Hey there, I’ve been away from WaniKani and language learning in general for a while, and when I decided to pick it up again I got sort of annoyed by the fact that I had to take my hands off the keyboard to look at the right answer when I got something wrong during my review sessions so I made this.
Its a Firefox extension that just opens the item info pane automatically when you submit an answer without changing the focus, which lets me stay hands-on-keyboard while I go through my massive backlog of reviews.
I remember there used to be user scripts out there for Tampermonkey/Greasemonkey, but I really don’t like those kinds of extensions.
If anybody finds this is useful, I’m open to developing more keyboard-centric features if you can think of any. Otherwise, there probably won’t be much development here, I enjoy the “It Just Does One Thing” principle. At the moment the only possible addition I’ve tossed around is adding a settings pane so you can decide if you want this to work only when an answer is wrong, or all the time.
This is is really something to scratch a personal itch, but maybe someone else will find it useful.
That’s awesome, I had no idea! I guess that turns this extension into a glorified auto-f-key-presser, hah!
prouleau:
Sure, it’s just personal preference. Primarily I’d just rather not have to manage another interface of stuff. It’s like needing a tool (greasemonkey/tampermonkey) to use another tool. Firefox already has an addons manager. An integrated browser extension is a simple install with no overhead in a consistent repository and they’re ezpz to build, go look at the source for this one - its super simple.
Just out of curiosity. How did they approve an extension for a closed site? I wrote several Firefox extensions, and two of them (one for Coursera, and another for my university) weren’t approved for publishing, and I was advised to distribute the extension myself. None of the appeals to these resolutions were resolved in my favour.
I don’t know about browser add-ons. I wrote a script as a userscript and I would have done it no other way. With a userscript I can look at the code of existing Wanikani scripts to figure out how to write mine. I don’t have as many Wanikani browser extensions to look at how to do Wanikani related stuff. Also I need to use WKOF for settings and simplified access to the Wanikani API and this works only in a userscript.
I wrote a pretty in-depth guide in the reviewer comments section explaining what the site was, how it worked, how to sign up for an account etc… etc… and I was really explicit about what the extension was doing. I acknowledged the requirement about providing test account credentials and just explained that it wasn’t my site but I even walked through how the SRS system worked and what they would have to do to actually get to reviews (go through your lessons, wait until the system says reviews are ready, etc).
My guess is that I just overwhelmed the reviewer to the point where s/he said, “Fine, whatever.” and clicked approve. There was no conversation or follow-up.
That’s great prouleau, I’m glad you’ve got a way to make your development easier. Not having good examples of an API’s usage has caused a ton of headaches throughout my career, so I definitely get it.
If you’re curious about extension development, go peek through the repository. I’d be happy to answer questions about it if you ever decide you want to try building your own.
Just so we’re clear here, I’m not suggesting anyone switch to or even use this thing, particularly not if you’ve got other good options in place. It was something I built in an afternoon because I was tired of clicking a button and thought I’d share. If you’re into userscripts that’s totally cool, I bet you could even rip out my JS and throw it into one if you were so inclined.
Now that I know there are existing hotkeys, maybe I really will expand this into a more general keyboard-based WK navigator.