Have you noticed your friend number going down recently? I always kind of wonder who would unfriend me on Facebook and why. The Unfriend Finder user script will at least help me answer one of those questions. It will keep track of who unfriends you on Facebook.
Want to give Facebook a more minimalist look and feel? If so, I have found the perfect Greasemonkey script for you to install and use. The simply named, Minimalist Facebook userscript removes several annoying (and space wasting) features of the Facebook website.
One big complaint about search engines is they are all rather vanilla with their visual representation. Wouldn’t it be better if you could color code things a ‘bit more? One Greasemonkey script that does a great job at this is Colorful Search.
Want to hide all the stuff you do not really need on your personalized iGoogle homepage? Thanks Super iGoogle, a handy Greasemonkey script, you can simplify iGoogle to only show you the content you need to see.
You might not know the name Anthony Lieuallen, but I bet you have heard of Greasemonkey before. It is the Firefox extension that allows you to extend or customize your favorite web sites in a number of different ways.
Anthony is one of the driving forces behind that project, so I thought it would be fun to pick his brain to find out what his part in the project is, and what advice he might have for other hopeful Greasemonkey script writers or Firefox add-on developers.
What all have you done in development for the Firefox Greasemonkey extension?
I’ve definitely lost track of when and how exactly I first learned about Greasemonkey, and when I got involved. Luckily, I can look up enough old records to get a pretty good idea of what the right answer here is.
I first interacted with Greasemonkey as a user. Quickly though I graduated to User Script author. My earliest blog post about a script I authored was in March of 2005. I wrote a few scripts, some quite popular, for a while. By June, Mark Pilgrim contacted me about being included in the “Greasemonkey Hacks” book, essentially a cookbook-like collection of existing User Scripts, with discussion about what they were and how they worked. I was included as a contributor when that book was published.
In a nutshell, Greasemonkey is an add-on for Firefox that allows you to customize a web site’s look and function. Now you don’t have to be a coder to use it though, because there are already hundreds of scripts out there available for free that you can use to help you do a number of different things.
How Do You Use Greasemonkey?
Once you have installed Greasemonkey, you will see the little monkey’s head come up in your status bar. From here you can create a new user script of your own or you can edit the ones you have already installed. You also have the ability to enable and disable scripts or Greasemonkey all together, if you need to.
Where Can I Find Greasemonkey User Scripts?
Finding Greasemonkey scripts is easy. For that, let me point you in the direction of Userscripts.org. This is a great depository of user scripts people have created to get more out of various web sites. You can browse through all of the scripts, or search for the web site you want to modify.
Greasefire, another extension for Firefox can also help. It will let you know in the status bar how many user scripts are available for that specific URL you are visiting. Here are a few more of my favorite Greasemonkey script collections:
How Can I Make My Own User Scripts for Greasemonkey?
Making your own Greasemonkey user scripts might be a ‘bit of a challenge, unless you are an old JavaScript coding pro. It does take some learning, however there are several resources on the Web that will help you teach yourself. One of the best is the Dive into Greasemonkey eBook. Here are a few more resources to help you create your own user script:
Once you have made a successful Greasemonkey userscript, you might even look into creating it into a stand alone Firefox add-on.
If you like the tweak the Web, and make it your own, then Greasemonkey is well worth picking up as a Firefox extension. The add-on, plus some user scripting can lead to helping you get more out of your favorite web sites, and then share that help with others. When push comes to shove, isn’t that what the Internet should be all about?
I figured this hack was in the works for some time now, just happened to run across it this morning. Thanks to Firefox, Greasemonkey and a little creativity from a scripter out there you can download music from the MuxTape web site. Here are the words of wisdom from the script creator…
This downloads muxtape songs. Just click the “Download me!” link, change the file-name to your liking and append .mp3 to it.
There you go! Pick up the Greasemonkey script in question here:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/24382
Now of course I am not encouraging you to go out there and be a pirate, but for those tunes up there that you can not find anywhere else or may be original works from an independent artist you would like to enjoy – the option to download is now there. I have a feeling though they will more than likely get this fixed soon on the MuxTape side of things.
In a cage match to the death, who would win between the best of the MySpace user scripts versus the Facebook user scripts? Load up Firefox, install Greasemonkey – and give some of these handy addons a try. I use both MySpace and Facebook so hard for me to decide. How about you?
Have any other favorite Greasemonkey scripts I might have overlooked?
I enjoy using the Stylish extension to make a lot of little edits to various web sites I visit around the web. The biggest would probably be Gmail – and I would rather not lose all the user style edits I have done just in case the worst might happen.
The other day I was re-installing Firefox on my main machine here, and I needed to backup the edits and user styles I had downloaded and created. I searched and searched, and finally found the place which it is saved to. It is not an easy file to find so I thought I would share with you where it is at.
On Windows XP go to Documents and Settings, then go to your profile folder. From there navigate yourself through Application Data, then Mozilla, then Firefox (yes, it is pretty deep in there) and then your profile folder for Firefox.
You made it! Do the dance of joy and move on…
The file your looking to copy is stylish.rdf. Of course you could always just search your computer for the same file name – but what fun would that be?
Just right-click on it, copy it and save it elsewhere. Then when you need to restore the settings, drag and drop it back where you found it and all should be well again.
It has been a while since I looked at any Greasemonkey scripts. The newest one that I have checked out is called Myspace Notifier. This script will notify you of any new mail, friend requests, and more. To use it, make sure you have the Firefox Greasemonkey extension installed.
