[GUI Plugin] FanFicFare

[slimcat]

Originally Posted by booster-t

Ummm ... pardon my dumbness, but can someone explain how that tweak works please? Adding it to my personal.ini results in it being red, which means it is incorrect. Help?

Thanks

Stephen

Go to Preferences → Tweaks. In "Change the programs that are run when opening files/URLS" you set the browser you want to open web pages.

For Chrome:
openers_by_scheme = {'http*': '/Applications/Google\\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\\ Chrome %u'}

For Firefox:
openers_by_scheme = {'http*': '/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox %u'}

[Meirless]

Hi,

I think I broke something, because now Chrome and Firefox don't even open the AO3 pages when I start FFF. 😞

This is the section I modified most recently:

Spoiler:

[defaults]

# Dates format (année/mois/jour)
datePublished_format:%%y/%%m/%%d
dateUpdated_format:%%y/%%m/%%d

# --- PRÉFÉRENCES DE TÉLÉCHARGEMENT ---
is_adult: true
include_images: true
jpg_quality: 100
keep_summary_html:true

include_subject_tags:prefix_ships_LIST,prefix_category_LIST,prefix_rating,prefix_status,prefix_wordcount

browser_cache_path:C:\Users\minze\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache\\Cache_Data
browser_cache_path:C:\Users\minze\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ZjwI7Fo4.default\cache2

[archiveofourown.org]
#use_archiveofourown_gay:true
#always_login:true

username: HAHA
password: HAHAHA

use_browser_cache:true
use_browser_cache_only:true
open_pages_in_browser:true
browser_cache_age_limit: 4
slow_down_sleep_time:2

Does anyone have an idea what I might have broken?

Thanks in advance!

[booster-t]

Originally Posted by slimcat

Go to Preferences → Tweaks. In "Change the programs that are run when opening files/URLS" you set the browser you want to open web pages.

For Chrome:
openers_by_scheme = {'http*': '/Applications/Google\\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\\ Chrome %u'}

For Firefox:
openers_by_scheme = {'http*': '/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox %u'}

Thanks! That worked (for now)

Stephen

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by jazzhands

Question: Do I need the whole list of tags under under exclude_metadata_pre: if I already have the top code snippet (include_in_genre: ao3categories) in the file?

If it's easier for you, a Yes or No answer is just fine. No explanation needed.

Maybe? Probably? Restricting genre to only ao3categories will limit what appears in genre and, by default, include_subject_tags (ie Calibre Tags).

Honestly, you're best just trying it and see.

Originally Posted by slimcat

I can't get the browser cache to work on either Firefox or Chrome on Mac, but the failures are different. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Chrome fails with 'no such table: resources'. Firefox opens the AO3 page but never finds it in the cache and eventually returns a 428 (debug logs attached).

Your Chrome case fails (apparently) because of Chrome's new SQL cache. We looked at it in May and supporting it is... problematic. (And apparently it's also changed since.)

But there is a work around:

You can go into Chrome's Experiments flags and change the cache type to 'simple' or 'blockfile'. Enter chrome://flags/#http-cache-custom-backend into the address bar.

Note I've not tested this recently on mac.

I don't have an explanation for Firefox failing. Might be related why some people can only get AO3 /series/ URLs with browser_cache_age_limit:-1 ??

Originally Posted by Meirless

Hi,

I think I broke something, because now Chrome and Firefox don't even open the AO3 pages when I start FFF. 😞

This is the section I modified most recently:

Spoiler:

[defaults]

# Dates format (année/mois/jour)
datePublished_format:%%y/%%m/%%d
dateUpdated_format:%%y/%%m/%%d

# --- PRÉFÉRENCES DE TÉLÉCHARGEMENT ---
is_adult: true
include_images: true
jpg_quality: 100
keep_summary_html:true

include_subject_tags:prefix_ships_LIST,prefix_category_LIST,prefix_rating,prefix_status,prefix_wordcount

browser_cache_path:C:\Users\minze\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache\\Cache_Data
browser_cache_path:C:\Users\minze\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ZjwI7Fo4.default\cache2

[archiveofourown.org]
#use_archiveofourown_gay:true
#always_login:true

username: HAHA
password: HAHAHA

use_browser_cache:true
use_browser_cache_only:true
open_pages_in_browser:true
browser_cache_age_limit: 4
slow_down_sleep_time:2

Does anyone have an idea what I might have broken?

Thanks in advance!

If it's not opening pages in browser, you may have the same issue as some of our mac users--OS forbidding traditional 'open a link from an other app'. See recent posts about openers_by_scheme. Otherwise, I'd check for duplicate [sections] with conflicting commands in personal.ini.

You have a typo in your Chrome cache path (an extra /).

Also, you need to comment out one browser_cache_path or the other. As is, only the last one will be used.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

As for using browser_cache_age_limit: -1 for series -- that appears to be true? But why?

AO3 apparently serves series pages with the header "cache-control: max-age=0, private, must-revalidate", but that sets the expiry time that FFF ignores...

I thought I had this figured out, but apparently not. I was busy today and I'm thinking tired. And I will be busy a lot of tomorrow. So I'll look at on the weekend.

In the meantime, if it works, it works.

FYI, today, I'm not seeing any difference hitting AO3 /series/ URLs with default browser_cache_age_limit:4.0 vs browser_cache_age_limit:-1.

If anyone does still see failure with browser_cache_age_limit:4.0 and success browser_cache_age_limit:-1, I could use to see the debug log for failure and success.

Otherwise, I'm chalking this up to Yet More AO3/Cloudflare weirdness.

[booster-t]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

FYI, today, I'm not seeing any difference hitting AO3 /series/ URLs with default browser_cache_age_limit:4.0 vs browser_cache_age_limit:-1.

If anyone does still see failure with browser_cache_age_limit:4.0 and success browser_cache_age_limit:-1, I could use to see the debug log for failure and success.

Otherwise, I'm chalking this up to Yet More AO3/Cloudflare weirdness.

Hello Jim

Here's the debug log for success with cache -1

This is my personal.ini segment for A03

[archiveofourown.org]
username:XXXXXX
password:XXXXXX
is_adult:true
## use_archive_transformativeworks_org:true
always_login:true
use_archiveofourown_gay:false
slow_down_sleep_time:4
use_browser_cache:true
use_browser_cache_only:true
open_pages_in_browser:true
browser_cache_age_limit:-1



Stephen

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by booster-t

Hello Jim

Here's the debug log for success with cache -1

This is my personal.ini segment for A03

Thanks, but success by itself is not diagnostic.

It's the failure I really need to see. A contrasting success from the same user at near the same time is helpful.

[booster-t]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

Thanks, but success by itself is not diagnostic.

It's the failure I really need to see. A contrasting success from the same user at near the same time is helpful.

OK just for fun, I changed the cache to 4 and chose a new story with all the characteristics the same ... I was still successful. I suspect there is some other factor affecting outcomes. Here's the debug log.

Stephen

[slimcat]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

Your Chrome case fails (apparently) because of Chrome's new SQL cache. We looked at it in May and supporting it is... problematic. (And apparently it's also changed since.)

But there is a work around:

You can go into Chrome's Experiments flags and change the cache type to 'simple' or 'blockfile'. Enter chrome://flags/#http-cache-custom-backend into the address bar.

Note I've not tested this recently on mac.

I don't have an explanation for Firefox failing. Might be related why some people can only get AO3 /series/ URLs with browser_cache_age_limit:-1 ??

Quick update. Changing the cache type to "simple" solved it on Chrome, so that still works on Mac (it's working with browser cache age limit defaults). Thanks for the tip!

For testing purposes, I tried to get Firefox working and couldn't (I tested on a non-series work this time). Setting the browser cache age limit to -1 didn't make a difference. It seems to get stuck on a loop, repeatedly opening the Chapter Index, but not getting any farther. Manually opening the full work didn't make a difference either.

Sidenote: I saw instructions somewhere (maybe reddit?) that your default system browser has to match what you set up for Calibre and FanFicFare and that isn't true, at least on Mac. My default browser is still Firefox, but I have Calibre set to open urls in Chrome and the FFF browser cache set to the Chrome path and it all still works.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by slimcat

Sidenote: I saw instructions somewhere (maybe reddit?) that your default system browser has to match what you set up for Calibre and FanFicFare and that isn't true, at least on Mac. My default browser is still Firefox, but I have Calibre set to open urls in Chrome and the FFF browser cache set to the Chrome path and it all still works.

One acquaintance of mine ran into issues with a different default browser. However, he was opening the pages manually in the default browser to get around CAPTCHA issues and then trying to use data from the default browser's cache when he was was pointing at a different browser's cache. A D'OH! moment.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by slimcat

For testing purposes, I tried to get Firefox working and couldn't (I tested on a non-series work this time). Setting the browser cache age limit to -1 didn't make a difference. It seems to get stuck on a loop, repeatedly opening the Chapter Index, but not getting any farther. Manually opening the full work didn't make a difference either.

Sidenote: I saw instructions somewhere (maybe reddit?) that your default system browser has to match what you set up for Calibre and FanFicFare and that isn't true, at least on Mac. My default browser is still Firefox, but I have Calibre set to open urls in Chrome and the FFF browser cache set to the Chrome path and it all still works.

The firefox problem sounds like wrong cache dir setting--maybe for a different profile, if it did find a firefox cache dir?

Correct. Using openers_by_scheme, you don't have to use the default browser.

[slimcat]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

The firefox problem sounds like wrong cache dir setting--maybe for a different profile, if it did find a firefox cache dir?

I figured out the issue. I only have one profile, but I had Multi-Account Containers enabled and set up for AO3 and that was causing the failure. When I removed AO3 from my container preferences, Firefox caching works.

[JimmXinu]

New Test Version Posted

2026-07-18
- base_otw_adapter: Don't require open_pages_in_browser to skip login.
- base_xenforo2forum_adapter: Look both forward and backward when post not found in reader page. #1395

EDIT: FYI, the XF fix is needed because SB, at least, is now blocking individual /post/ requests from FFF, while reader pages still work. It bodes ill for the future.

[ovillo]

What info does FFF get about individual stories in an anthology? Specifically I'm wondering if it's possible to get completion status per-story, not only for the whole anthology.