One of the coolest pieces of technology I’ve encountered in a very long time is Greasemonkey, a Firefox extension which Babak Nivi described as “to websites what inheritance is to objects in object-oriented programming.” In other words, as Simon Willison has written, it is a “swiss army knife” that acts as “a lightweight intermediary” in web applications, allowing users to add or modify features as they see fit. It lets you “mash-up websites,” as Nivi put it, and is akin to “hypertext for databases”.

In order to use Greasemonkey, you need to install Firefox and follow the instructions on the Greasemonkey site. The GreaseMonkeyUserScripts wiki provides a list of available scripts and installation is a snap — just click on the Tools menu and choose to “Install User Script.”

I’m currently using the following seven scripts.

  • Linkify: finds pieces of text that look like links but aren’t and makes them clickable. This is incredibly useful on message boards and when reading text files.
  • Butler: removes ads, fixes fonts, and adds links to Google pages. This is definitely the script I use more than any other; it’s written by Mark Pilgrim, the author of Dive Into Greasemonkey.
  • Hide Google Adsense Ads: makes Google ads invisible on all sites. They still load, but I don’t see them.
  • Allow Password Remembering: stops sites from disabling password remembering. This gives me complete control over which sites remember passwords and which do not.
  • KillBlank: prevents sites from opening links in new windows. This is just one of many ways of accomplishing this, but it works well.
  • Hide Gmail Ads: self-explanatory… no more GMail ads.
  • Salon Auto-Pass: this one is pretty unique and another Pilgrim production. When visiting Salon, it automatically obtains a Daily Pass so that I can read articles immediately.

Greasemonkey is an amazing tool and it’s something that I’ve quickly taken for granted. If you have any script recommendations, please pass them along.