QUOTE (Computerworld) |
Greasemonkey Let's get this out of the way right up front: Greasemonkey is not for the faint of heart. It basically allows you to add JavaScript to any Web page, but writing these scripts requires a good knowledge of scripting. The good news is that there are many generous souls out there who share the scripts they create. When first installed, Greasemonkey does nothing. It just enables the scripting. You'll have to write, or install, scripts before you see any changes on your pages. So what do these scripts do? Almost anything you can do with JavaScript. For example, I use both Google's Gmail and Reader services. I found a script that causes Reader to appear on the same page as my Gmail. That's a pretty big change. (It's easy to disable a script, and even easier to universally disable Greasemonkey, in case you need to undo a change.) Want your Google search results to appear in two columns? There's a Greasemonkey script for that. Then there are lots of scripts that do small things like remove the Edit features from Wikipedia. Most of us are never going to edit these pages, so why not clean them up a bit? Another script, shown here, makes Google search results appear in two columns to provide better use of space on wide monitors. The possibilities are endless. Check out userscripts.org for a script repository. If you want to write your own scripts, try diveintogreasemonkey.org or pick up Mark Pilgrim's Greasemonkey Hacks from O'Reilly Media. Version reviewed: 0.6.7.20070131.0 addons.mozilla.org/firefox/748 |