User script hack night

[will whittaker]

So... um when we gonna do this?
>
>

[Ronald Schouten]

I proposed Tuesday, November 18th in my last post. Was that post not
received by members?

Ron

[mock]

On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 04:07:29PM -0700, Ronald Schouten wrote:
>
> I proposed Tuesday, November 18th in my last post. Was that post not
> received by members?
>

Hmmm somehow my mail client managed to eat it. November 18th works for me.
Now we just need to brainstorm some projects. I was kinda thinking of
automating adding numbers to the do not call registry. Also encryped facebook
chat/mail would be kinda cool. Actually, it occurs to me that what would be
totally awesome, is if I could leave little encrypted blobs of text for specific
people anywhere. Needs more thought though.

[Ronald Schouten]

Hmmm somehow my mail client managed to eat it.  November 18th works for me.

Great, does anyone object to this date?

In case others missed my last post, two good resources for Greasemonkey/UserScripts are:

http://diveintogreasemonkey.org/toc/
http://userscripts.org/
 

Now we just need to brainstorm some projects.  I was kinda thinking of
automating adding numbers to the do not call registry.  Also encryped facebook
chat/mail would be kinda cool.  Actually, it occurs to me that what would be
totally awesome, is if I could leave little encrypted blobs of text for specific
people anywhere.  Needs more thought though.

I think both ideas might be biting off a bit much for a first project. The reason I think so is that our scripts will be limited to the same JavaScript sandbox as the native JavaScript running in any given website. For the auto-registration idea, our script would need to access an external list of numbers and then submit each number separately - which would require our script to continue running after a page refresh.

Your other idea of leaving encrypted text for people on Facebook sounds interesting, but needs more fleshing out. Please elaborate.

One simple idea is to pick a site we all use and simply modify the layout better to suit our needs. For example, remove all the ads and then make use of the freed up space. I use a UserScript like this for gmail and it rocks (yes, better than AdBlock).

Any other ideas?

Ron

[David Meeuwis]

Nov. 18 works for me. I like the in-page ad removal idea, seems doable
in an hour or so. Maybe its also a good idea to read through and
dissect an existing script or two?

David

[Ronald Schouten]

Okay, I just hacked together a simple script that removes the "Search the Web" button from gmail. It was fairly painless except for two sticky points.

1) It turns out elements ids can contain colons but to reference them in javascript you will need to escape them. (e.g. document.getElementById("\:r8");)
2) I used setTimeout to delay the execution of the script otherwise my changes would not take affect. It would be useful to know if there are more elegant ways of queuing userscripts.

Ron

P.S. The diveintogreasemonkey.org reference is excellent.

--
Please note: My email address has changed to ron.sc...@gmail.com.

[Ronald Schouten]

A more concrete idea for a collaborative UserScript might be to create
NetBook Friendly version of popular web apps. Netbooks commonly come
with an 1024 x 600 display. I'm anticipating that most web apps will
be designed for the more typical 1024 x 768 display meaning that
Netbook users will have to scroll vertically more often. I say
"anticipating" because I still have not received my Dell Mini (should
come this week).

I'm not sure anyone else even cares about Netbooks so this might be
only of interest to me.

Ron

On Nov 3, 10:49 pm, "Ronald Schouten" <ron.schou...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Okay, I just hacked together a simple script that removes the "Search the
> Web" button from gmail. It was fairly painless except for two sticky points.
>
> 1) It turns out elements ids can contain colons but to reference them in
> javascript you will need to escape them. (e.g.
> document.getElementById("\:r8");)
> 2) I used setTimeout to delay the execution of the script otherwise my
> changes would not take affect. It would be useful to know if there are more
> elegant ways of queuing userscripts.
>
> Ron
>
> P.S. The diveintogreasemonkey.org reference is excellent.
>
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 9:45 AM, David Meeuwis <dmeeu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Nov. 18 works for me. I like the in-page ad removal idea, seems doable
> > in an hour or so. Maybe its also a good idea to read through and
> > dissect an existing script or two?
>
> > David
>

> > On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 1:21 PM, Ronald Schouten <ron.schou...@gmail.com>

> Please note: My email address has changed to ron.schou...@gmail.com.

[Ronald Schouten]

Just a reminder that this Tuesday (November 18th) is Hack Night. We'll
meet at 7:00pm at the Serious Coffee in Cook Street Village to delve
into the world of UserScripts and Greasemonkey. If this is your first
time coming out, I'll be the guy sporting a Movember look.

Ron