Some of us have the insatiable desire to build. To create. To assemble. To hook together existing things in new ways that haven't been done before. And while we work hard to perfect whatever it is our project turns out to be, it is always made possible by the great work of others from which we can build.

"If I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." – Isaac Newton (paraphrased)

Here are some of the tools I use when developing Social Fixer, which I think deserve recognition. And keeping with my philosophy of supporting independent developers such as myself, I have purchased or donated to support each of them!

Greasemonkey

Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows developers to insert scripts into web sites to run their custom code. This is the very core of Social Fixer. It began as a simple Greasemonkey script, and I later created tools to translate that script into native extensions for other browsers. But I develop the code using Greasemonkey, and without it, Social Fixer could not exist. Big kudos to the developers of Greasemonkey, who do this in their spare time, just because they enjoy it.

Firebug

This Firefox extension provides fantastic debugging capabilities within Firefox. With it I can inspect the CSS applied to elements, trace through Javascript code to debug it, see all the ajax requests that are being made, and more. Like Greasemonkey, I simply couldn't create Social Fixer without it.

Sublime Text

There are lots of editors out there, and I've probably tried most of them. Previously, I was using Notepad++ for my development (and still do for some things), but I recently switched to Sublime Text and I'm not looking back. It has a ton of fantastic features and customization options. One of the key features I love is that if I close it down with unsaved changes to files (or even new files that have never been saved), it preserves them for when I open it back up. I can drop things into new tabs and keep notes without having to worry about saving files or losing what I was working on. I love it.

Radian

I had used Circle Dock for quite a while as a quick-launcher in Windows, but it just wasn't as convenient as I wanted. So I was very happy to find Radian through a Lifehacker article. It does everything I want, and does it well. I use it to quickly launch the apps I use, as well as to quickly fire off my packaging scripts that build the extensions. When I don't have it, I find myself lost, not remembering how to start the apps that I use many times every day!

JS Deminifier

I just found this add-on a couple days ago, and my life got so much easier. Facebook's Javascript code is minified, making it unreadable in Firebug. Also, since entire components are on one line in the source, I can't step through the debugger line by line to see what their code is doing. JS Deminifier automatically un-minifies their Javascript code before it hits the browser, so Firebug sees it in fully expanded, readable, formatted text. This makes my Javascript debugging and reverse-engineering so much easier.

JS Beautifier

This is a web site that will take mangled, ugly Javascript or HTML and format it to be readable. I've used it so many times over the last few years that I've made several donations to the site's maintainer. Though the newly-discovered JS Deminifier add-on will reduce my dependency on this site a bit, I still use it for chunks of HTML that I pull out of Facebook, or pieces of script that JS Deminifer won't handle. It's absolutely an essential tool for me.

If you're a developer, I hope you check out some of these great tools, and possibly include them in your toolbox too!

-- Matt Kruse, Creator of Social Fixer

Users click "Like" literally billions of times per day, but most don't understand how that can trigger stories to show up in their friends' newsfeeds. You may be a Like-spammer and not even know it!

How Are Your Likes Used?

Here are some of the ways that clicking "Like" can be used in ways you don't realize:

1. If you "Like" a product on Amazon or other site connected to Facebook, or even if you just Like a post made by a product you are a fan of, you may actually show up in an ad for that company! Facebook may show an ad to your friends, telling them that you liked a product. See this story on the New York Times: On Facebook, Likes Become Ads. Read this story!
2. If you "Like" a Sponsored story from Target or any other Page you like (sponsored stories are Facebook's new con to earn revenue), that story may appear in your friends' news feeds, even if they don't like the Page! You are effectively passing on their ad to your friends.
3. If you "Like" something posted by a friend, and that post's privacy is set to "Public" or "Friend of Friends", your friends who don't even know this other friend may see the story in their feed that you liked their post.
4. If you "Like" something posted by a friend, and you both have a mutual friend, that mutual friend may see a story in their news feed that you liked their post.

For these reasons, I have personally decided to limit my activity with Facebook. I rarely "Like" or comment on posts anymore, because there is simply no way to interact with Facebook without potentially spamming your every move to your friends' news feeds, or appearing in ads.

For all of Facebook's attempts at privacy, they have failed on one of the biggest privacy concerns – I don't want my every click on Facebook to be broadcast to my friends! This new kind of Social Voyeurism is not welcome by me, or many others.

Facebook, if you want people to interact more with the site, you need to give us greater control over how "spammy" we are to our friends, and let us Like and Comment without fearing that our every word or click will be broadcast for all to see.

Of course, please click "Like" on this post. It may show up in your friends' news feeds, but that would be a good thing. Maybe they will read it

-- Matt Kruse, author of Social Fixer.

Have you ever found yourself staring at Facebook (or any other site) and the font in your browser was either really small or really big? Here's a quick fix and explanation.

Pressing Ctrl+0 (zero) will reset your font size to the default in all modern browsers. It's a quick fix, and a good thing to remember!

But Wait, What Happened?

How did the font size get changed to begin with? Two simple explanations:

1. Most likely, you held down the Ctrl key on accident while scrolling with your mouse wheel. In most browsers, this changes the font size bigger or smaller. I'm not sure if anyone actually uses this feature or finds it useful, but it always seems to confuse users!
2. Pressing Ctrl+ in most browsers will increase font size, and Ctrl- will decrease it. But the chances of hitting these keys on accident is much smaller.

This helpful tip has been brought to you by Social Fixer – the app that improves the Facebook site by eliminating annoyances and adding lots of great enhancements and functionality.

-- Matt Kruse

Facebook has a porn problem! Why won't they add the simple features needed to help Page owners prevent porn from appearing on our walls? Share this post to put the pressure on them!

I have been battling porn spam on the Social Fixer Page for months. It works like this:

1. Spammer creates a new Page on FB, usually called "Sexy Videos", "Hot Movies", etc.
2. They post a porn picture to their wall, tagging other pages like @SocialFixer
   
3. The post then shows up on my wall, because they tagged me
4. I and others report the post as spam, and it's deleted (I have a great support team!)
5. The porn Page is disabled or deleted soon after being created
6. They create a new page and repeat…

The problem is that Page owners have no ability to stop this!

1. It's not possible to prevent people from tagging your Page, since all pages are public
2. It's not possible to stop tagged posts from showing up on your wall
3. Turning off the ability of people to post pictures doesn't help, because they aren't actually posting pictures to your wall, they are posting it to their own.
4. Adding words to your "Moderation Blocklist" like "Sexy" doesn't help, because those words are in the Page name, not the post itself, so the posts don't get blocked.

This is a real problem for me and many other Page owners. Facebook is probably working hard to prevent this kind of activity, since I'm sure they don't want porn appearing on their site. But what they really need to do is implement one or both of the following features:

1. Allow Page owners to prevent people from tagging them in updates.

2. Provide an option for Pages to require approval of tags before they are shown on the Page's Timeline, like they do for personal Profiles:

Facebook needs to be pressured to implement these settings for Pages, to give owners the control needed to keep their Pages safe from spam. Please share this post to spread the word and hope to get Facebook's attention, since they don't provide an easy way to contact them directly, and they generally ignore user emails or Help posts!

Hopefully, if users bring this issue into the spotlight and give Facebook some unwanted attention in this area, they will feel pressured to add the features that Page owners need to prevent it.

Thanks for helping!

Facebook recently started showing a "Trending Articles" box to most users, informing them of what news articles their friends have read. Facebook provides no way to hide this "feature", but with Social Fixer you can hide it from your page!

Starting with version 6.6, there is an option in the "Popular" tab. Check this box to hide the Trending Articles section, and you'll never have to see it again!

The hiding is based on searching for the text "Trending Articles", so if you are using a language other than English, it won't work by default. That's why the second box is there – you can enter the translation of "Trending Articles" in your language which will match, and then it should properly hide.

And while you're at it, are you annoyed when you click on a story that your friend read, and it opens up a box to add a Facebook app, rather than going directory to the story? Social Fixer can fix that too!

By default, it fixes these links so they do NOT open the Facebook App. The setting to control this can be found in the Posts tab of Options:

If you don't already have Social Fixer, go to http://SocialFixer.com to install it into your browser, then enjoy a better Facebook experience!

Do you ever see links to stories, videos, pictures, etc in your Facebook news feed and wish you could easily save them to view later? Now you can, with Social Fixer and Pocket!

Social Fixer is a free browser extension that removes annoyances from Facebook and adds great new features. New in version 6.6 is the ability to easily send posts to your Pocket reading list. Now you can scan your Facebook news feed and save interesting links for reading at a more convenient time!

What is Pocket?

Pocket (formerly known as Read It Later) is a service that stores content that you put in it, that you want to read later. It can plug right into your browser, or you can download their free app for your portable devices. Social Fixer adds a "Save" icon to each post to add stories to your Pocket list. Then you can look at your Pocket Queue at any time – even when you're out and on your mobile device – and get access to the stories you saved earlier.

How Do I Save Posts?

When you hover over any post in your newsfeed, you'll see a "Save" icon in the tray of icons added by Social Fixer:

Clicking it pops up a simple dialog directly from Pocket's site, prompting you to add the link to your list. When you click "Save", the story is added to your list.

You can then click "Close" and the popup goes away. Then if you fire up Pocket on your mobile phone, for example, you'll see the story at the top of your queue:

Saving Facebook Posts Themselves

If you want to save a link back to the Facebook post itself rather than the content that it links to (maybe you want to check back later and see if there are any comments), you can do that too. By clicking on the "Save FB post instead" link in the lower right, you can change the saved link to the Facebook post itself. Then you need to click "Save" to add it to your list.

What Is It Good For?

It's very convenient, once you start using it! I subscribe to a lot of "Pages" on Facebook, and there are always lots of links I want to read. But when I'm sitting at my computer, I never have time to actually look at them all. I used to bookmark them or keep a lot of open tabs of things I want to check back on. Now I use Pocket.

I save each article I want to read later. Then, I mainly read them on my iPhone later when I'm waiting in the car for my daughter to come out of sports practice, or even when I'm in a boring meeting. I always have a list of great articles to read, wherever I am!

FAQs

Before you ask, here are the answers:

Q: Can I integrate with another reader/queue service?
A: Not yet. Future updates will allow this.

Q: When I pop up the window, I see a login screen in a small scrollable window?
A: That's because you're not logged into Pocket. You need to first create an account, and be logged in your browser.

Q: Can you make it automatically close the popup when I click Save?
A: Not right now, for technical reasons. I'm working on tighter integration with Pocket to even make the dialog popup unnecessary.

What Next?

Do you have any other great ideas of how to enhance Facebook by adding great new features or integrating other functionality? Then join the Social Fixer community and help us improve your social experience!

-- Matt Kruse, author of Social Fixer

Facebook's EdgeRank algorithm hides your posts from 84% of your Page's fans. Now Facebook wants you to pay for ads to make those posts visible. Welcome to Facebook's new con.

A while ago, Facebook stopped giving users a reverse-chronological view of their news feed by default, and replaced it with a list of stories hand-picked by their "EdgeRank" algorithm. This spawned a number of blog posts and info-graphics explaining, for example, Why 84% of Your Facebook Fans Are Lurkers. This was supposedly intended to show you the content you were most interested in, by figuring out what you really liked. Yeah right.

The real intent of the algorithm is to allow them to artificially limit the exposure of Page posts. Companies and individuals work hard to create Facebook Pages, to build a "Fan" base, and to push out interesting, relevant posts to the people that "Like" them. Facebook's algorithm hides most of their posts from your view.

So now that they've created a shortage, how is a Page supposed to actually reach its fans, which have expressed interest in their content by "Liking" their page? Easy: You have to pay the piper!

Facebook's "Marketing Solutions" Page posted a note today explaining that in order to make sure your fans see your posts, you need to purchase ads to "sponsor" those stories! They've given you a platform to publish on and made it look very promising. They lured you in, telling you that you could easily reach people who are interested in you. But then they changed the rules. Now they want you to pay for what you've taken for granted. And users who think they are getting the content they are interested in are often surprised to find out that Facebook is deciding for them what is important. Most users have no idea they are doing this. Does it benefit them? No. Does it benefit Page owners? No. Who does it benefit? Facebook, and its future investors.

Does Twitter do this? No. Does Google+ do this? No. Facebook's hubris is reaching new extremes.

As Facebook cruises towards its IPO, it's obvious that profit is the driving force behind all of its decisions, users be damned. Most of its design and functionality decisions are made in an attempt to serve more and better targeted ads to the user, and to artificially control access to information so they can charge for it.

As the popular phrase goes, "If you're not paying for something, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold." You're now being sold to Page owners who want you to see their content, in the form of ads and sponsored stories. Let the slippery slope begin…

This post is the personal opinion of Matt Kruse, author of Social Fixer – a browser extension that attempts to improve the Facebook experience by removing annoyances and adding useful features.