TrueAchievements is a statistics-centric website that is part of the Xbox Community Developer Program, and has also released a companion app for the Xbox One. For the record, I am not affiliated with either Xbox or TrueAchievements in any way.
As an avid user of the site, a great many small things tended to irk me as I ran across the same little niggling problems each and every day. Also, sometimes I just get bored and tinker with things for no good reason. I like to think of this script as a feature stopgap, since I have the free time and design mobility to create features much faster than the site developers can.
Using TA's site settings page, you can turn on or off each thing this script does. Since the features are in various stages of experimentation most of the time, you might end up turning one or two off from time to time.
If you've requests or bugs to report, you can bother me anywhere you know me from. Reddit DMs, TrueAchievements PMs, Skype, etc. Some contact forms are listed specifically on my GreasyFork userpage.
This script does a number of things, including:
- reformatting dates. TrueAchievements has a bad habit of using umpteen different date formats, and sometimes they all collide on the same page. You can reconfigure the date output formats using the token format of PHP's date function, and the same information is available in a help box on TA's site settings page.
- allows spoilers to be collapsed again. TA's current spoiler tag lets you expand the spoiler but not collapse it afterward. A really simple fix is put in place by this script that leaves the spoiler header on the page to be clicked again to collapse the spoiler content.
- display video links. I make use of a very granular request blocking browser addon called uMatrix which, among other things, blocks out third party scripting. Others like myself who use e.g. NoScript may run into the same problem of embedded videos just being a blank white box and would be unwilling to let it run on TrueAchievements domain. This addition simply displays the YouTube link to the video so content-hostile browsers like me can view it first-party on YouTube sans the tracking cookies etc.
- feed permalinks. A small tag icon will appear on the right side of a friend feed comments with a copy-able link directly to that post.
- on content round up posts, collapses the space between tables and following spoilers. The spoiler that follows a table on these posts is information about the table directly above, so this small change saves a lot of vertical space and makes it a lot more skim-friendly removing extraneous whitespace.
- XBox Sales page improvements, including:
- an icon at the end of each row to hide it. I use these to eliminate potential purchases while reviewing the sales;
- replacing the information icons in the price column with a background color. The benefit of this is that the color tells you what you need to know at a glance instead of hovering over every single one. Blue is a sale exclusive to Gold members, yellow is a free Games with Gold game, and red is a price that varies based on region;
- compacting the row's vertical size when there are more than 25 items in the table;
- sorting the table by every column header without refreshing the page.
- filtering and sorting achievements without refreshing the page. This is a huge benefit and time saver for anyone who uses sorting or achievement flag filtering at all. A NOT filter is also added to the achievement flags.
- makes the red warning box about unobtainable/discontinued achievements clickable to automatically show those achievements. A small thing, but doesn't require extra clicks to discover what they are.
- solution list improvements:
- I don't know about anyone else, but I check my solution list at least once a day for vote changes to quickly determine if a solution may need refining or updating. This option adds a series of checkboxes to quickly filter for solutions with votes in the last week, solutions with a negative vote ratio (more negatives than positives), or solutions with no votes at all.
- this page can be sorted by clicking the table headers as well.
- a lot of session improvements, including:
- changing the links on gamertags to compare your achievements instead of sending you to just that user's achievement list;
- hides user statuses (these are of no consequence in a session and just take up space in the table);
- displays an achievement matrix if you are in the session and there is more than one achievement listed. Use the help icon on the top of the matrix while on a session page to learn more about it.
- site settings improvements, including:
- filtering the available options by a search query. Let's face it, this page is a gargantuan mess of options and anything that helps you find what you need is a welcome change;
- adds a second Save button to the top of the page.
- improve the chatroom. Largely aesthetic changes, but the biggest ones make the chatroom fit all on the same page without scrolling and move all the little action icons to the same spot on the page.
- sorting solutions. If there is more than one solution for an achievement, a dropdown will appear to sort them by your selection. Sort options include:
- positive vote ratio, the percentage of the total votes that are positive;
- total positive votes, most positives at the top regardless of negative vote count;
- oldest, the solutions posted first;
- newest, the solutions posted or edited most recently;
- author's total TA score;
- author's TA score for that game;
- achievement won date.
- walkthrough bookmarks. Click a paragraph in a walkthrough to save a bookmark for later, then simply click the bookmark icon next to the page title to jump to it. You can also visit TA's walkthrough hub to see a list of all walkthrough bookmarks you have saved and jump right to them.
- "Show all" button on table pagination. You can display the entire contents of the table at once from any page. This will prompt you to make sure it's what you want if there's more than a couple of pages, because this feature will work on a table of any size.
- Block forum posts by user. Click the "Hide all posts" button below their gamertag and you won't see anything they post any more. This also covers text posted by blocked users that is quoted by others.
Mildly broken/experimenting:
- fixing the hash-link for solution comments.
Coming soon:
- nothing planned. Suggest something!
