IMacros for FF

[stuckling1]

I've quit Facebook for lent, and during this time a few of my friends decided to spam my Wall with pointless posts like "Here's Another Annoying Notification" etc. Just for laughs.

Whilst searching for a tool to help me clean this up, by mass-deleting the posts, I came across a few references to an automation addon called IMacros.
It's mentioned in this blog post and has it's official blurb on the Mozilla addons site

At first reading and after a bit of googling it looks fairly good - suited to my requirement, hopefully quite easy too.

But before I install it, has anyone got any thoughts/ideas/experience with it?

Kind regards, Stuckling1

[HansV]

Sorry, Stuckling1! Apparently nobody here has used this add-on...

[Bigaldoc]

Whilst searching for a tool to help me clean this up, by mass-deleting the posts, I came across a few references to an automation addon called IMacros.

I'm not familiar with that addon either but it may be possible that some other "run of the mill" macro program might serve the purpose and have broader benefits than just Firefox.

Do you mind describing if you can a sample scenario in which you might want to delete more than one entry and what you would do manually to accomplish the task? I've never come across a need for multiple deletes so I'm wondering what movements and keystrokes you would encounter.

The reason I ask is that there are more than one "keystroke emitting" programs around and maybe a Fx addon isn't necessary.

Of course, you could always try the one you asked about and delete it if it doesn't work well.

[stuckling1]

Thanks for your thoughts

what you would do manually to accomplish the task?

I don't know how familiar you are with Facebook, but it would just be a case of clicking the 'Older Posts' link at the bottom of the page, waiting for older posts to load, repeating until all the posts are loaded, then clicking the 'Delete Post', 'Confirm' links on each post.

remove posts.jpg

Tedious and timeconsuming to do by hand!

I'll have a look around for some other macro programs, but I think I'll give this addon a go - it can always be removed relatively easy if it's rubbish.

Will post my experiences on here :)

[jscher2000]

Users have created a vast library of Greasemonkey userscripts for Facebook. I think the ones described as "wall cleaners" might be relevant. I haven't tried any myself, and the userscripts.org site is having problems with excess traffic, but you might take a look:

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Au ... ll+cleaner" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Greasemonkey add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... asemonkey/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Bigaldoc]

... but it would just be a case of clicking the 'Older Posts' link at the bottom of the page, waiting for older posts to load, repeating until all the posts are loaded, then clicking the 'Delete Post', 'Confirm' links on each post.

Yes, I use Facebook on a daily basis and I usually delete them as they show up, marking them as spam as well. So, I don't ever have any multitude of 'em to deal with.

Please DO keep us posted how you get on with that addon.

[stuckling1]

Users have created a vast library of Greasemonkey userscripts for Facebook

I know, I'm a big fan of Greasemonkey!! I use Better Facebook combined with Unf***Facebook to remove rubbish from the news feeds and improve general usability. I had a trawl around userscripts.org in search of wall-cleaners, but most of them seem to focus on removing one's own recent activity, rather than all the posts in a certain time range.

Will give both greasemonkey and IMacros a try, and relay results.

[stuckling1]

oh and I might also make use of the "Download My Data" feature in case it all goes wrong!

Thanks all for your thoughts

[Bigaldoc]

oh and I might also make use of the "Download My Data" feature in case it all goes wrong!

Prompted by this post and since I've never tried that, I did.

My Facebook account, although two years old, has only been active for 13 months. The download seems to be complete, including all my Wall postings since day one. It's usable from an Index HTML file and includes Wall, Photos, Notes and Messages.

In my case, the unzipped data is less than 100 MB which isn't bad in this day and age. It did take 2-3 hours before I got the email telling me it was ready to download. Have fun.

[stuckling1]

Hi guys.

'ppologies for the slow response, I've been upgrading to FF4, giving it the Goldilocks treatment.

Anyway, I've gotten back to Imacros and my original problem.

1. Addon installed easy peasy.
2. Fired it up and had a play with some of the demo macros, it seems to be quite powerful with the right instructions. I made it fill a few simple forms in for me using a built in function.
3. Then I set about recording a macro myself. I started with what I thought would be a simpler task - marking every track in the top 25 on my Last.fm with a 'Love' symbol. I reasoned this would be easy to automate as it's only one click per event. Anyway I set Imacros recording, 'loved' the first two tracks on the page. It produced this macro -

Code: Select all

VERSION BUILD=7200328 RECORDER=FX
TAB T=1
URL GOTO=http://www.last.fm/user/MrMathieson
TAG POS=143 TYPE=SPAN ATTR=*
TAG POS=1 TYPE=A ATTR=TXT:Love<SP>this<SP>track
TAG POS=145 TYPE=SPAN ATTR=*
TAG POS=1 TYPE=A ATTR=TXT:Love<SP>this<SP>track

The next stage I met was adding the general case - clicking the (n+1)th span and loving that.
this I did by changing the TAG POS=145 to TAG POS=R2 - which makes Imacros go back to the previous-but-one tag, and add one. Then I ran the macro on Loop mode 8 times.
4. Hey presto, all 25 tracks are loved.

Spoiler

well okay it was a bit harder than that, it took me several attempts and a good trawl through the documentation to get something that worked, but hey. It's all a learning curve!

Now going back to the original problem, I didnt fancy wrestling with both Imacros and Fb 150 times.. So I lifted the code from here (the orginal blog where I learnt about Imacros) as a starting point.

I ran it, and.... well, it worked... But it started deleting EVERYTHING I've ever posted! I swiftly stopped it and am now scratching my head as to how to place constraints on the timeframe from which it removes posts.
So far no luck...

Kind regards to all the other posters in this thread too!

stuckling1