Screenshots: Giveaway Entry, Filtered Comments, Unfiltered Comments, Options: Comment, Options: Filter

The Steamgifts Giveaway Improvement Script was originally designed to automatically thank the giveaway's creator when entering their giveaway; Saving you both time, and making sure you remain polite; But has evolved into much more. It is now a general efficiency improvement tool for everything to do with the giveaway page of Steamgifts.com. It comments and enters a GA with a single form submit, halving the amount of server communications time it can take to both enter and comment on a single giveaway. The script also makes the site slightly more stable when the site is particularly laggy and unresponsive. Specifically, because it uses AJAX requests; If one fails it can tell, and the script just sends another one, and so on and so forth until the request gets through. Additionally, you can specify a number of End Behaviors to perform, after you have entered into a giveaway, including closing the tab.

The script first looks for any content in the page's comment box, and will use that if it is available. Otherwise, it uses whatever custom comment you have set, or just defaults to "Thanks!", if one is not available. When the script submits a comment it records this, and stores an expiring data point to remember not to auto comment if you re-enter this giveaway. You can also set a specific "end behavior", to perform after submittal of both the comment and entrance into the giveaway (e.g., close the page).

The script is also built with a filter specifically designed to recognize other auto thank comments, as well as a host of other generic thanks spam. Filtering them out, and adding them to the "thanked" summery. So you can personalize and lengthen your default comment as much as you want, while still having it filtered out as generic "thanks" spam. The filter ignores your own comments, but will filter out all default auto thank comments, while leaving the personalized ones (read: comments that you wrote for a specific giveaway). When the script encounters replies, it only filters out the entire comment tree if every single comment is considered spam, otherwise the entire tree is left intact. While viewing the comments, or through the options menu, you can add more messages to filtered list, or more authors to the whitelist.

Another major feature is the Markdown toolbar. Steamgifts uses the Markdown language to style and format comments. This first version of the toolbar only includes two features, but they can make using Markdown far easier. One button converts the selected (or entire comment) from HTML to Markdown, and by default strips out any remaining HTML code as well. Meaning you can create links, list, or bold text using HTML code, and one click of this button will convert it to Markdown. The other button simply strips out HTML code, useful if you are copy pasting.

This entire project, and in particular the auto comment feature, was inspired by BarefootMonkey's Thank Filter Userscript. Additionally, the visual style of BarefootMonkey's "thanked" summery is almost copied for my own.
The HTML to Markdown conversion is done using Dom Christie's to-markdown JS engine, copyright © 2011 Dom Christie and released under the MIT license.

(Options will not take effect on any current pages, until they are reloaded)

Compatibility:

Designed and tested on Chrome, using the Tampermonkey extension.

• Firefox - Does not work, and I cannot get it to work. This project needs a Firefox expert to port it. If you are interested in giving it a try, please contact me.

• SteamGifts Plus - Some minimal testing. Appears to be compatible.

• Help Needed - If it works for you, or does not work for you, in any unlisted ways, please let me know.

Version History:

• Version 2.3 – Added fully featured, and customizable filter system. Preload options. Fixed some bugs, improved stability. Moved options link to option in "Account" dropdown; Changed page to "/giveaway/improvement". As well as a bunch of really nessesary little features to improve normal commenting. Two buttons arounds the comment box to make using the markdown easier; One to conver HTML to markdown, and anouther to strip out html code. Added in reset to default buttons for all text options. (August 24th, 2013)

• Version 2.1.1 – FIX: Page closing by default. (August 7th, 2013)

• Version 2.1 – CHANGED: Name, some wording in about page changed. ADDED: highlight options link when in options page. (August 7th, 2013)

• Version 2.0 – Complete code redesign and many features added. Code stabilized, improved, modularized, and documented. Designed to be feature complete (aka, have all the necessary features, but nothing fancy or particularly involved). (August 7th, 2013)

• Version 1.X – Original design and release of the Auto Thank Script. Many rapid updates were released to stabilize and improve basic design. All it did was comment "Thanks." every time you entered a giveaway. It worked, but had ragged, patchwork, code. Latter versions tried to prevent double comments. (August 2th, 2013)

Potential Future Updates:

• Expand the Markdown toolbar.

• A mark/badge to denote that you have already commented on this current giveaway.

• When script launched for the first time or newly updated, show About page.

• Add more End Behavior features.

• Keep points up to date on all pages.

• Check for new replies, and show in menu bar.

• Add in support for special tags, that would be replaced by the gifter's name, the giveaway name, etc.

• Add in support for multiple different auto comments, and allow user to select one when entering giveaways/commenting.

• Add support for more special tags to select and insert from a randomly chosen one from a range of other auto comments.

• Add support for simple IF/else special tags for use within the comments.

• Allow support for templates. Comments that are designed to be added to (e.g., signatures).
  (Submit any suggestions, bugs, or compatibility information to the Official Steamgifts Giveaway Improvement Script)

Links:

• Official Steamgifts Giveaway Improvement Script

• Userscript Page