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06:05 pm - This originally began as a comment in someone's journal...
...but for all of you out there using FireFox, there's a plugin I'd like to demonstrate the power of.
GreaseMonkeyHow it does it's magic isn't that important, but what that magic is capable of is quite nice. It allows scripts to be run on your client-side BEFORE any web-page scripts are run each time a web-page loads, allowing portions of websites to be rewritten, extended, or otherwise modified. Everything from blocking ads at a level of site-specific design that most ad-blockers can't touch, to bypassing 'click through' full-page ads, to simple removing or reducing the impact of artificial limitations.
DeviantArt is a wonderful example for this. By default, you're forced to use tiny thumbnails, can't view more than 24 images per page of a gallery (which I might add shows 5 images per line) have ads littered around the pages you view, AND occasionally have click-through full-screen ads pop up. Of course,
all of this goes away if you pay them a subscription fee. Or if you go to
the userscripts.org DeviantArt category and install the appropriate scripts.
This shows both the power of the tool, it's promise, and it's threat to the proverbial 'powers that be' in the form of utterly defeating all forms of 'coercive payment for freely available services' business models. You can no longer block only select forms of access to a feature to non-paying customers. If the feature is available at all, GreaseMonkey can allow
all users to access it fully at any time they wish, to the point of re-writing your layout to suit themselves.
2 comments
IE7 does this, but I can't be bothered to learn its scripting.
Of course, IE7 automatically removes most ads (including Google ads) automatically, so I can't think of a reason to use it... ^^;
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You said you were interested in that HTML job - gonna send me a resume?
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