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Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

dutzi.party

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Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#71
post #60
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried my best to switch to DDG this year. The results just aren't as good as Google.

I'd like to offer a less binary perspective... I tried to switch and ended up using both, I use duckduckgo not for privacy but practical reasons: recently google has become extremely irritating for technical searches that are not popular, even for the ones it can find it now autocorrects them by default to "what it thinks you meant", which for technical things like parameter names, command names, APIs etc are always…

>SEO optimization

Search engine optimization optimization

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#72

I installed TamperMonkey recently and wrote some scripts to improve my Twitter experience. Very handy. Then it popped up a request for donations screen, which is an understandable approach by the TamperMonkey author, but I became uncomfortable that TamperMonkey was watching everything I did on the web and reporting back to the author, so I uninstalled it.

I saw the same request and it was the trigger for me to donate.

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's not about "going back to" anywhere. It's not as if we couldn't use different search engines for different queries. This all-or-nothing mentality of migrating away from Google (the search engine) seems flawed to me. It's still better for your privacy doing half of your queries using Google, instead of doing all of them. By the way, no offense intended! We're all free to pick our tools.

I partly agree. I don't want it to be all or nothing. But the way browsers are set up with the "default search", it somwhat is. Ooooh I would love to be able to custom route searches depending on rules.

DDG ends up working well as the default search for me. The ability to type my query and then decide if I want to use DDG or Google doesn't require me to take my hands of the keyboard. I just add a g! and I'm switched off my default. So it's a great default with an ergonomic way to switch to a different engine.

Google as default requires me to use the browser UX to change the engine, which I believe requires using the mouse or hitting tab or arrow keys. Less ergonomic.

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#74
post #39

15 years ago i used userscripts for ... kinda cheating at a popular browser game. i didn't do anything _really_ illegal, it just extended the UI. e.g. if you sent an army to rob a village, it stored the type and level of workshops and calculated how many troops you'd have to send plundering the next time. it worked really well. next i changed the backend from local storage to a shared database and shared the script w…

I did same for ogame! I can't remember exact details but I could queue stuff the game wouldn't let me. some were paid features i think

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#75
For me, userscripts have been a great way to learn javascript. I have no programming experience and the ability to find something I want to tweak and be able to implement it on a web site is pretty cool. I created a userscript a few years ago and during the quarantine I've been learning a lot rewriting it to work better.

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's not about "going back to" anywhere. It's not as if we couldn't use different search engines for different queries. This all-or-nothing mentality of migrating away from Google (the search engine) seems flawed to me. It's still better for your privacy doing half of your queries using Google, instead of doing all of them. By the way, no offense intended! We're all free to pick our tools.

I partly agree. I don't want it to be all or nothing. But the way browsers are set up with the "default search", it somwhat is. Ooooh I would love to be able to custom route searches depending on rules.

Firefox supports this, go into Settings -> Search and set a keyword for the search engine.

For example, if you set the keyword for DuckDuckGo to "ddg" and Google to "go", then typing "ddg " into the topbar will search DuckDuckGo, and typing "go " will search Google.

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#77
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I partly agree. I don't want it to be all or nothing. But the way browsers are set up with the "default search", it somwhat is. Ooooh I would love to be able to custom route searches depending on rules.

Firefox supports this, go into Settings -> Search and set a keyword for the search engine. For example, if you set the keyword for DuckDuckGo to "ddg" and Google to "go", then typing "ddg " into the topbar will search DuckDuckGo, and typing "go " will search Google.

DuckDuckGo itself supports this. Just start a query with !g to have it routed to Google. For example, "!g search on Google" would bring you to the Google search results page for "search on Google."

DuckDuckGo supports several other commands like this, which they refer to as "bangs."

https://duckduckgo.com/bang

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#80
post #77
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox supports this, go into Settings -> Search and set a keyword for the search engine. For example, if you set the keyword for DuckDuckGo to "ddg" and Google to "go", then typing "ddg " into the topbar will search DuckDuckGo, and typing "go " will search Google.

DuckDuckGo itself supports this. Just start a query with !g to have it routed to Google. For example, "!g search on Google" would bring you to the Google search results page for "search on Google." DuckDuckGo supports several other commands like this, which they refer to as "bangs." https://duckduckgo.com/bang

A query need not be started with a bang. Just add 'g!' or 'yt!' anywhere in your search terms and it should work fine.
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