GreaseMonkey is a very useful Firefox extension that “allows you to change the functionality of Web sites on the fly–adding new features, stripping out existing ones, and otherwise tweaking a site in ways its operator never intended.” PC World has a pretty informative article on GreaseMonkey, as does Lifehack.
As the articles mention, GreaseMonkey gives you the ability to customize particular sites on Firefox by installing scripts that change appearance, add functionality, etc. Once you install the script (found at the GreaseMonkey mozdev site) and restart Firefox, you will be able to right-click on .js JavaScript file links and choose the “install user script” option, or you can open the .js files and choose the same option from the “Tools” menu. You can further edit and customize these files before you install them if you choose, which I’ve already done for the script I use to automate the addition of del.icio.us tags to my Blogger posts, but for the most part this isn’t necessary.
The GreaseMonkey User Scripts site is continually updated with a huge amount of scripts that are available, sorted by website and beginning with scripts applicable to all sites. Here are some scripts that I find useful:
- Google image search – directly links to images found in a Google image search (rather than forcing you to click through individual pages)
- Inline MP3 player – adds a small button next to MP3 links on all pages that activates a Flash MP3 player (see image at right using my MP3 Of The Moment at left as an example)
- Google Butler – “remove ads, add links to competitors in Google search results”
- Amazon “free music” helper – changes “Free Music Download” links to a direct link to MP3
- StrongBad e-mail buttons – adds “previous” and “next” buttons to HomeStar Runner StrongBad e-mail pages
- Add Netflix links to IMDB – useful if you browse IMDB a lot and have a Netflix account
- Add IMDB links to Netflix – pretty much the opposite of the previous script
- Technorati and del.icio.us tags for Blogger – adds a box underneath Blogger posts for Technorati and/or del.icio.us tags, appending the HTML code to the current post (I modified my del.icio.us script slightly).
- del.icio.us skin – make del.icio.us pages look a little nicer
I’ll try and add useful scripts as I find them; let me know how they work for you…
Update: I added a link to a GreaseMonkey inline MP3 player, but by default the excellent Adblock extension puts an ugly “Adblock” tab above the button indicating that you can block the Flash element. So, I unchecked the “Obj-tabs” option, relying instead on the newly installed FlashBlock extension for blocking Flash elements (there is a “whitelist” option to disable the extension for trusted sites). This may be more trouble than it’s worth, but I obviously really like the simple MP3 player button… 😉
