i wrote my first greasemonkey script. for those who aren’t familiar, greasemonkey is a firefox extension that allows the user to run scripts that programmatically change the current web page on the fly.
see the wikipedia page.
and download the extension here.
anyhoo, i spent a short while this weekend whipping together monkeybarrel. (click here to install)
monkeybarrel is a script allows the user to discover more greasemonkey scripts. for a given page that you visit, it searches userscripts.org to see if there are any scripts that apply to the page. if the script turns up some results, it links you to them.
i think if people knew about more scripts, greasemonkey would take off, as being able to edit a page is a powerful thing. this is my attempt to help that:
another great greasemonkey script that nfultz hacked together a berkeley version of a script that inserts a library link in amazon.com book pages. (click here to install)
you guys see any other uses for greasemonkey? i like to think of it as inverse screen scraping: instead of taking this html and finding some programmatic way to to pull out data and strip out formatting, you have a script that edits or inserts stuff in your page, fitting into the formatting in in a nice way.
UPDATE: userscripts.org had to disable installation of MonkeyBarrel, because it generated server load and created other issues. Please get the new version that doesn’t slam servers.
You might be interested in my amazon2melvyl script: http://sindikk.aeshin.org/amazon2melvyl/
It uses the xISBN service to improve lookups (so if the library has the hardback and you’re looking at the paperback, you’ll still find something).
Also, my thoughts on Greasemonkey from a couple of years ago (and the long comment thread they spawned): http://sindikk.aeshin.org/2005/02/18/greasemonkey-stole-your-job-and-your-business-model/
Ryan, yeah I actually found your amazon2melvyl via MonkeyBarrel. It’s the only hit if you use the search query “Berkeley”
Probably the most important Greasemonkey script I use is the CNN Fortune Cookie script. It’s one fault is that you have to wait for CNN’s full homepage to load before it kicks in, and with all their pointless bells and whistles you may lose patience.
The results, however, are unequivocally hilarious.