Michael Koby

A few months ago I installed Greasemonkey, an Add-on (previously called “extensions”) for Mozilla’s Firefox browser. The idea behind Greasemonkey is to add functionality to or change the appearance of websites. Most of the time these changes are not drastic but can really add to one’s web browsing experience in a many good ways. For this week’s list, I thought that I would share some of my favorite Greasemonkey scripts with you.

• Delicious Vibes – I love De.licio.us. When it comes to bookmarking sites for later research, reading, and/or reference there is nothing better. However, the default Delicious look is pretty blah and not really appealing at all. This Greasemonkey script gives Del.icio.us a more Netvibe-ish look. Which really cleans up the interface nicely.

• Netvibes Tweaks – Netvibes is my new homepage. All my hot RSS feeds, news items, and stuff I need to stay up on is on there. Without it I would not be so “in the know” and would miss out on important news. The default Netvibes look is nice, very soothing, and pleasing to the eye. What this little script does is just makes things a little easier to look at. It rounds the tabs and makes “read” items easier to see and will bold new items a little more than default. All in all, a great script for any Netvibes fan.

• Mirrored by DuggMirror – I Digg a lot throughout the day. One thing that many people who are newcomers to Digg notice real fast is that a lot of webservers can not handle the traffic load Digg can send their way. Thank God for the folks at DuggMirror. DuggMirror will mirror a site before it goes down due to the “Digg-Effect” allowing folks to be able to see it. This Greasemonkey script adds a DuggMirror link next to each story so that you can click on the link instead of searching the comments for the DuggMirror link that someone usually provides.

• Gmail Revisited – Gmail, Google’s web mail service, is probably hands down the best web mail service out there right now. That however does not mean that it is the prettiest (Yahoo! Web Mail Beat wins that prize). What the Gmail: Revisited Greasemonkey script does is change the fonts and some of the colors to make Gmail just a little more pleasing to the eye. It does not drastically change the interface but they changes make it easier to read the screen.

• MySpace Custom Style Remover – Myspace can be a major headache sometimes. If you can actually get the site to respond to your requests, you will usually find yourself staring at a custom styled user page that you can not read any of the text on. Probably the best Greasemonkey script in existence right now is the MySpace Custom Style Remover. What this script does is remove the custom styles on a page and brings the pages back to the MySpace default, which while ugly is easier to read then some of the styles people put on their pages.

So there you have it. Some of my favorite Greasemonkey scripts. Do you have a favorite? Leave a comment and let me know about it.

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