Hey!
I’ve always wanted certain small QoL features on the iNat website that would likely not be added because they are more tended towards power users…
Introducing LnLcFlx’ iNaturalist Tweaks! This is my browser extension, and it just got accepted in the Firefox store. Mobile (Firefox for Android) is also supported (for the crazy people like me, who use the website on their phone). I will not submit it to the Chrome store for reasons explained in the following link, but you may install it in Chrome manually.
Note, this is my first JS project, and there will be some bugs. It is also very much WIP, and I’m planning to add many more useful and funny little features.
Now some screenshots to see what it’s about:
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show the observations that are connected via observation fields such as
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embed videos/websites linked in observation fields
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show EXIF info about a photo right inside the observation image picker (for those who love to stalk other people’s gear). It even supports flash detection, the Lens filter observation field and showing the filename (the latter is only possible for your own observations)
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fetch the German conservation status directly from the authority (because most statuses are missing)
If there is interest and a public API (or at least a scrapable website) I can also add direct fetches of other red lists.
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all features can be turned off/on individually in the extension settings
Ideas are welcome, but note that I do not have much time and this is mostly a hobby utility that I created to serve my own needs. The source code is freely available here. For bugs/feature requests just open an issue there (or write it here alternatively).
- Could this be useful to you?
- yes on Firefox
- yes on Chrome (also Edge, etc.)
- yes on Safari
- yes on mobile
- no
Best wishes,
LnLcFlx
Oh, I see I didn’t quite understand polls here: The “Could this be useful to you?” is supposed to be the heading of the poll.
I’ll look into supporting Chrome and Safari then.
Now supports Chrome (but not on the store)!
I don’t have Windows, so I can’t test if it works on Edge as well.
Feedback for other Chrome based browsers welcomed.
I actually love the ‘spy on equipment’ feature. That’s so smart! :D
I stoped looking at that info because it always destroys me to see how much those cameras cost but I may actually steal that idea!
(I use edge, will check if it works if you want)
Thanks :) If there was only an API endpoint to get the metadata…
I would compile the top 10 most used camera setups on iNat (maybe even per groups e.g. birds vs macro separately). My bank account would not survive the jealousy…
If you could test real quick on Edge, it would be great! I just googled its edge://extensions instead of chrome://extensions, unlike in my README claims.
I tested this on Chrome for Mac and Edge for Mac and it appears to install and work fine. Both browsers reported one error:
‘background.scripts’ requires manifest version of 2 or lower.
Thanks for the feedback, thats’ great!
The error is expected, but has no negative effect: Firefox and Chrome require different field in their manifest.json that are not compatible and Chrome complains about the presence of the field only needed for FireFox. It’s just easier for me to have one manifest.json for both and that’s why the FireFox field is also in the Chrome extension even though it has no effect.
I noticed what appears to be a slight bug. With the extension turned on, the Identify page does not dim/gray out observations that I have already reviewed. This happens even when I uncheck “Apply changes to Identify page” in the extension settings. I’ve trained myself to use the gray tiles to navigate among observations I’m identifying, and this makes that process difficult.
If I turn the extension off, then the Identify page shows paler versions of the thumbnails for those observations that I have reviewed.
This is intended. I often go through already reviewed observations and am annoyed be the greyed out tiles. Will add a toggle (by default off) in the settings to enable this.
as a follow-up to a related Forum topic (see: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/we-could-use-a-tool-to-highlight-different-dates-between-observations-and-image-exif-data/78592/14
and see: cthawley and…“it would probably be more useful to show the specific dates and times (e.g., so users can easily assess whether the image was altered to be in the CNC “window” or any other specific date/time range)”
Could that discovery be a part of the plug-in (or just the time difference e.g., seconds/minutes) ?
thanks,
The time difference is already displayed for each picture on the observation page.
Do you want this to also be visible on the Explore page, to identify outliers more quickly (i.e. without having to open all observations)?
However, I think for the purpose of checking for outliers in the CNC, a dedicated tool that goes through all CNC observations and only displays those outside the period, would be more useful.
(The problem with this approach is the lack of an API endpoint for EXIF data and fetching the EXIF data in my plugin is only possible because it hooks into the browser session, which allows access and parsing the HTML of the photo details page without any bot Cloudflare problems and similar.)
In v0.0.17, this should now be fixed.
Thanks for making that change so quickly. I downloaded the new version and was able to disable/enable the grayed-out observation tiles on the Identify page.
thanks. And apologies for not articulating my inquiry better in the first post above. So, in effect, I was asking about the plugin and the ability to extract the actual (authentic) date observed of an image submitted in order to corroborate the date supplied by the observer on an image in question. That is, there is no metadata for an image/observation and the image needs deeper review for data quality. There is a “date observed” and “date submitted” but added in by the observer. In summary, could the plugin verify that information and objectively check on the accuracy?
I have to say, I still don’t get exactly what you are proposing:
The accuracy of the user inputted date can be verified from looking at the computed time difference to the EXIF date. This difference is already displayed by the extension.
Is your point that you want
- to see the absolute EXIF date?
- the time difference just in a different spot on the observation page?
- this info already visible in the observations grid in the explore or identify tab?
Also keep in mind that your strategy only works reliably for phone pictures, since cameras without automatic time sync are often quite off.
{probably} this
(and again thanks for the follow-up).
Done. But I decided against absolute time and it’s easier to comprehend a time difference. It now shows minimum and maximum differences between EXIF and observation time under the latter
thank you for the follow-up. And responding with my inquiry.
I appreciate your time and dedication to helping to create better tools for data quality in iNaturalist.
Scott
Sure :) Forgot a screenshot:
Here is an example of one of my old observations involving pictures taken on different cameras with out-of-sync times.
I think this is good enough to spot discrepancies for the CNC.
In the rare case, where a suspicious observation has been found, one can still click the little “i” on a photo to check the absolute time and date in the EXIF data.
Also relevant for CNC: I’m releasing today a “potential duplicates” feature that renders in the “More from {username}” section at the bottom of an observation page.
It is supposed to show observations nearby (with configurable accuracy) on the same day of the same taxon (or higher matching taxa like ssp. but not lower).
