrome Webstore

Answer 2

Important note: The Additional Editor Buttons Toolbar can directly be installed through the Chrome Webstore and the workaround below is not necessary any more:

• Mathematica Editor-buttons for StackExchange

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Workaround for Windows users with the Chrome browser

A recent update to Chrome on Windows disables extensions which do not come from the Chrome Web Store, with no simple way to re-enable them. There are various workarounds here. I have used the "import the unpacked user-script in developer mode" solution, which is working fine though you do have to cancel a "disable developer scripts" dialog every time Chrome starts.

For simplicity here are specific instructions for halirutan's script:

• Create a new folder and move the m_toolbar.user.js file into it.
• Create a new file called manifest.json in the folder with the following contents:

.

{
  "manifest_version": 2,
  "name": "m_toolbar",
  "version": "1.0",

  "content_scripts": [
    {
      "matches": ["http://*.mathematica.stackexchange.com/*"],
      "js": ["m_toolbar.user.js"]
    }
  ]   
}

• Open the extensions page in Chrome (menu-tools-extensions or navigate to chrome://extensions/).
• Check the "Developer mode" option at the top right.
• Click the "Load unpacked extension..." button and select the folder you created.

That should be it, after reloading mathematica.stackexchange the buttons will be back.

Answer 3

Update extension from the author.

Mathematica Editor-buttons for StackExchange