As some of you may remember back on the Wizards forums I wrote a few Greasemonkey userscripts to make them slightly more usable. They broke with the Great Forum Update, and then most everybody left, so I never bothered updating them, and forgot about the whole affair entirely.
Then it was recently pointed out to me [1] that they might be handy over here at NGA, so I've started porting them to work here. I'm planning on using this thread to link to possibly-useful scripts.
Scripts
Better Autocards
When you autocard, you get a neat little popup image of the card from Gatherer. That's nice, but card scans on magiccards.info are generally bigger and better-looking. For example:
Gatherer | magiccards.info |
This script will rewrite all the autocards on a page to show a scan from magiccards.info.
Tested on Greasemonkey (Firefox) and Tampermonkey (Chrome)
Originally suggested by Shazzeh
Notes
FAQ
What's a userscript? A userscript is a piece of Javascript code that runs after a page loads. It can modify how the page looks and/or how it behaves. Most just run a specific site -- for example, all of the ones in the post will only run on NGA sites.
What do I need to use a userscript? All you need is a browser extension to run the script. For Firefox, use Greasemonkey. For Chrome, I use Tampermonkey.
For other browsers, options are limited. I recommend using Firefox or Chrome.
How do I install a userscript?
Install the plugin for your browser of choice.
Click the install link for the userscript.
That's it!
If you run into any issues with these, please let me know! Also, if you have any ideas for things to write, suggest away!
[1] Huge thanks to Shazzeh here -- he reminded me that BetterAutocards existed, had a copy of the script on hand [2], and even started porting it to work at NGA! [2] The scripts were all hosted on userscripts.org, which apparently went down in May and never came back up. Welp. Now I am using Github.
So... is there any particular reason not to just weld these into the forum's software itself? I mean... the Better Autocards are just pretty much straight up objectively better Autocards, so wouldn't it makes sense to just make that an inherent part of the forum?
Only thing is that for people with lower resolution screens having a larger autocard image would be a problem.
Any way that it could be implemented in a user-enabled option, then? Off by default (Gatherer), with the option to turn it on (magiccards.info)?
Would that be a major headache to implement, or perhaps cause issues with the forum software? If it doesn't cause too many issues now nor would it cause any foreseeable problems in the future, I'd say that's the way to go.
Of course, I know approximately zilch about coding and software, so I won't push too hard for something I don't know how to work into the system.
I'm hesitant to add this as-is; the script makes autocards three times as much work for the client (it has to load the normal page, find all the autocard links, load a magiccards.info search page to find out where the image lives, before it can rewrite the autocard URLs). Also, as mentioned, the images are much bigger, which might be problematic for some people.
That said, I definitely want to move to magiccards.info scans for autocarding. Looking at their link structure, all that's really needed for that is a server-side database that can translate between card names and set/collector number, I suppose. I'll poke at it when I have time tomorrow.
A per-user setting should also not be hard. It will probably default to magiccards.info, as they really are much prettier, but it'll allow people to switch if they prefer the smaller versions.
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"In the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded." — Terry Pratchett
Thanks so much for updating this, it's fantastic! I didn't want to bother you with it but my Javascript is not strong and I didn't have the courage to wade through the ridiculous one-liner in the page source that seemed to control the tooltips. At least this way everyone can benefit.
The discussion in this topic is also great. I forgot what using a forum with real admins was like.
Count me as someone who actually likes the Gatherer images better. I generally only need a quick glance to recognize a card, and as long as the text's readable in case I need a refresher, I'm fine. The magiccards.info images are indeed larger, but as far as I'm concerned that just means they take up more space than they need.
I fully admit I'm likely in the minority--my card-recognition abilities are freaky at times.
And so people say to me, "How do I know if a word is real?" You know, anyone who's read a children's book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it! That makes it real. Being in the dictionary is an artificial distinction; it doesn't make the word any more real than any other word. If you love a word, it becomes real. --Erin McKean, Redefining the Dictionary
And so people say to me, "How do I know if a word is real?" You know, anyone who's read a children's book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it! That makes it real. Being in the dictionary is an artificial distinction; it doesn't make the word any more real than any other word. If you love a word, it becomes real. --Erin McKean, Redefining the Dictionary
Why would you name an EDH and Cube mainstay? I actually thought you talked about Thran Turbine, which is several times more difficult to guess correctly. Add me to the list of people who don't really have a need for bigger pictures.
Thran Dynamo is a 4CC artifact that taps to produce . Thran Turbine is a 2CC artifact that produces during your upkeep that you can't use to cast spells. IIRC, its flavor text is something along the lines of "When Urza asked what it did, the Viashino told him 'It hums.'"
EDIT: Dang, got the CC of the Turbine wrong. Apparently it's only 1CC. And the flavor text is worded a bit differently. Ah, well, got the important part anyway.
And so people say to me, "How do I know if a word is real?" You know, anyone who's read a children's book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it! That makes it real. Being in the dictionary is an artificial distinction; it doesn't make the word any more real than any other word. If you love a word, it becomes real. --Erin McKean, Redefining the Dictionary
If you are interested in contributing content and have any questions, or if you are interested in contributing as a moderator, administrator, or editor, please feel free to send me a message via PM or to via email at [email protected]
Thran Turbine also lets you choose between adding or . fwiw, I knew that it costed 1, but assumed it adding 2 on your main phase, and could only be spent on artifacts.
Thran Turbine also lets you choose between adding or . fwiw, I knew that it costed 1, but assumed it adding 2 on your main phase, and could only be spent on artifacts.
I actually knew exactly what it did, because I used to run a deck based around it, kill switch, and mycosynth lattice. (not of my own design, I saw it in a MaGo article and liked it and tried it out.)
And so people say to me, "How do I know if a word is real?" You know, anyone who's read a children's book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it! That makes it real. Being in the dictionary is an artificial distinction; it doesn't make the word any more real than any other word. If you love a word, it becomes real. --Erin McKean, Redefining the Dictionary
And so people say to me, "How do I know if a word is real?" You know, anyone who's read a children's book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it! That makes it real. Being in the dictionary is an artificial distinction; it doesn't make the word any more real than any other word. If you love a word, it becomes real. --Erin McKean, Redefining the Dictionary
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. Thran Turbine is a 2CC artifact that produces 
during your upkeep that you can't use to cast spells. IIRC, its flavor text is something along the lines of "When Urza asked what it did, the Viashino told him 'It hums.'"
or