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Dotjs — hack the web

defunkt.io

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Re: Dotjs — hack the web

#41

Post by ericmoritz »

defunkt wrote: post #17
gue5t wrote: post #14

This seems like it's a lot of overhead for what amounts, in terms of capability, to a reimplementation of greasemonkey. It also makes you implement finer controls on execution by url yourself, whereas greasemonkey has them in its syntax. The author states, "GreaseMonkey user scripts are great, but you need to publish them somewhere and re-publish after making modifications. With dotjs, just add or edit files in ~/.js…

That's all true, but dotjs is only for Google Chrome on OS X. Google Chrome on OS X has no such filesystem-based model for managing scripts.

You know that once a user script is installed in chrome you can edit the script.js file in the extension's directory on the fly. It's a little more work than simply putting a file in ~/.js but it doesn't require a HTTP server to function.

Re: Dotjs — hack the web

#42

Post by aboodman »

defunkt wrote: post #16
reustle wrote: post #13

Requires Ruby? Why...

Chrome extensions can't access the local filesystem so we have to start a tiny webserver in the background. If someone knows a way around this limitation, or a simpler webserver to require / embed, I would be thrilled. But so far this is the best I've found.

Did you investigate requesting the files directly from the filesystem, like "file:///home/monkey/.js/google.com.js".

You'd need to tell users to enable file access for the extension though chrome://extensions/, since that isn't enabled by default and users have to opt into it. I also don't know if there is a way to get the current user's homedir without hardcoding it.

Also: you're being super careful to not allow arbitrary reading of the filesystem, right? A good sanity check would be to ensure that realpath() of any file served is under ~/.js before handing it off.

Re: Dotjs — hack the web

#43

Post by scrrr »

dasil003 wrote: post #39
seanp2k wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So actually it's much worse than Greasemonkey. Also, with GM you can just save the script with the same filename and it'll use that instead. This project is 100% useless.

Unless you don't use Firefox and you tend to have a lot of dot files that you hack around with in your home directory. Then it starts to seem pretty awesome.

Chrome runs Greasemonkey-scripts, too. They are automatically converted to extensions in the background. Works very well. ( http://blog.chromium.org/2010/02/40000-more-extensions.html )

But I wouldn't call this useless. It's just another approach.

Re: Dotjs — hack the web

#44

Post by alsocasey »

forgotusername wrote: post #27
holman wrote: post #8

I've sneakily been using this for months on Hacker News itself- I just .hide() stories past around story #15. More signal, less noise. And it's just jQuery, so it's really easy to whip up. Bonus points for it being so easy to share, too: https://github.com/holman/holman-js/blob/master/news.ycombin...

It's interesting how perspectives differ on what is considered noise. On the average day I start my browsing here around link 15, or even the new queue. You're pretty much guaranteed to hear of anything hitting the front page anyway if it was meaningful to begin with. If not, it's probably some momentary obsession or buzzword bingo (say, "Google", "Social", "Facebook killer", "Privacy", "Product launch" to take an ep…

I'll add bitcoin to that list.

Re: Dotjs — hack the web

#46

Post by niekmaas »

alsocasey wrote: post #44
forgotusername wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting how perspectives differ on what is considered noise. On the average day I start my browsing here around link 15, or even the new queue. You're pretty much guaranteed to hear of anything hitting the front page anyway if it was meaningful to begin with. If not, it's probably some momentary obsession or buzzword bingo (say, "Google", "Social", "Facebook killer", "Privacy", "Product launch" to take an ep…

I'll add bitcoin to that list.

don't forget the cloud!

Re: Dotjs — hack the web

#48

Post by vijaydev »

seanp2k wrote: post #38
defunkt wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome extensions can't access the local filesystem so we have to start a tiny webserver in the background. If someone knows a way around this limitation, or a simpler webserver to require / embed, I would be thrilled. But so far this is the best I've found.

ahahahahah what? Dude, do you work for Microsoft? "Well see, we just have to run MS-SQL server (DESKTOP OMG EXPRESS ENGINE) here, and then we run IIS on top of it to serve this file listing..."

He co-founded GitHub and is the CEO presently. That will be good enough for you?

Re: Dotjs — hack the web

#49

Post by yread »

holman wrote: post #8

I've sneakily been using this for months on Hacker News itself- I just .hide() stories past around story #15. More signal, less noise. And it's just jQuery, so it's really easy to whip up. Bonus points for it being so easy to share, too: https://github.com/holman/holman-js/blob/master/news.ycombin...

I quickly scan http://hckrnews.com/ which makes sure I don't miss any upvoted story. It does have a lot of noise, but going through 20 or so articles since last time i looked doesn't take that long

Re: Dotjs — hack the web

#50

Post by SupremumLimit »

yread wrote: post #49
holman wrote: post #8

I've sneakily been using this for months on Hacker News itself- I just .hide() stories past around story #15. More signal, less noise. And it's just jQuery, so it's really easy to whip up. Bonus points for it being so easy to share, too: https://github.com/holman/holman-js/blob/master/news.ycombin...

I quickly scan http://hckrnews.com/ which makes sure I don't miss any upvoted story. It does have a lot of noise, but going through 20 or so articles since last time i looked doesn't take that long

I just look at the top 50% on hckrnews.com. That seems to work for me, even though I'm not usually after the buzzword-of-the-day stories.
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