Greasemonkey

Greasemonkey (of English greasemonkey for "( car ) mechanic ", literally " Schmieraffe " in German colloquially " Schmiermaxe " ) is called an extension to the Mozilla Firefox web browser, which enables the implementation of the concept Active Browsing. Greasemonkey allows the user to do custom JavaScript files in the browser. These scripts customize the appearance and behavior of the displayed web page, without having to make an access to the actual web page. This Greasemonkey extended example websites to functions, fixes bugs in the presentation, integrates content from other websites and does repetitive tasks automatically.

Technical details

Greasemonkey is written in JavaScript and XUL. The extension allows the user to run JavaScript files in the browser, which can manipulate the displayed web page via DOM interface. These JavaScript files are called Greasemonkey scripts; they are without the extension does not run directly. However, because Greasemonkey provides only a simplification for the creation and integration of these scripts, there are many Greasemonkey scripts to a standalone executable Firefox extension or bookmarklet.

For each script multiple regular expressions can be defined by one or, for which URL it should be included. If this URL invoked Greasemonkey binds the script in the page, so that this behaves as if it had been included from the page itself, and can change the page therefore arbitrary.

Greasemonkey scripts have the file extension. User.js so that they are automatically detected by Greasemonkey scripts and as are offered to the user for installation. In addition to the actual JavaScript code files contain some metadata about author, working methods and suggestions for to use regular expressions.

Although Greasemonkey simplifies the creation of extensions, but a basic knowledge of JavaScript and DOM is required. However, it allows an "extension to extension" called Platypus to create in a more WYSIWYG simple scripts and save the hide, for example, parts of a Web page or move and restore these changes when you re- visit the site.

Typical areas of application

Users have created a wide variety of scripts, which for example

  • Install a delete button or feeds from Google Reader into Gmail
  • Show prices for the same product on other websites
  • Remove many types of Internet advertising
  • Customize the layout of a Web page
  • Fill out forms automatically
  • Add shortcuts to the website
  • Call services automatically via HTTPS

Similar functions for other browsers

Greasemonkey is available for Mozilla Firefox, Epiphany, Flock and Seamonkey.

In QupZilla Greasemonkey is also available.

Opera has implemented version 8 or similar software directly, making Greasemonkey scripts, mostly in Opera changes are run without (large ). In addition, there are two extensions called Violent Monkey, which is a counterpart to Greasemonkey, and User Script Converter, which tries to generate Opera Extensions of Greasemonkey scripts.

For Internet Explorer tries this functionality was (never now ) by GreasemonkIE, Trixie and Turnabout provide, where only the latter is being developed as open source software under the BSD license. A similar concept also iMacros, but this software is focused on the automation of processes in the browser. Changes in the website are not provided.

For Safari there with GreaseKit (formerly Cream Monkey) and PithHelmet ( Shareware) similar tools for the Mac OS version of the browser.

Google Chrome supports Greasemonkey scripts since version published in early 2010 4 The scripts are not natively run as ECMA scripts, but transferred when installing a script in a plugin that can be managed like all other extensions of the browser then. Due to the technical differences between Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome Google assumes, however, that only about 85 to 90% of the scripts run properly in Google Chrome. With Tampermonkey also exists a Chrome extension that claims to be fully compatible with Greasemonkey.

Almost all browsers allow you to run through bookmarklets JavaScript in your browser, but only by manual call and not automatically when the page loads.

Similar software

Very similar, but with Cascading Style Sheets, the extension Stylish for Mozilla and Chrome browser works.

Many local proxy servers can be used, regardless of browser, before displaying to change the requested web page by the web browser, such as Proxomitron and Privoxy.

Document Object Model Uniform Resource Locator Web (web browser) Flock (web browser) BSD licenses Webbrowser
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