10:25 pm, 24 Feb 05
lj greasemonkeying
Tony made a Greasemonkey script that pops up userpics when you mouseover LJ links. Rad!
(For example, when I mouseover the above link to his LJ I see his picture pop up like a tooltip.)
I think Greasemonkey is a minor step towards a new view of the web, where the end-user controls what they actually get from a website. The logical conclusion is to use sites as feeds (as RSS has done for most blogs for me -- I don't ever look at the author's websites). I don't think the Greasemonkey ideal will ever be integrated into a major browser because it's trivial to Greasemonkey out e.g. ads from all pages you visit. But all that means is that the power will remain in the hands of people who can take the extra step.
(For example, when I mouseover the above link to his LJ I see his picture pop up like a tooltip.)
I think Greasemonkey is a minor step towards a new view of the web, where the end-user controls what they actually get from a website. The logical conclusion is to use sites as feeds (as RSS has done for most blogs for me -- I don't ever look at the author's websites). I don't think the Greasemonkey ideal will ever be integrated into a major browser because it's trivial to Greasemonkey out e.g. ads from all pages you visit. But all that means is that the power will remain in the hands of people who can take the extra step.
Hey, basically anything Greasemonkey can do a proxy outside the browser could have done (remember Junkbuster?). That would allow other things besides Javascript, but would probably make things even messier :)
Though surprisingly it turns out JavaScript is actually pretty nice if you get it in a restricted environment: Greasemonkey only works on Firefox so you can target that directly without worrying about IE compatibility. Stuff like XPath and the DOM make it pretty easy to get things done. The main trouble is that debugging is difficult, but I think people are working on improving that.
Then again, I have drunk the web kool-aid.
I'm not sureI don't think I understand the point of classless OO. I mean, I understand what it is and how you use it, but don't see where it might be useful over the usual thing.That worries me, even though i'm pretty sure its harmless.
Could this be what you were seeing?
Greasemonkey currently injects using the HTML script tag, setting href="chrome://greasemonkey...".
Could this be what you're seeing in the HTTPS warning?
We're currently looking at using FF internal JS engine instead, but we're not sure its possible yet. This issue was actually raised due to problems with us polluting WYSIWYG editor round-tripping.
As far as using a proxy instead; yes you could, but then you don't get View Source as easily, and there are tons of JS/DOM developers, whereas we'd have to convince people to being developers for My Favorite Proxy.
Greasemonkey is indeed messy, but it is a simple thing that works, and we can make it appeal more widely as we go, I think.
PithHelmet for Safari does more stuff; there's been some discussion about making GM more featureful, too. Not sure if this will happen, tho.
You can contact me at :
jdunck gmail com
Bah. I've been doing stuff like this for years! ;)
I got the power. chik-chik, bub-buh-bur-bub, chik-chik. I got the power.