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bigwoof · 06-13-2021, 11:50 PM

Thanks Jim for the cache feature. It works really well!!

Finally got round to using it this past weekend as the aggressive cloudflare setting FFF is using seems to be here to stay...

some "tips" that might help others

1. if using email notifications from FFF to announce new chapters / books of subscribed stories/authors/communities, it's useful to label all messages from bot@fanfiction.net with a special tag (in gmail, you just setup a rule). that way you can easily find all the messages that need special handling (over others from say AO3 that don't)

2. Hotkeys are your friends in chrome. what I do is go to my special label (my label is
called process) and then click the last new email, control click on all the links to load the new chapter in a new background tab and then use the previous message button and quickly finish loading up all the new emails.

After all new emails are done, click on the label again, select all emails, right click and mark them as unread and right click again and remove the label. now you can just use the "get story urls from email" feature in FanficFare to process all the updated and new stories at one go. but before starting the FanFicFare process, you should do the following bit below first

After clearing the labels in the gmail tab, I then switch to the first opened tab (with an updated FFF story pointing to the latest chapter as the email notification link sends you there by default) with "Control-Tab" (hotkey to switch to next tab to the right in Chrome) and then put the mouse where the chapter selector is, click on it and select first page (need to reload the first and last page in the cache). then control-tab, click (no need to move the mouse as the chapter selector is in the same place for all stories), and repeat for all tabs.

takes 5 mins to clear about 20-30 new stories. if a story has more than one new chapter, additional clicking is needed.

exception is emails from FFF communities pointing out new stories added to the community. for those emails, the link to the story is not the top link (that links to the community link). you need to scroll down and click the 2nd link.

3. The WebToEpub Chrome plugin is super useful if you want to load up a whole story (new story or something that just broke due to reasons). click on pack epub to load all pages. if it hangs, you need to reload any FFF page and wait for the captcha to pass. WebToEpub will eventually resume but the page it was stuck on might have an error and need to be reloaded.

4. remember to click on the photo on the first page of a new story if you want the image in the epub (and set the appropriate use image setting in personal.ini).

5. A somewhat common FFF error occurs when a story has a new chapter (say 40) and you can open chapter 40 in the browser but when you select chapter 1, chapter 1 loads and shows only 39 chapters. i.e. the first chapter is not updated. You need to wait until the first chapter is updated (reload chapter 1 some time later) before the story can be updated properly.

Hope this helps... also, don't be like me and spend 15 mins wondering why the cache was not working only to realise the cache was not being saved due to disk space issues.. oops!

06-13-2021, 11:50 PM	#6024
bigwoof Connoisseur Posts: 88 Karma: 18 Join Date: Jun 2020 Device: Boox Note Air3, don't use my kindle anymore	Thanks for implementing the Cache feature Jim! Thanks Jim for the cache feature. It works really well!! Finally got round to using it this past weekend as the aggressive cloudflare setting FFF is using seems to be here to stay... some "tips" that might help others 1. if using email notifications from FFF to announce new chapters / books of subscribed stories/authors/communities, it's useful to label all messages from bot@fanfiction.net with a special tag (in gmail, you just setup a rule). that way you can easily find all the messages that need special handling (over others from say AO3 that don't) 2. Hotkeys are your friends in chrome. what I do is go to my special label (my label is called process) and then click the last new email, control click on all the links to load the new chapter in a new background tab and then use the previous message button and quickly finish loading up all the new emails. After all new emails are done, click on the label again, select all emails, right click and mark them as unread and right click again and remove the label. now you can just use the "get story urls from email" feature in FanficFare to process all the updated and new stories at one go. but before starting the FanFicFare process, you should do the following bit below first After clearing the labels in the gmail tab, I then switch to the first opened tab (with an updated FFF story pointing to the latest chapter as the email notification link sends you there by default) with "Control-Tab" (hotkey to switch to next tab to the right in Chrome) and then put the mouse where the chapter selector is, click on it and select first page (need to reload the first and last page in the cache). then control-tab, click (no need to move the mouse as the chapter selector is in the same place for all stories), and repeat for all tabs. takes 5 mins to clear about 20-30 new stories. if a story has more than one new chapter, additional clicking is needed. exception is emails from FFF communities pointing out new stories added to the community. for those emails, the link to the story is not the top link (that links to the community link). you need to scroll down and click the 2nd link. 3. The WebToEpub Chrome plugin is super useful if you want to load up a whole story (new story or something that just broke due to reasons). click on pack epub to load all pages. if it hangs, you need to reload any FFF page and wait for the captcha to pass. WebToEpub will eventually resume but the page it was stuck on might have an error and need to be reloaded. 4. remember to click on the photo on the first page of a new story if you want the image in the epub (and set the appropriate use image setting in personal.ini). 5. A somewhat common FFF error occurs when a story has a new chapter (say 40) and you can open chapter 40 in the browser but when you select chapter 1, chapter 1 loads and shows only 39 chapters. i.e. the first chapter is not updated. You need to wait until the first chapter is updated (reload chapter 1 some time later) before the story can be updated properly. Hope this helps... also, don't be like me and spend 15 mins wondering why the cache was not working only to realise the cache was not being saved due to disk space issues.. oops! Last edited by bigwoof; 06-14-2021 at 08:12 PM.