I finished prototyping this tonight. I still would like to have it more thoroughly tested for edge cases before inviting people to use it more widely, but can you take a look and see if this is something the admin are comfortable having publicly available? It’s currently in a branch on the github (not in the main link in the OP); you can download it here and then follow the same installation instructions as in the OP. Let me know if there are any additional changes you’d like to see to make it more consistent with the machine generated content policy.
2 Likes
Okay, I’m ready to announce another major version. This version of the extension has a fully enabled Bulk Action mode that allows 30 (or if you increase the per page limit, up to 200) actions to be applied at a time. I’ve also made some bug fixes, minor UI changes, and two major feature additions: you can group buttons into sets and swap between them on the fly, and you can create custom lists and add observations to them to revisit later. So for instance you can make an action that adds observations to a high-level taxon and also adds them to an internal list (saved on your browser, within the extension) to revisit later, then use the URL generator to search within one or more lists at a time.
I haven’t received any feedback in a while so please let me know if you run into issues, or if you use it a lot and it works smoothly. Once I get some clear indication that it’s bug free, and that the iNat staff is okay with it as it stands, I’ll publish it officially on the browser extension stores.
Download it here and then follow the same installation instructions as in the OP.
6 Likes
Amazing work on this update @Megachile. I’ve been using version one of this plugin almost every day, and with this update I might have to stop that, if only because I’ll have finished everything I care to use it for. I’ll have to actually decide what taxon I’m going to tackle next after finishing up with my favorite genus of leafhopper.
As for general feedback, everything about this version feels a lot smoother after using the old version for so long. The bulk update is extremely convenient, straightforward, and with enough guardrails that I don’t think I could accidentally misuse it. Thank you for making this. It has turned what I considered to be a tedious process into something that actually feels worth doing. I hope that the iNat staff agree with allowing the use of your project.
Haven’t checked out the custom lists yet, but I’m sure that’ll be very helpful for some things I have planned for the future. Keep up the good work :)
4 Likes
Just downloaded it and had the same error saying that I needed Manifest Version 2 but realized there no issue lol. On first sight, I love it so far and will edit this comment when I get a better idea of the extension and after I use it more. Thank you for creating this extension @Megachile!
I haven’t read the whole thread, and this tool looks pretty cool, but it seems potentially problematic to change observation fields without seeing their contents first. Wouldn’t this tool be better restricted to observations that lack fields? I wouldn’t want my carefully entered observation fields to be overwritten by someone going through doing batches in Identify. Sometimes there is information in Notes or in additional photos that isn’t clear from the first photo.
6 Likes
I agree - I don’t think it’s “fair” to override observation field data without giving a legit look to the full context of the observation.
4 Likes
@deboas @cthawley I feel like that’s only relevant if you want to use to tool explicitly for adding things into an observational field, and I doubt anyone would go so far as to download this plugin and use it for that without knowing what they’re doing.
Just to clarify in case there’s some miscommunication, using the tool to add an ID/annotation will not just wipe all observational fields. It’s only if you intentionally set up one of your hotkeys to mess with an observational field that that single observational field will be modified (and only if that observer has the setting enabled allowing other people to do so). This isn’t really something you could do accidentally, so anyone doing so is doing so intentionally. And anyone intentionally adding that into their workflow probably knows what they’re looking for/can make sure to only edit intended observations after manually reviewing them. The plugin also warns you what you’re doing before you edit anything (in a batch), tells you what it’s doing as it’s editing (it takes a couple of seconds per observation in a batch) and confirms what you have done after the fact (again only with the batch edit) so even if someone were to select the wrong shortcut for a batch edit, they would have plenty of chances to catch themselves. Furthermore, you must actually open each observation in the identify page to use a shortcut individually, so anyone taking this approach could see all images/existing annotations/obs fields before making their update.
I admit it could be a problem if someone was doing at maliciously, but anyone with that level of hate for iNat can probably figure out a better way to mess with the website than downloading this obscure plugin off of a relatively small thread on the forum.
I did initially build it so that it would skip over any OFs with existing values but got frustrated with that limitation while using it myself and removed it. I’ll think about better ways to implement a “safety” so that it’s possible to overwrite under certain circumstances but flag the overwriting in some way. Fwiw if you undo the OF action it will restore the previous value.
4 Likes
I just did that, and after the final step I get a toast telling me that the manifest is corrupt.
Environment: MacOs Ventura 13.7
Firefox 131.0 (64-bit)
When navigating to the Downloads folder where the expanded folder sits, all items are greyed out because the filetype defaults to “add-ons”. After switching over to “all files”, they become clickable. Clicking on manifest.json yields that error.
Just tried this for the first time and it’s working great! I do lots of Lepidoptera IDs, but I’ve not spent the time to annotate much of anything. By making a few buttons for common species in various life stages, I’ve just replaced clicking “agree” for those species with clicking the appropriate button, which adds the same ID, but also adds several annotations. So not necessarily speeding up the workflow I’ve been doing, but getting a lot more out of each click. Thanks for making this!
6 Likes
I had the same problem (except I’m running Windows 10). If I try to add the .json file (after adjusting the dialogue because that’s not one of the file types it is looking for), I get the same error message. If I try to add it from the .zip file (which is one ofthe file types it expects), it say it’s not verified.
1 Like
@Megachile I have the same message here using Windows 11 and Firefox 131.0.4 (64 bit).
Also, some of the presets seem to be saved even though Firefox uninstalls the addon when I close the browser. At least when I reload the addon, a few of my presets return. Why only some? I can’t say.
@Megachile I’ve been using your great tool for some time now to add high level IDs and annotations, but today it abandoned me and I get these messages:
I’ve tried deleting and reinstalling, but nothing works. Any ideas?
Update a few days later: I’ve tried updating Chrome, downloading the extension again and reinstalling, cancelling cookies and cache… but nothing works. I’m now using it in Edge which works fine, but hope I can make it work again in Chrome sooner or later 
.
Update 2: Without me doing anything new, it’s just started working again in Chrome. All well and good… but would love to know what the problem might have been so I can resolve it quickly if it ever happens again.
I love this tool to pieces! But I have one request for an improvement. Currently, if I sort a set A-Z, switch to a different set, and then back to the same one, the order will have reverted to default Oldest-Newest again. Please fix this…
1 Like
Can this tool be used when adding observations? I skimmed the thread, but didn’t see anything. It would be lovely if after adding a couple groups of 20+ observations, I didn’t have to go back and open each observation separately to add annotations.
Not as it is currently built, no. I don’t know what kinds of things would be possible in the desktop observation importer and don’t really have time to find out now. That’s a project for someone else to take up I guess :o
1 Like
This should be fixed now in the bulk action branch (and custom button orders are saved so you can go back to them after using the alphabetical/time based orders too). Thanks for flagging this!
I implemented a new system to handle this over the weekend. Right now the Bulk Action version has a safety mode that is on by default and prevents you from overwriting OF values at all. If that safety is turned off, it will present you with a list of any existing OF values that will be overwritten by your bulk action before proceeding, and flag the specific observations for inspection/deselection. The Undo button still works to restore original values as well.
5 Likes
Thanks, sounds like a good solution!
1 Like
Please let me know if you encounter any issues with it as you start using it!
1 Like