Greasemonkey Hacks is an invaluable compendium 100 ingenious hacks for power users who want to master Greasemonkey, the hot new Firefox extension that allows you to write scripts that alter the web pages you visit. With Greasemonkey, you can create scripts that make a web site more usable, fix rendering bugs that site owners can't be bothered to fix themselves, or add items to a web site's menu bar. You can alter pages so they work better with technologies that speak a web page out loud or convert it to Braille. Greasemonkey gurus can even import, combine, and alter data from different web sites to meet their own specific needs. Greasemonkey has achieved a cult-like following in its short lifespan, but its uses are just beginning to be explored. Let's say you're shopping on an e-commerce site. You can create a script that will automatically display competitive prices for that particular product from other web sites. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination and your Greasemonkey expertise. Greasemonkey Hacks can't help you with the imagination part, but it can provide the expert hacks-complete with the sample code-you need to turn your brainstorms into reality. More than just an essential collection of made-to-order Greasemonkey solutions, Greasemonkey Hacks is crammed with sample code, a Greasemonkey API reference, and a comprehensive list of resources, to ensure that every resource you need is available between its covers. Some people are content to receive information from websites passively; some people want to control it. If you are one of the latter, Greasemonkey Hacks provides all the clever customizations and cutting-edge tips and tools you need to take command of any web page you view.
Author: Mark Pilgrim
Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Customer Reviews
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Technical, but good
If you're looking for a book on how to actually get started with Greasemonkey *coding* this is a great book. Sure, there's a collection of basic intro info, but this is a how-to book for coders. That's not a bad thing, of course! And from a coding standpoint, it does a great job.
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I'll never view the browser experience the same again...
Bottom line... I'm hooked. I was vaguely aware of what Greasemonkey was, but I really hadn't taken the time to explore it. That time is now over. I had a chance to review a copy of Greasemonkey Hacks by Mark Pilgrim, and I don't think I'll look at web browsing the same again.
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<br />Contents: Getting Started; Linkmania!; Beautifying the Web; Web Forms; Developer Tools; Search; Web Mail; Accessibility; Taking Back the Browser; Syndication; Site Integration; Those Not Included in This Classification; Index
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<br />This is a typical O'Reilly Hacks title, where you have 100 tips and tricks on exploiting some technology or toy. In this volume, Mark Pilgrim shows how you can use the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox to completely change the way you interact with web pages. The first two tips show how to install Greasemonkey and how to install a Greasemonkey script that you either download or write yourself. From there, it's all over the board as far as what you can do with these script gems. Tired of dealing with URLs on a site that aren't clickable? Check out tip #13 (Turn Naked URLs into Hyperlinks). Want to have a web page refresh itself automatically every x minutes (even though they don't have a meta refresh tag)? Then go to tip #41 (Refresh Pages Automatically). And my favorite... Hate those web site registrations that force you to enter basic information every time just to see the content? Do you normally use BugMeNot to find an existing registration? Wish that all could be integrated and automated in your browser? Tip #84 - Bypass Annoying Site Registration. I can tell you that this one was the first Greasemonkey script I installed, and it's way cool...
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<br />This is really not a "how to code Greasemonkey scripts" book. You're dealing with JavaScript and the document object model, but Pilgrim and his group of contributors don't spend any time trying to teach you how to do all that. The book delivers the scripts already coded and tested, and you just have to install them. But that's not bad, and it works on a number of levels. If you've never used Greasemonkey, it's a great way to discover the power (as I did). And if you *are* a Greasemonkey user and/or developer, this will give you many new ideas on scripts you might want to write yourself. And since you can download the scripts from the O'Reilly site, you already have a solid base of code from which to start. Hard to beat that in terms of value...
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<br />Obviously, I like tech books and I read a lot. But not often do I run across a book that ends up changing the way I view the basic technology I touch every day. If I wasn't a Firefox user, this book would convince me to become one in short order. As a Firefox user, I'm now convinced that I can personalize and manipulate web sites and information in ways I never imaged. This is really a recommended read...
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Should be Firefox Hacks
Really this should be Firefox Hacks since the book is primarily about how to use Greasemonkey to make the sites we all visit on a daily basis more usable. Greasemonkey allows you to write scripts that alter the behavior of websites from within the browser. If that sounds esoteric, ok, but just have a look around what you can actually do with it and you will see just how powerful it is. Greasemonkey is worth your time and this is the book that shows you how to exploit that power.
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