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Facebook Enhancements..........

by J Ali Kalia

FFixer (previously known as Facebook Fixer) is a userscript that allows you to customize Facebook®. You can install it via the download page on userscripts.org.

Easy Installation

If you are using Mozilla Firefox (with the Greasemonkey extension installed), Google Chrome or Chromium , just click on this installation link and then click Install when the popup appears (Chrome/Chromium users may also get a warning about installing extensions - just click continue).

If you do not have Greasemonkey installed, or if you are using another web browser such as Safari or Opera, then click here for installation instructions.

Features

FFixer provides the following features. Most features are enabled by default, but can be enabled or disabled independently.

Big Profile Pictures and Photos
Big Album Pictures
Video Download Links
Load Full Albums
Homepage Customization
Bookmarks
Localization
Translation
Age and Sign
Calendar Integration
Keyboard Shortcuts
Re-Title
Error Page Reloading
Menu Bar Customization
Import/Export of Script Settings
Automatically Check for Script Updates
Cross-Browser Support
and more...

Bigger Profile Pictures and Photos

Just hover the mouse over any photo thumbnail and a bigger popup picture will appear, even if the person is not your friend. You can choose to have the bigger picture stay visible until you click the 'x' to close it or you can have it disappear when you move the mouse off of the thumbnail. You can also hold CTRL, SHIFT or ALT when putting the mouse over a picture to prevent the popup from appearing, or hold them when taking the mouse off a picture to keep the popup open. More customization options are available on the config screen.

Bigger Album Pictures

Click the "show big pictures" link within regular photo albums, profile pictures or tagged photos and you can see the full-size versions of all the pictures on a single page.

Load Full Albums

Thumbnails for every image in an album can be loaded onto a single page. By default this is done when you click on the "all" link, but it can also be done automatically by changing an option in the config screen.

Video Download Links

Provides links on video pages to download the video (underneath the links for tagging/reporting the video). Facebook® uses more than one format for videos - files with an FLV extension must be played using an FLV player. If the file doesn't start downloading when you click 'Download Video', right click on the link and select 'Save Link As'.

Homepage Customization

By default the homepage will look the same, however, you can use the script's configuration to hide the filter column to the left of the feed, or the entire column to the right of the feed. Instead of hiding the entire right column, you can also hide the following sections independently: Highlights, Pokes, Suggestions, Connect With Friends.

Bookmarks

FFixer can add a Bookmarks sub-menu to the main menu at the top of the screen, allowing you to bookmark any page on Facebook®®. including profiles, albums and applications. These bookmarks are easily accessible from any page on Facebook

Localization

FFixer will output text in the same language in which you are using Facebook®, if the language is supported: Bulgarian, Chinese (Taiwan), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Korean, Macedonian, Norwegian, Serbian (Cyrillic and Latin), Slovak, Spanish, Turkish, Vietnamese.

Translation

Select any text in Facebook® and press T (shift + t) to translate it using Google Translate. This feature requires keyboard shortcuts to be enabled, and the translation language can be selected in the config screen.

Age and Sign

Shows a person's sign and age if they have made their birth date public. These options can be enabled/disabled separately.

Calendar Integration

Adds links on people's profile to add their birthdays to Google Calendar. Also adds a link on the birthdays page (http://www.facebook.com/events.php?bday=1) that lets you export an iCalendar file with all of your friends' birthdays. This file can be imported into many websites/programs including Google Calendar, Yahoo! Calendar, Mozilla Sunbird, Apple iCal, Microsoft Outlook and many more. (If you have a lot of friends it can take a while to generate this file.)

If you use Google Apps you can specify your domain in the scripts configuration so that the script can provide the right links for you.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Provides site navigation and access to Facebook® features using keyboard shortcuts. For example press "P" to jump to your profile, or press "b" to see full-size pictures when viewing an album. A full list of shortcuts is available in FFixer's configuration. If a shortcut is not working, try clicking anywhere on page's white background and trying the shortcut again.

Re-Title

Removes "Facebook |" from the title of every page. This makes it much easier to tell what pages are where when you have a lot of open tabs.

Error Page Reloading

Automatically reloads application pages when errors occur and they show the standard Facebook® error message.

Menu Bar Customization

You can adjust the transparency of the main menu bar (the one with the search field) and the bottom menu bar (the one with application bookmarks and buddy list). Both menus can be adjusted separately with 6 levels of transparency ranging from fully visible to completely hidden.

Import and Export of Script Settings

You can import and export your settings via the config screen so you can easily use the same configuration for FFixer across multiple accounts, browsers or computers.

Automatically Check for Script Updates

Automatically checks everyday to see if FFixer has been updated. You can also check for updates on demand in the scripts configuration. (Thanks to Jarett for his Script Update Checker.)

Advanced Options

FFixer now has several "advanced options" including hiding suggestions that come from Facebook instead of friends, hiding or highlighting stories in the news feed based on their content, and applying custom CSS to every Facebook page. These options are covered in the FFixer Guide.

Cross-Browser Support

FFixer is tested in Firefox, Chrome/Chromium and Opera, but it should work in any browser that supports userscripts. Users have reported it working in Safari, Flock and other browsers. Keep in mind though the primary target is Firefox (and browsers with Greasemonkey) so features may work slightly differently or with restrictions in other browsers.