LJLogin logged-in-account switcher in need of TLC

[arcanetrivia]

This is a bit of a long shot, but I am hoping that somewhere in the influx of fresh blood from Tumblr there may be someone with the knowhow and the resources to do something about this.

Once upon a time slarti wrote a Firefox extension called ljlogin that let you switch between multiple LJ accounts on the fly without having to manually log out and log in. Unfortunately, while it used to work on Dreamwidth as well for a while, some change to the login specs on LJ or DW or both somewhere along the line meant that it broke some years ago. Even for use on LJ it has been officially defunct for more than two years, and defunct in a practical sense for more like three, because it was never updated to newer extension signing requirements. If you are a roleplayer who has a lot of journal accounts, it's an invaluable tool for painless switching between them. (In my case I just have two, but it was still very handy.)

The code is open source and slarti gave their blessing to someone picking it up and carrying on (with no support from them, however). Is there anyone out there who might like to undertake the task? (Ideally to make it work on both sites again, and not just DW.)


(unrelated: while browsing the comm tags to see if any would apply to this post, I noticed there are four variations of "Yuri!!! on Ice" with different numbers of exclamation points in different places. Mod might want to engage in some tag merging there.)

Comments

[merelydovely]

Pinged tenlittlebullets as someone who might know more about next steps..

[tenlittlebullets]

I haven't developed browser extensions before, but here's roughly what you'd need to tackle:

(Edit: Never mind, ninja'd by texelations while I was down a research hole.)

1. The login changes that broke the extension for LJ, DW, or both.
- If the problem was the actual login part, this is the part of the source code you'd want to start with for troubleshooting. Potential culprits: Change in form-submit URL, change in how to create the password-derived secret you send over, an additional security requirement like a CSRF token, something else I haven't thought of off the top of my head.
- If the issue was in recognizing when you were logged in and who you were logged in as, it was probably a change in what cookies the site sets and what information is encoded in them.
- If the issue was coordination with Firefox's password manager (which, in the source code, looks fiddly, fragile, and at the mercy of changes in browser behavior)..... well, I have good and bad news for you.

2. You'll have to rewrite it using Firefox's new add-on toolkit. The old one used XUL, the new one can only use the WebExtensions API, there's a handy guide for porting from one to the other... aaaand it helpfully specifies that there is no WebExtensions equivalent to the nsILoginManager the old version used to access Firefox's saved passwords. (Yeah, I'm going to vote that locking this down was a smart decision on Mozilla's part.) This means you'll have to find a different way to get and store the account passwords. Which could just mean asking the user for them and working out a secure way for the extension to save them in its own stored data.

3. The other change in how Firefox handles extensions is that regular users can only install ones that are listed in the official add-on catalogue. To get it listed, you'll need to get Mozilla to review and sign it. This isn't like Tumblr's Apple Store woes--they're mostly looking for malicious code and spyware. There is, however, a chance that you'll get dinged on best practices or subjected to extra scrutiny because you're handling passwords. Not insurmountable, more like a place I could see a rookie add-on developer getting discouraged.

If that's you and you want to take a crack at it anyway, don't be afraid to rope in third-party help and community support to get over the finish line. Lots of people who don't have time/resources to do the whole thing are happy to help you untangle specific knots.

[arcanetrivia]

This means you'll have to find a different way to get and store the account passwords. Which could just mean asking the user for them and working out a secure way for the extension to save them in its own stored data.

FWIW, LJLogin asked you to enter the password, it didn't try to fetch it from Firefox's store. (At least, I assume it didn't; I didn't have my browser store passwords in the first place, so I know the extension was at least capable of simply asking the user.)

[merelydovely]

Thanks so much for doing all this research!!!

[rp_help]

The modern extension is LJ Juggler and can be found for Firefox and for Chrome.

[arcanetrivia]

Oh my! I had no idea there was a current alternative! Thank you. Now, the challenge is to see if it will run in Pale Moon (which isn't vanilla Firefox)...

[rp_help]

Incidentally, if you're wanting to run Juggler because you want to RP on DW, let me know. RP is actually DW's largest user base, or was until the last week.

[arcanetrivia]

No, I just want to switch between my personal and fandom journals.

[arethinn]

Dangit, WebExtension (of course), which Pale Moon doesn't support. Also, the reviews are not encouraging - seems like something got broken a couple of years ago and you can't add new accounts to it, which isn't going to help a lot for a first time setup? Are you using it without trouble?

[texelations]

I've never had a lick of trouble with it. I use Chrome and Vivaldi with it and have never experienced an issue (I've been using it for about 7 years, though I only started using Vivaldi this past summer).

[arcanetrivia]

I wonder if whoever was porting it to Firefox stopped doing that, since it hasn't been updated there in a couple of years.

[arcanetrivia]

D'oh, that was me. (See, account switching is handy...)

[larissa]

I haven't used ljlogin/juggler in years so I don't remember exactly how it worked, but Firefox has a native add-on (Multi-Account Containers) that does basically the same thing. I have a couple different accounts open in different tabs in the same window, it's very handy.

[arcanetrivia]

Hmm, I'm not sure if this is something Pale Moon supports, but I can look into it.

[arcanetrivia]

The about:config preferences mentioned at the bottom of the page don't exist in Pale Moon, so I guess that the code that handles that function in Firefox was among the stuff that ended up on the cutting room floor in forking Firefox off into Pale Moon. mrf. thanks for the suggestion, though.

[alassenya]

I can't help you with login tools, but I routinely log on to different accounts at the same time with different browsers. Firefox, PaleMoon, Chrome and even the lowly Edge can be used at the same time (but make sure you clear cache and cookies at the end of each session). I have never had much luck with Opera but that's a fifth option.

[arcanetrivia]

I do already perforce use a second browser for some things on Tumblr since Xkit doesn't support Pale Moon (my primary browser), but it's a pain in the rear and a tool like this lets you avoid having to do so. What I have been using for a while now is an extension called CookieSwap that swaps entire profiles' worth of cookies on the fly, but it is hard to keep everything else I want to stay logged into perfectly synchronized between the two (one that has me logged in to LJ and DW as arethinn and one as shyfoxling).