https://github.com/jmpinney/compost

a firefox extension for checking link rot
https://github.com/jmpinney/compost

extensions firefox linkrot

Last synced: 3 months ago
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a firefox extension for checking link rot

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/jmpinney/compost
• Owner: jmpinney
• License: mpl-2.0
• Created: 2024-07-25T22:47:04.000Z (5 months ago)
• Default Branch: main
• Last Pushed: 2024-07-26T20:28:43.000Z (5 months ago)
• Last Synced: 2024-07-27T01:28:43.097Z (5 months ago)
• Topics: extensions, firefox, linkrot
• Language: JavaScript
• Homepage:
• Size: 57.6 KB
• Stars: 0
• Watchers: 2
• Forks: 0
• Open Issues: 0
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README.md
  • License: LICENSE

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README

        
# compost

 a firefox extension for checking link rot

![compost](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/e332c11c-af37-4e94-abaa-d812b0a26d5c)

 # What does it do?

I'm sick of clicking links and hitting 404 pages, home page redirects or sites that just don't exist anymore. Link rot sucks, and i want a way to know if a link is broken before I click it. This extension counts the number of links present on a webpage and checks each link to see if it returns an HTML status code error. If it does, it counts it as a broken link and displays it as broken.

Link rot will become more and more pervasive as time goes on. [Pew Research](https://www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/2024/05/17/when-online-content-disappears/) says that 38% of webpages available in 2013 are no longer accesible in 2024. That sucks! 

# Steps to load the extension:

1. Download folder

2. Load the Extension: Go to about:debugging in Firefox, click "This Firefox" or "This Nightly", then "Load Temporary Add-on", and select the manifest.json file from the extensions directory.

3. To detect broken links, click the extension on the toolbar. 

# Issues

This has some rough edges and a couple issues I'm working through:

- Extremely slow on sites with more than a few hundred links

- Doesn't persist list of broken links when popup is closed and reopened

- Ugly UI is ugly

- Doesn't run automatically

- Need to figure out CORS... i'm a system engineer, not a web developer, so this is a new concept to me

Microsoft redirects all their links... go figure. Will have to figure out how to detect that while still detecting homepage redirects for missing pages. 

- ![image](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/1676ed04-319f-48bc-bfaf-b467526f46e2)

All these links are actually broken...home page redirect or 404 page. Working as expected.

- 

# Planned Features

- When a site is broken, add toggle to report the status code instead of just "broken"

- Better UI and accessibility features

- Upload to firefox extensions store

- Automatically run on page load instead of manually initiating the scan

# Features planned if i turn my life around and stop procrastinating 

- Highlighting broken links on the webpage

- Some kind of link rot reporting mechanism/database

- Automatically fetch archive.org versions and substitute broken links