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Greasemonkey was the good one and then something happened with it and it was no longer the best choice. I'm not sure what. The same repeated with Tampermonkey.

Greasemonkey was the good one and then something happened with it and it was no longer the best choice. I'm not sure what. The same repeated with Tampermonkey. It now has telemetry built into it, at one time w/ no privacy policy. https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/6hs59w/tampermonkey_has_google_analytics_enabled_by/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/6hs59w/tampermonke... The good one now is Violentmonkey. Has been for some time. Does Mozilla have an allowlist for these? If so I don't like it.

Fnoord 4y ago
I just checked the addon in its settings. Yes, it has telemetry. No, it isn't enabled by default. Its opt-in. That's how I want such a feature implemented (e.g. Homebrew doesn't, it uses opt-out).
pwdisswordfishc 4y ago
> Greasemonkey was the good one and then something happened with it and it was no longer the best choice. I'm not sure what. ?????
- sp332 4y ago
  Wasn't this a casualty of the XUL addons being removed? The other monkey extensions were ported to the new Web Extension APIs.
  - pabs3 4y ago
    Greasemonkey still works in recent Firefox versions.
    - piyush_soni 4y ago
      It does, now, but its developer took a really long time in porting, in that time TamperMonkey was developed and had really gained popularity.
      - IAmNotAFix 4y ago
        So it might actually still be the best choice.
- piyush_soni 4y ago
  IIRC, the developer initially resisted shifting to WebExtensions and then eventually (my assumption) half-heartedly did convert his extension to it, but in the meantime TamperMonkey developer got to it much sooner and worked hard for making it work equally well in both Chrome and Firefox. It is still not as feature rich as TamperMonkey and not even actively maintained anymore I think.
sp332 4y ago
For Android, yeah, they have a short list of allowed addons. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/search/?promoted=recommended&sort=random&type=extension https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/search/?promoted=re... You can get past it if you're willing to run Nightly and jump through these hoops: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extension-support-in-firefox-for-android-nightly/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...
- benatkin 4y ago
  Hmm, well they've chosen a known bad one. What gives. :( How is this ever cool, Mozilla? https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey/issues/1545#issuecomment-1177494094 https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey/issues/1545#iss...
  - justinclift 4y ago
    Reading further down that issue, it doesn't seem to be what it initially sounded like. ?
    - benatkin 4y ago
      Still wild to reserve permission to to that
      - blibble 4y ago
        doing that would be flat out unlawful under the GDPR, regardless of whatever crap they put into their EULA and enough to get that company into rather expensive trouble
- plorg 4y ago
  You can do this in Beta now as well.
- mook 4y ago
  I've landed on using the F-droid build instead of Nightly. That also allows custom extension collections, and I believe Mozilla's attitude was that they get more telemetry for Nightly as they consider that an opt-in somehow (or at least they did for the desktop app).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jraph 4y ago
A big thing for me is that Tampermonkey is not open source. And yes, Firefox on Android has an allowlist of "known working good" extensions, the reason given being that Firefox for Android doesn't implement everything the Desktop version implements and IIUC, want to a avoid users blaming the browser when something breaks because of it.
- saghm 4y ago
  > A big thing for me is that Tampermonkey is not open source. How does that even work? I assumed that Firefox extensions were implemented in frontend web technologies (JavaScript, CSS, etc.)? Do they use WebAssembly or something, or is it just obfuscated to the point that trying to read it isn't worthwhile?
  - charles_f 4y ago
    The latter afaik, but also since they have analytics there's a backend bit you can't see
  - 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
    being in cleartext does not mean the code itself is "open source" or proprietary. the license defines that,
  - pmontra 4y ago
    Check the EULA at https://www.tampermonkey.net/eula.php https://www.tampermonkey.net/eula.php Excerpt from point 4 > 4. NON-ALLOWABLE USES OF TAMPERMONKEY > You are strictly prohibited from, and agree that you will not, adapt, edit, change, modify, transform, publish, republish, distribute, or redistribute Tampermonkey or any elements, portions, or parts thereof, including without limitation, to any elements, portions, or parts of Tampermonkey software (in any form or media) without the Company’s prior written consent. [...]
    - 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
      https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey/blob/master/COPYING https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey/blob/master/COP... this says GPL so unless they update their license file here, this stays
piyush_soni 4y ago
What exactly is better in ViolentMonkey? Just want to know because I keep working with userscripts and after GreaseMonkey's collapse TamperMonkey has been my default userscript manager.
- capitainenemo 4y ago
  ViolentMonkey at least seemed to be the only one that worked in my Firefox with NoScript enabled on a site. And since I was occasionally writing script snippets to fix stupid uses of JS to unhide images/html, that was nice.
  - eipi10_hn 4y ago
    My browsing's habit is the same as yours, just a bit different is I use noscript-mode and write my own scripts to fix the sites using ublock alone (so I won't need 2 extensions for it). It was a bit (nice) surprised for me to see many sites is really usable in noscript-mode.
    - capitainenemo 4y ago
      Heh. On a few (not all) my firefox profiles I actually use umatrix+noscript. :) This one I'm typing on right now actually. The reason is I like the simple toggle approach of noscript, but I like umatrix's granularity. So I set umatrix to block virtually all 3rd party things, but give it a full whitelist on the things noscript handles well (media/script/xhr/other). Then I whitelist selectively in noscript and expand slightly in umatrix if necessary (say, for temporarily whitelisting google's captcha images).
- thrdbndndn 4y ago
  In term of usability: its JS injector mechanism is much faster than TM last time I checked. Not that it's a big deal for normal users, but I have a few huge global scripts that I can see very visible impact. And it's more "cleaner" as that you can clearly see each scripts you loaded in devtool and debug them, but and I think TM is catching up in this regard. Outside that, VM is totally open source, development seems to be much quicker (with the drawback of slightly less stability, I'd admit), devs are more responsive.
fumeux_fume 4y ago
Only a small subset of extensions are allowed on mobile. If you use the nightly version of the Firefox app there's an elaborate process you can go thru to allow access to all extensions.
aqfamnzc 4y ago
I agree with most of your comment, but just a quick note that whether or not a service provides a privacy policy doesn't mean they necessarily do anything to protect users' privacy. (Mostly in the sense that if they did have one, that fact wouldn't mean much on its own.)
nfriedly 4y ago
Iceraven supports Violentmonkey - https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser (Iceraven is a fork of Firefox for Android with way more extensions enabled and several other annoyances fixed.) I just installed it and then added https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/460206-hn-avatars https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/460206-hn-avatars - it works perfectly!
- benatkin 4y ago
  Ooh, that's awesome! Similar to Kiwi Browser with Chromium.

Fnoord 4y ago

I just checked the addon in its settings. Yes, it has telemetry. No, it isn't enabled by default. Its opt-in. That's how I want such a feature implemented (e.g. Homebrew doesn't, it uses opt-out).

pwdisswordfishc 4y ago

> Greasemonkey was the good one and then something happened with it and it was no longer the best choice. I'm not sure what. ?????

sp332 4y ago
Wasn't this a casualty of the XUL addons being removed? The other monkey extensions were ported to the new Web Extension APIs.
- pabs3 4y ago
  Greasemonkey still works in recent Firefox versions.
  - piyush_soni 4y ago
    It does, now, but its developer took a really long time in porting, in that time TamperMonkey was developed and had really gained popularity.
    - IAmNotAFix 4y ago
      So it might actually still be the best choice.
piyush_soni 4y ago
IIRC, the developer initially resisted shifting to WebExtensions and then eventually (my assumption) half-heartedly did convert his extension to it, but in the meantime TamperMonkey developer got to it much sooner and worked hard for making it work equally well in both Chrome and Firefox. It is still not as feature rich as TamperMonkey and not even actively maintained anymore I think.

sp332 4y ago

For Android, yeah, they have a short list of allowed addons. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/search/?promoted=recommended&sort=random&type=extension https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/search/?promoted=re... You can get past it if you're willing to run Nightly and jump through these hoops: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extension-support-in-firefox-for-android-nightly/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...

benatkin 4y ago
Hmm, well they've chosen a known bad one. What gives. :( How is this ever cool, Mozilla? https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey/issues/1545#issuecomment-1177494094 https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey/issues/1545#iss...
- justinclift 4y ago
  Reading further down that issue, it doesn't seem to be what it initially sounded like. ?
  - benatkin 4y ago
    Still wild to reserve permission to to that
    - blibble 4y ago
      doing that would be flat out unlawful under the GDPR, regardless of whatever crap they put into their EULA and enough to get that company into rather expensive trouble
plorg 4y ago
You can do this in Beta now as well.
mook 4y ago
I've landed on using the F-droid build instead of Nightly. That also allows custom extension collections, and I believe Mozilla's attitude was that they get more telemetry for Nightly as they consider that an opt-in somehow (or at least they did for the desktop app).

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jraph 4y ago

A big thing for me is that Tampermonkey is not open source. And yes, Firefox on Android has an allowlist of "known working good" extensions, the reason given being that Firefox for Android doesn't implement everything the Desktop version implements and IIUC, want to a avoid users blaming the browser when something breaks because of it.

saghm 4y ago
> A big thing for me is that Tampermonkey is not open source. How does that even work? I assumed that Firefox extensions were implemented in frontend web technologies (JavaScript, CSS, etc.)? Do they use WebAssembly or something, or is it just obfuscated to the point that trying to read it isn't worthwhile?
- charles_f 4y ago
  The latter afaik, but also since they have analytics there's a backend bit you can't see
- 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
  being in cleartext does not mean the code itself is "open source" or proprietary. the license defines that,
- pmontra 4y ago
  Check the EULA at https://www.tampermonkey.net/eula.php https://www.tampermonkey.net/eula.php Excerpt from point 4 > 4. NON-ALLOWABLE USES OF TAMPERMONKEY > You are strictly prohibited from, and agree that you will not, adapt, edit, change, modify, transform, publish, republish, distribute, or redistribute Tampermonkey or any elements, portions, or parts thereof, including without limitation, to any elements, portions, or parts of Tampermonkey software (in any form or media) without the Company’s prior written consent. [...]
  - 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
    https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey/blob/master/COPYING https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey/blob/master/COP... this says GPL so unless they update their license file here, this stays

piyush_soni 4y ago

What exactly is better in ViolentMonkey? Just want to know because I keep working with userscripts and after GreaseMonkey's collapse TamperMonkey has been my default userscript manager.

capitainenemo 4y ago
ViolentMonkey at least seemed to be the only one that worked in my Firefox with NoScript enabled on a site. And since I was occasionally writing script snippets to fix stupid uses of JS to unhide images/html, that was nice.
- eipi10_hn 4y ago
  My browsing's habit is the same as yours, just a bit different is I use noscript-mode and write my own scripts to fix the sites using ublock alone (so I won't need 2 extensions for it). It was a bit (nice) surprised for me to see many sites is really usable in noscript-mode.
  - capitainenemo 4y ago
    Heh. On a few (not all) my firefox profiles I actually use umatrix+noscript. :) This one I'm typing on right now actually. The reason is I like the simple toggle approach of noscript, but I like umatrix's granularity. So I set umatrix to block virtually all 3rd party things, but give it a full whitelist on the things noscript handles well (media/script/xhr/other). Then I whitelist selectively in noscript and expand slightly in umatrix if necessary (say, for temporarily whitelisting google's captcha images).
thrdbndndn 4y ago
In term of usability: its JS injector mechanism is much faster than TM last time I checked. Not that it's a big deal for normal users, but I have a few huge global scripts that I can see very visible impact. And it's more "cleaner" as that you can clearly see each scripts you loaded in devtool and debug them, but and I think TM is catching up in this regard. Outside that, VM is totally open source, development seems to be much quicker (with the drawback of slightly less stability, I'd admit), devs are more responsive.

fumeux_fume 4y ago

Only a small subset of extensions are allowed on mobile. If you use the nightly version of the Firefox app there's an elaborate process you can go thru to allow access to all extensions.

aqfamnzc 4y ago

I agree with most of your comment, but just a quick note that whether or not a service provides a privacy policy doesn't mean they necessarily do anything to protect users' privacy. (Mostly in the sense that if they did have one, that fact wouldn't mean much on its own.)

nfriedly 4y ago

Iceraven supports Violentmonkey - https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser (Iceraven is a fork of Firefox for Android with way more extensions enabled and several other annoyances fixed.) I just installed it and then added https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/460206-hn-avatars https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/460206-hn-avatars - it works perfectly!

benatkin 4y ago
Ooh, that's awesome! Similar to Kiwi Browser with Chromium.