Bless FrankerFaceZ! PraiseIt

I had meant to write this earlier (Because I had taken these screenshots when AGDQ, a speedrunning marathon that happens every year that raises money for different charities, was running in early January I believe) so the images themselves may be a bit old.

Anyway I frequent a streaming website called Twitch.tv where you can watch others play games and such. I almost always have a stream open on a second monitor akin to leaving the television on as background noise.

Now here is what the stream on Twitch looks like without any modifications.

Original view of Twitch.tv

Sure it looks fine. But I wouldn't be writing about this if I didn't notice something unusual. Here's what I see:

View with BetterTTV and FrankerFaceZ extension installed*

Ignoring the obvious dark theme and some changes that were also made from BetterTTV extension as well as changes the FrankerFaceZ extension/addons for browsers (And the double "Host" buttons at the very bottom since both extensions added one I hadn't removed one of the buttons until a week later).

There were two extra buttons that simply are not there on other channels, even with the addons.

The "Featured" and "Schedule" button that came specifically for this channel using FrankerFaceZ were completely new to me!

 Note: It usually isn't there and is purely added on from the community extension*.

It's an extra feature that GamesDoneQuick had to update specifically for the stream through interaction with the extension developer and sadly I can't find the link to the extension page that mentioned this feature because the buttons are gone now that the marathon is over...But it was there, I swear!

And boy were they so, so, so useful.

Normally you would have to scroll down, click on a banner to open a new tab in order to go to their website to see the schedule. This embeds it right underneath for ease of access for the user and is so much more convenient.

As you can see, hovering over the button with the mouse will give you the current game being run as well as the next game to be played.

Clicking on the button will give you the whole schedule without ever having to leave the page.






Next the Featured button. I'm glad this was added because in the past GDQ (Games Done Quick) charity marathons I've personally been too lazy to manually type in the stream of the person that was currently playing in order to follow them for notifications on when they stream themselves. As a result I would just forget about them a week later even though I thought what they did was really cool.

View after clicking on the Featured button.*

A button to directly follow the streamer!
Honestly I thought that was fantastic and so helpful I wondered why Twitch didn't create a feature similar to this where ANY streamer can update these on their own channels, for example, to promote their friends and people they are currently playing with.

Anyway really great designs added with the help of third party extensions. I personally don't see any downsides to Twitch actually implementing this themselves as it barely adds any clutter to a place where Twitch already puts their 'Share' button (See bottom of first screenshot next to viewer count.)

*All of the images above are screenshots I took of Twitch.tv and Twitch.tv/gamesdonequick
 and the layout of the site has been modified and does not reflect the original layout of the site.