Greasemonkey

Hello, and Happy Thanksgiving! OK, enough pleasantries; let's get down to business. Yes, that's right: Stazz's Stuff does not take days off for holidays. We're here everyday to nourish you with your daily nerdiness - except for yesterday, when we took a day off.

I am currently very interested in a technology called Greasemonkey. It's an add-on for Firefox that allows you run various scripts (Java Scripts) that modify the behavior of many popular web sites. I have to admit that I am Greasemonkey neophyte, but I am starting to research various ways of using it and I am very impressed.

The main way that I use Greasemonkey is as the basis for the Better GMail add-on. Better GMail is a set of scripts that make GMail...better. It adds support for HTTPS connections and folders (for those not into tagging). There are tons of customizations that Better GMail provides, but the point is that each one of them is a Greasemonkey script; all of it is built on Greasemonkey. Another example is Better YouTube.

Anyway, you can find tons of Greasemonkey scripts if you look for them. If you're ever using a popular web site and find yourself thinking "I wish this site did _______ differently," take a look and see if there is a Greasemonkey script to make it do what you want. A good place to look is userscripts.org. I am planning on researching this further and I will report on what I find.