I miss the programmable web (2021)

#1

Post by rckrd » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 4:51 AM UTC

I miss the programmable web (2021)
matt-rickard.com

Re: I miss the programmable web (2021)

#2

Post by LAC-Tech » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 5:47 AM UTC

How did these user scripts work? I don't get how they could be "blocked" now. I've made my own snippets of JS to run on certain sites before.

Re: I miss the programmable web (2021)

#3

Post by ozten » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 5:49 AM UTC

I thought this would be about the glory days of “Mash-ups” using web APIs. Flickr + Twitter + Delicious tags to create a new experience. 2007 ? What a period to be a hacker!

Re: I miss the programmable web (2021)

#4

Post by andrewstuart2 » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 5:56 AM UTC

My most used bookmark is this, for speeding up the first audio or video element on the page. I suppose that's if you don't count me typing 'n' and auto-completing my way to hacker news.

    javascript:(function() { (document.querySelector('video') || document.querySelector('audio')).playbackRate = (+prompt('How many times normal speed?') || 1); })();

Re: I miss the programmable web (2021)

#5

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 6:03 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: I miss the programmable web (2021)

#6

Post by thunderbong » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 6:04 AM UTC

andrewstuart2 wrote: post #4

My most used bookmark is this, for speeding up the first audio or video element on the page. I suppose that's if you don't count me typing 'n' and auto-completing my way to hacker news. javascript:(function() { (document.querySelector('video') || document.querySelector('audio')).playbackRate = (+prompt('How many times normal speed?') || 1); })();

For webkit based browsers, you can also use Video Speed Controller extension

https://github.com/igrigorik/videospeed

Re: I miss the programmable web (2021)

#7

Post by isodev » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 6:09 AM UTC

Kind of reminds of the days of Yahoo! Toolbar and friends. I think today we have several ways we can go about this. There are browser extensions that can be used to both complement and alter the behavior of a website. Extensions can interact with the OS and other apps on a system which offers a lot of potential for integrations and customization. (e.g., on iOS/macOS, Shortcuts allow integrations with 3rd party apps, AppleScript, PowerShell (on Windows), etc.)

Re: I miss the programmable web (2021)

#8

Post by wincy » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 6:09 AM UTC

LAC-Tech wrote: post #2

How did these user scripts work? I don't get how they could be "blocked" now. I've made my own snippets of JS to run on certain sites before.

It was a little frustrating the last time I wrote a Tampermonkey script, mostly because React is being used on the site and I had to find some algorithms to traverse the state being stored in the React Fiber required some DOM traversal and knowing about the inner workings of React to figure out things like the Download URLs I needed for my script to work. Basically I had a list of files that I own on their site and wanted a "download all" button, so I made one.

It added a substantial amount of complexity but it wasn't insurmountable. The scripts he talks about sound like there's stuff I'd have to sub in a shell script or use a two stage process to do, as there is some post-download processing I'd like to do automatically, but there's no way for me to access my OS from the sandbox of Firefox (I mean, for good reason, although it would be nice if I could override that in some cases)

Re: I miss the programmable web (2021)

#9

Post by drran » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 6:10 AM UTC

IMHO, we need a browser optimized for power or professional user experience (PPUX), instead of browsers optimized for dumb users (DUX).

Re: I miss the programmable web (2021)

#10

Post by grishka » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 6:26 AM UTC

Huh? Userscripts are dead according to author, but I apparently never got the notice because I have about a dozen of those things installed right now. Three of them are for YouTube because it's this much annoying as is.