Greasemonkey : Completely change your firefox browsing experience

Greasemonkey is an excellent addon which makes Firefox a lot better. Unlike many other addons that let you do one particular thing, possibilities with this one are incredible. Greasemonkey extension lets you add so called ‘user scripts‘ which can add more functionalities or change the behavior of a web page. These scripts let you control any aspect of a web page’s design or interaction. For instance, you can add video download functionality to video sharing site like youtube, OR disable all ads on myspace OR change the appearance of gmail and lots lots more…
So, how does it work?

• 1. Install Firefox, if you haven’t done it already.
• 2. Install Greasemonkey. Once done you should see a small monkey face at the right bottom corner of your browser window.
• 3. Start adding ‘user scripts.’

Userscripts.org is a directory currently listing over 2.000.000 Greasemonkey ‘user scripts’. All of these scripts are developed by users themselves. Most of them directed to solve common web problems, i.e. removing annoying ads, adding additional navigation options, and changing the look of the page. Once you’re on userscripts.org you can use their tag cloud box to quickly locate desired scripts. For instace, clicking on ‘myspace’ tag will show get you all scripts designed for myspace.
Some of the popular script categories are:

• Myspace (ex: remove all ads from Myspace, remove all flash media from profile pages, …)
• Facebook (change the look of Facebook, remove ads, automatic page refresh every 30-90s, …)
• eBay (add new column displaying total item cost (price+shipping), auto-feedback, …)
• Amazon (disable ads, show prices in different currencies, for each product show prices from other sellers, …)
• Gmail (change appearance, integrate google reader into gmail, ….)
• Youtube, GoogleVideo (ADD video download option, change site theme, … )
• and many more including Flickr, Del.icio.us and whatever is popular.

Installing user scripts is extremely easy, just click on the script’s install button and Greasemonkey will do the rest. In case you don’t see desired changes then try restarting the Firefox.
Tips:

1)Try to avoid installing scripts from elsewhere but userscripts.org. 2) While browsing through scripts you may see something like ‘NOTE: manual configuration required‘, if you have no idea how to configure them just avoid them.

Posted by Unknown on 4:31 AM. Filed under Internet Tips and tricks, PC tips and tricks . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0