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Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

dutzi.party

111–120 of 145 posts

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#111
Since 2012 I'm using a userscript I wrote to inject a button to each github code comment to open my editor at the file-and-line.

It feels strange this is not something more people want, but I haven't seen any other project that addresses the same, so I'm still kinda maintaining it:

https://github.com/kidd/org-protocol-github-lines/

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#113
post #11

I’ve been really into using scripts to enhance my browsing experience, so much so that I’ve spent the last 6+ months developing these extensions to curate my experience on the Web: - Intention ( https://getintention.com ) - Pauses distractions so I can scroll less and do more - Hide Feed ( https://hidefeed.com ) - Replaces feeds with my daily focus - Hide Likes ( https://hidelikes.com ) - Hides vanity metrics for a m…

Would you consider releasing these (especially Intention) as FLOSS?

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#114
post #55

Given the increasingly hostile nature of websites, along with the tendency to remove user control, userscripts are not just still relevant but more relevant than ever. Here's some that I like: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/10096-general-url-cleaner https://greasyfork.org/fr/scripts/19210-google-direct-links-... https://github.com/ParticleCore/Iridium

Why use a userscript when you can use a search engine that is not from a spyware company? Like Startpage, Qwant, Duckduckgo or Searx? Alleluia, direct links out of the box. For youtube, why not give Invidious a try (ok, it has its downs)? Sometimes, the best solution to "hostile websites" is to not use them in the first place (or use their proxified versions).

That is such a useless and pervasive answer to something cool: why not use these alternatives. _Obviously_ the author/user of these scripts knows that the Internet has more than one thing for each kind, and obviously they chose to use the site they are using but in a different way.

None of the search engines are as good as Google (most of the time) and for video hosting sites it's about the content.

Imagine 20 years ago someone built a device that turns the volume down when ads come on, and the first reply to that is "but the channel I'm watching doesn't show ads". Well, good for you.

Sometimes the best solution to "I want to use this website differently" is to use it differently.

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#116
post #88

Strongly agree with the original article, and it's fun to see all the niche use cases that people are mentioning here. But I have a major frustration with user scripts: writing them requires experience with Javascript and reverse engineering websites. This is fine for the HN crowd, but locks out most web users, who can't program at all. I bet that if it were slightly easier to develop user scripts, there'd be 10x as…

Would be nice if every website had a scraper. People maintain huge content blocking databases so why not scraping code? It should be possible to treat every website like an API.

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#117
post #67
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Startpage: "You can’t beat Google when it comes to online search. So we’re paying them to use their brilliant search results in order to remove all trackers and logs." Searx is a meta search engine. You can gather results from gogle.

RE Startpage, sounds good, seems to work... how are they making money to pay Google?

Startpage also shows ads at the top of the search results. It claims not to track the user (similar to DDG, which also shows ads but doesn’t track the user). But there was news about Startpage being acquired a few months ago, and the trust in it has dropped for some people.

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#118
post #114
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why use a userscript when you can use a search engine that is not from a spyware company? Like Startpage, Qwant, Duckduckgo or Searx? Alleluia, direct links out of the box. For youtube, why not give Invidious a try (ok, it has its downs)? Sometimes, the best solution to "hostile websites" is to not use them in the first place (or use their proxified versions).

That is such a useless and pervasive answer to something cool: why not use these alternatives. _Obviously_ the author/user of these scripts knows that the Internet has more than one thing for each kind, and obviously they chose to use the site they are using but in a different way. None of the search engines are as good as Google (most of the time) and for video hosting sites it's about the content. Imagine 20 years…

> for video hosting sites it's about the content

Invidious is an alternative front-end for YouTube--so you are getting the same content.

https://www.invidio.us

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#119

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.

I've set Firefox its default search engine to DDG. Then if the search results are unsatisfying, I search again but now prepend the search with !g for Google, or !gi for Google Images.

Fwiw, you don't need to prepend it; you can put it anywhere in the query

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#120
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wanted to love DDG. It promises a lot. And it delivers a lot. I love the shortcut codes. But after a few months I had to go back to Google. Two main reasons: 1. Image searches could often return literally zero results for simple terms. 2. I'd look up a term and get non-English Wikipedia articles before the English ones, which often wouldn't even show up.

It's pretty easy to append "!g" to your ddg search results if they're inadequate.

Yeah, this is so engrained in me now, I find it hard to search without a "second opinion" on devices that default to just Google.
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