Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant • Hacker News Board

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#121

Post by shezi » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

robrtsql wrote: post #118

shezi wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ah, I did not know that, thank you for pointing it out.

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#122

Post by megous » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

the_duke wrote: post #2

Tampermonkey, ViolentMonkey and GreaseMonkey are all available in Firefox. Can anyone provide a comparison? Edit for the early commenters: as I stated, all of the above are available on current Firefox. Greasemonkey also has been ported to webextensions. Hence my question. Edit 2: TamperMonkey is closed source source and apparently embeds Google Analytics. Either of those immediately kill it for me, considering the k…

I only use extensions that don't have minimized/obfuscated code in the xpi file. So that leaves only GreaseMonkey. There's zero technical reason to minimize extension JS code, since it's already compressed in xpi (zip) file.

It's not a silver bullet (I caught people who managed to put a tracker into non-minimized code too, in the past.), but minimized code is hard to compare for chnages and review during updates, so that's a no no for me.

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#123

Post by gav » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 6:09 PM UTC

chrismorgan wrote: post #30

I’ve written extensive user scripts to improve inferior web interfaces of tools that we use for work. My two biggest ones are for a work tracker and a support system. The support system one especially is considered indispensable by the support staff and almost everyone else that ever interacts with it. (Why not just change support system?—you may ask. There were certain features that provided the concrete reason for…

I built a bunch of tools with user scripts to help run a smallish ecommerce business. It was especially useful because they didn't have the ability to easily or inexpensively make changes to their platform (you could argue that this is a big issue, but a lot of merchants have to give up control as the alternative is prohibitively expensive).

- A internal "there's an issue with this product" feature that created a ticket for the content team

- Identifying products and creating a Google Charts sparkline with sales inline on product listing pages

- Showing sales stats inline in pages, allowing non-technical people to get useful insights by just browsing the site and not having to look at dashboards/reporting tools/etc

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#124

Post by tartoran » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 6:18 PM UTC

Firehawke wrote: post #34

I have severe photosensitivity; large blocks of white hurt my eyes. I use userscripts with Tampermonkey to change sites like this one and Github to a dark color theme that my eyes will tolerate much better.

I think I might have the same thing tough if I reduce temperature I can tolerate white allright. It actually removes all the blues and starts to look pinkish. I use the f.lux app with a slight color temperature reduction at all times. Sometimes I accidentally turn it off and what a difference on my eyes!

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#125

Post by ornornor » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

shezi wrote: post #114

Ileca wrote: 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…

> None of the search engines are as good as Google (most of the time)

Startpage (and ddg I think?) basically provide you googles search results without the tracking. They’re the same quality of results without your google created echo chamber (because google can’t profile your search habits when not using google directly for search)

You’re still giving google money (indirectly) but st least you’re depriving it of your personal data.

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#126

Post by stjohnswarts » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 7:57 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #110

FalconSensei wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder if DDG has just caught onto this trend, and is prioritizing the language of the article that has the most editorial activity. It should prioritize the language of the query. I'm supposing the commenter above searched for something in English and got a non-English result?

Yeah I was looking up some very straightforward things and I'd end up with non-English wiki pages on the first page, and the English wiki page for the same topic was... I guess maybe on later pages.

Are you using a VPN? I've never seen a foreign language wiki article show up, and I've been using DDG for a couple of years.

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#127

Post by stjohnswarts » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 7:59 PM UTC

tomxor wrote: post #67

Ileca wrote: 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?

They show ads at the top of every search I've ever done there. At least when I'm not using an ad blocker.

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#128

Post by stjohnswarts » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 8:15 PM UTC

ori_b wrote: post #105

> Nowadays the internet is pretty decent for all ... what? The web is rapidly becoming more and more unusable. Often, sites only work well when I fully disable JavaScript, and the associated autoplay ads, trackers, custom half broken and CPU intensive navigation behavior overrides, and similar sources of misbehavior. The modern web is more user hostile than ever before.

I agree that the web is a bunch of potholes with autoplay sound and video, pop ups, in your face ads, etc. I find an adblocker, turning off autoplay in firefox, and pi-hole fix 99% of that. So I don't think you can say "often" that you have to fix things, unless you refuse to use similar methods that I've used. Literally the only site I will jump through hoops for and turn things off for (whitelist) is my bank, and they don't have anything other than a couple of annoying popups.

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#129

Post by stjohnswarts » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 8:17 PM UTC

lucasverra wrote: post #57

rovr138 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could create a basic profile for Firefox and load it on their computers. That would solve the issue of different UI’s initially and on-boarding would be easier. I use daily at least 3 Firefox profiles - Plain, Work, Personal I have others specific to clients. Firefox containers are an option now (although my setup predates this). This still allows extensions and everything to be encapsulated.

> I have others specific to clients. Firefox containers are an option now (although my setup predates this). This still allows extensions and everything to be encapsulated. Thanks for pointing this out, i was thinking about this but lazy enough to postpone research. Now i know

Look at the LTS versions of firefox (plug for my favorite browser). However similar is available for Chrome and shouldn't take more than a day to test and deploy for a small-medium office by any competent IT person.

Re: Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant

#130

Post by ori_b » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 8:41 PM UTC

stjohnswarts wrote: post #128

ori_b wrote: post #105

> Nowadays the internet is pretty decent for all ... what? The web is rapidly becoming more and more unusable. Often, sites only work well when I fully disable JavaScript, and the associated autoplay ads, trackers, custom half broken and CPU intensive navigation behavior overrides, and similar sources of misbehavior. The modern web is more user hostile than ever before.

I agree that the web is a bunch of potholes with autoplay sound and video, pop ups, in your face ads, etc. I find an adblocker, turning off autoplay in firefox, and pi-hole fix 99% of that. So I don't think you can say "often" that you have to fix things, unless you refuse to use similar methods that I've used. Literally the only site I will jump through hoops for and turn things off for (whitelist) is my bank, and t…

> I find an adblocker, turning off autoplay in firefox, and pi-hole fix 99% of that.

I find that turning off JavaScript works even better. Ad blockers don't generally disable JavaScript that tries to change how, for example, scrolling works.