Has any of you heard of an amazing Firefox addon called “Greasemonkey”?
I learned about it yesterday and apparently it’s been around for many years (about time I crept out from under the rock I reckon).
So for those not in the know, the long and short of it, it lets you create custom java scripts and then it runs them for every page you load (you can finetune it so it loads only select scripts for certain pages).
If you’re familiar with javacript, you know that it virtually lets you “monkey around” with the content of the page, and basically turn everything on its head - there’s no limit to what you can do.
However I’ve found a practical application for this awesome Greasemonkey - to bust pesky ads and other annoying content that drives me up the wall every time I inadvertently look at it.
For example, Youtube has this extremely galling “Featured videos” section. It pisses me off no end because there’s no getting rid of it - youtube won’t let you remove it and adBlocker I have on Firefox doesn’t remove it either. What adds insult to injury is that the content of “Featured videos” is based solely on your IP address, it doesn’t take into account the location you set for yourself.
So up till I found Greasemonkey I was up the creek. Now I created a simple java script that loads and makes short work of this sucker - no more “Featured videos” section for me, it’s permanently gone!!!
I’ve also created a few other scripts that took good care of ads on Google mail and on my favorite online dictionary that my adBlocker couldn’t get at.
So now I’m one happy camper, thanks to Greasemonkey!