[PLUG-TALK] Greasemonkey fixes many Google annoyances

Keith Lofstrom keithl at kl-ic.com
Tue Jul 5 07:38:46 UTC 2011


The stuff down the left side of the search results is only
mildly annoying to me.  OTOH, I am vexed at the stuff that
Google adds to the tab on the left of the iGoogle page. 
It squashes the applets, somewhat annoying on my 2048x1536
laptop, very annoying on my wife's 1024xs768 screen.

I use a tool called "Super iGoogle" which eliminates much
of the garbage that comes with the iGoogle start page,
including the infamous left side tab.  That is a user
script which runs under the add-on "Greasemonkey", which
manipulates the presentation of Firefox content.  

But that fixes a different problem than yours.  I went 
looking and found a Greasemonkey user script called:

"Google: Hide/Show Left Sidebar Navigation with Toggle Button"

That seem to do what you want - getting rid of the left
panel in the search results.  So I removed the mild
annoyance, and hopefully yours.  Thanks for the prod.

Here's where to find all this goodness:

Greasemonkey:  http://www.greasespot.net/
Hide/Show...:  http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/76197
Super iGoogle: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/26855

First you install the add-on Greasemonkey, restart, then go
into the menu:  Tools -> Greasemonkey -> Manage User Scripts.

That menu allows you to add or control user scripts.  You
can even call an editor and hack the javascript - most of
which is beyond me, but fonts and dialog box sizes are
easy to figure out.

There are thousands of Greasemonkey scripts available, for
many other sites besides Google, so plan on spending hours
downloading and playing with new goodies.  Keep in mind
that some of these scripts are fragile or poorly written,
so if Google changes the name of some variable, the
Google-related scripts may break, and the page reverts to
the default behavior.  Most of the popular user scripts
get patched or repaired within a few days, though.

BTW, Greasemonkey runs on Firefox on any platform, not
just Linux.  So you can show it to your Windows-ridden
friends, and earn their undying gratitude.

Now, to write a Greasemonkey script that turns all those
"I agree" buttons into "To hell with your agreement, I'm
clicking a different checkbox entirely, but your stupid
web server will still send me your content."

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs



More information about the PLUG-talk mailing list