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> Today, it requires a big jump to go from using browser extensions to creating them: you need to learn a fair amount of web development to get started, and you

> Today, it requires a big jump to go from using browser extensions to creating them: you need to learn a fair amount of web development to get started, and you can’t easily develop extensions in the browser itself. What if there were a quick way to get started developing and sharing extensions in the browser? You could imagine smoothly transitioning from editing a website in the developer tools to publishing a small extension. They're not full extensions, but userscripts and user styles go a long way, and extensions exist that allow people to create/use them in the browser (eg. Tampermonkey[0] and Stylus[1].) I consider them incredibly important, even though they can't do as much as extensions. [0] https://www.tampermonkey.net/ https://www.tampermonkey.net/ [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpeebahjckkjfobafhncgmne https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpe...

remram 3y ago
Userscripts are underrated! I use them for all kinds of things, like fixing GitHub's useless landing page (taking me to my repositories instead), make the Mastodon "follow" button work (by hardcoding my instance's domain), block useless results from Google search results (stackshare and the like), redirect from the YouTube "short" view to the normal video video view, remove the stupid whitespace to the right of Gmail's scrollbar, etc.
- sanitycheck 3y ago
  I've used Tampermonkey for a couple of moderately complex things and it does work well... I didn't come across a particularly nice way to use an external editor or integrate it with a normal dev workflow though, I wonder if anyone has tricks to share? I'm fairly satisfied with editing in VS Code, using a tsconfig.json with strict mode and checkJs turned on, then using JSDoc for typing. The ugly bit is the manual copy-paste into the Tampermonkey code area each time.
  - dvdkon 3y ago
    I don't use Tampermonkey (it's not FLOSS), but I'm pretty sure Violentmonkey autoreloads script files when that script was installed from a local file (maybe I had to enable it somewhere).
    - sanitycheck 3y ago
      It looks like you're right, I may try that instead in future. The userscripts I've made have been mostly for work and I immediately dismissed "Violentmonkey" as unsuitable because of the name, I'm not going to ask my clients or their (less technical) clients to install something that sounds quite nefarious. Unfortunate! ("Tampermonkey" is bad enough, but at least it's widely known.)
  - remram 3y ago
    I tend to copy/paste into the console anyway during development, so having to copy/paste into Tampermonkey too doesn't slow me down too much. I suppose it would be nice to have a more integrated workflow though.
    - sanitycheck 3y ago
      Yeah, I agree it's not slow as such - but I find it a bit distracting remembering to do it, and if I don't concentrate then I forget and then I risk confusing myself momentarily (not hard to do).

remram 3y ago

Userscripts are underrated! I use them for all kinds of things, like fixing GitHub's useless landing page (taking me to my repositories instead), make the Mastodon "follow" button work (by hardcoding my instance's domain), block useless results from Google search results (stackshare and the like), redirect from the YouTube "short" view to the normal video video view, remove the stupid whitespace to the right of Gmail's scrollbar, etc.

sanitycheck 3y ago
I've used Tampermonkey for a couple of moderately complex things and it does work well... I didn't come across a particularly nice way to use an external editor or integrate it with a normal dev workflow though, I wonder if anyone has tricks to share? I'm fairly satisfied with editing in VS Code, using a tsconfig.json with strict mode and checkJs turned on, then using JSDoc for typing. The ugly bit is the manual copy-paste into the Tampermonkey code area each time.
- dvdkon 3y ago
  I don't use Tampermonkey (it's not FLOSS), but I'm pretty sure Violentmonkey autoreloads script files when that script was installed from a local file (maybe I had to enable it somewhere).
  - sanitycheck 3y ago
    It looks like you're right, I may try that instead in future. The userscripts I've made have been mostly for work and I immediately dismissed "Violentmonkey" as unsuitable because of the name, I'm not going to ask my clients or their (less technical) clients to install something that sounds quite nefarious. Unfortunate! ("Tampermonkey" is bad enough, but at least it's widely known.)
- remram 3y ago
  I tend to copy/paste into the console anyway during development, so having to copy/paste into Tampermonkey too doesn't slow me down too much. I suppose it would be nice to have a more integrated workflow though.
  - sanitycheck 3y ago
    Yeah, I agree it's not slow as such - but I find it a bit distracting remembering to do it, and if I don't concentrate then I forget and then I risk confusing myself momentarily (not hard to do).