eBird reviewer utilities—browser extension

Kent Fiala

Version 1.1.2, released 25 November 2022

Link to Firefox extension—Click link then “Add to Firefox”

Link to Chrome extension—Click link then “Add to Chrome”

Link to Edge extension—Click link then “Get”

This browser extension provides five enhancements for the traditional review screen. I wrote the extension for my own use, but am now sharing it. Note that it is usable only by eBird reviewers.

The extension works on Firefox and Chrome, desktop or laptop. I'm sorry I am not equipped to make extensions for Apple products. I'm also sorry that neither Firefox nor Chrome have much support for extensions on mobile devices.

To install in your browser, just click the appropriate link above.

The figure at the bottom of this page identifies the features provided by the extension.

Feature descriptions:

• Recall. Have you ever updated a record and then immediately realized you should have done something differently? It's a real nuisance to get back to that now-closed record, and the more so if you accidentally updated multiple records. The “Recall” feature, for those “oops” moments, recalls links to the last record(s) that you updated (in traditional review, not quick review). Click on the “Recall” hyperlink to display a line containing a clickable link to the last record(s). Clicking “Recall” a second time hides this line again.

  Pro tip: if you are so unlucky as to need to correct a set of multiple records, keep in mind that as soon as you correct one, it becomes the recently updated record. To avoid losing track of your list, keep the window with the original list open and do all your work in separate windows.

• Toggle deferred. When you have a lot of deferred records, it's nice to be able to selectively see only deferred, or only not-deferred records. Repeatedly clicking the “Toggle deferred ” hyperlink cycles through displaying all records, only non-deferred records, or only deferred records. Note: this only applies to records that are already displayed on the current page. If you have observations distributed over multiple pages, it will not bring in records that are on another page. You can get a similar result by sorting on status, but toggling is so much faster, and doesn't require re-sorting after. However, sorting may be preferable when you have multiple pages.

  Note: the “select all” checkbox is disabled when some records are hidden. This is because “select all” would operate on hidden as well as displayed records, which would lead to confusion and errors.

• Download CSV. Clicking this hyperlink downloads the displayed queue or search result in CSV format. The downloaded CSV file also has an added column named "Day of Year" that contains the month and day without the year. There might be different advantages of having a search result in CSV format, but one in particular is that you can either sort it by day of year or make pivot tables based on day of year, which is handy in planning filter changes. Note that this function operates only on displayed records; the downloaded file will not contain any records from other pages. Be sure to adjust your page size as large as necessary before downloading.

• At the end of each line is a hyperlink to the eBird checklist for the observation. It's amazing how much nicer it is to have one-click access rather than two-step access for checklist pages.

• Adjusts the widths of "Review decision", "Reason", and "Notes" inputs to values that I prefer. This is handy if you are really obsessive about being sure what your inputs are. For example, you see “Documentation Inadequate-Species” instead of “Documentation In”, and you see more of the beginning of your Note text.

I also have some other browser extensions that could be of interest.