Anyone who uses the web to research technical topics really ought to be familiar with Google Groups as an invaluable resource. As such a person, I was shocked to realize that Big G recently decided that Groups is no longer worthy of a direct link above their main search box!
Inevitably, popularity causes all products and services to slide toward suck. This immutable law of business arises from the fact that most human beings are so incredibly stupid that striving toward simplification is the only way to spare us from dangerously depressing acts such as wonder and empowerment. Luckily, while checking my RSS feeds I stumbled upon two great things that I’ve gotta spread the word on.
First, there is apparently an alternative to Greasemonkey that goes by the cheery voodoo-eqsque name of Chickenfoot. What’s cool about it is that it wraps a good deal of the things Greasemonkey scripts do with standard functions like remove(), insert(), and before()… don’t get me wrong now, DOM traversal is just SOOO much fun! But standardization like this tends to boost overall quality, security, speed, and dramatically cuts down the time it takes make things work.
Hopefully the availability of Chickenfoot scripts will grow by leaps and bounds and a decent repository will spring up to keep them organized. Modifying web pages to our personal tastes is a concept and practice that celebrates the original spirit of the Internet. The more we’re able to popularize and advocate for client-side customization the more likely that 10 years from now we won’t have to put up with a nightmare reality of digitally encrypted web pages that get piped to our screens via secure video framebuffers.
Ehem! Getting back on topic here, my discovery of Chickenfoot comes by way of this sweet little script that puts the Google Groups link back where it belongs. Let’s just pray that we never have to live in a world where the presentation of our web-based experience is at the mercy of the idiot of marketers and managers that pull this kind of shit. Enjoy!
Inevitably, popularity causes all products and services to slide toward suck. This immutable law of business arises from the fact that most human beings are so incredibly stupid that striving toward simplification is the only way to spare us from dangerously depressing acts such as wonder and empowerment. Luckily, while checking my RSS feeds I stumbled upon two great things that I’ve gotta spread the word on.
First, there is apparently an alternative to Greasemonkey that goes by the cheery voodoo-eqsque name of Chickenfoot. What’s cool about it is that it wraps a good deal of the things Greasemonkey scripts do with standard functions like remove(), insert(), and before()… don’t get me wrong now, DOM traversal is just SOOO much fun! But standardization like this tends to boost overall quality, security, speed, and dramatically cuts down the time it takes make things work.
Hopefully the availability of Chickenfoot scripts will grow by leaps and bounds and a decent repository will spring up to keep them organized. Modifying web pages to our personal tastes is a concept and practice that celebrates the original spirit of the Internet. The more we’re able to popularize and advocate for client-side customization the more likely that 10 years from now we won’t have to put up with a nightmare reality of digitally encrypted web pages that get piped to our screens via secure video framebuffers.
Ehem! Getting back on topic here, my discovery of Chickenfoot comes by way of this sweet little script that puts the Google Groups link back where it belongs. Let’s just pray that we never have to live in a world where the presentation of our web-based experience is at the mercy of the idiot of marketers and managers that pull this kind of shit. Enjoy!
