Mon 20 Apr 2009
Tags: delicious, greasemonkey, squatter_domain, squatter_redirect
A few weeks ago I hit a couple of domain squatter sites in quick
succession and got a bit annoyed. I asked on twitter/identi.ca
whether anyone knew of any kind of domain squatter database on the
web, perhaps along the lines of the email RBL lists, but got no
replies.
I thought at the time that delicious might
be useful for this, in much the same way that Jon Udell has been
exploring
using delicious for collaborative
event curation.
So here's the results of some hacking time this weekend:
Squatter Redirect,
a greasemonkey script (i.e. firefox only,
sorry) that checks whether the sites you visit have been tagged on
delicious as squatter domains that should be directed elsewhere, and
if so, does the redirect in your browser.
Here's a few squatter domains to try it out on:
The script checks two delicious accounts - your personal account, so
you can add your own domains without having to wait for them to be
pulled into the 'official' squatter_redirect stream; and the
official squatter_redirect delicious account, into which other
people's tags are periodically pulled after checking.
Marking a new domain as a squatter simply involves creating a delicious
bookmark for the squatter page with a few special tags:
squatter_redirect - flagging the bookmark for the attention of
the squatter_redirect delicious usersquatter_redirect=www.realdomain.com - setting the real domain that you
want to be redirected to- (optional)
squatter_domain=www.baddomain.com - marker for the
squatter domain itself (only required if you want to use from your own
delicious account)
So www.quagga.org above would be tagged:
squatter_redirect squatter_redirect=www.quagga.net
# or, optionally:
squatter_redirect squatter_redirect=www.quagga.net squatter_domain=www.quagga.org
Feedback/comments welcome.
Mon 09 Mar 2009
Tags: cityrail, timetables, greasemonkey
I got sufficiently annoyed over last week's
Cityrail
Timetable
fiasco
that I thought I'd contribute something to the making-Cityrail-bearable
software ecosystem.
So this post is to announce a new Greasemonkey script
called Cityrail Timetables Reloaded
[CTR], available at the standard Greasemonkey repository on
userscripts.org, that cleans up and extensively
refactors Cityrail's standard timetable pages.
Here's a screenshot of Cityrail's initial timetable page for the Northern
line:
and here's the same page with CTR loaded:
CTR loads a configurable number of pages rather than forcing you to click
through them one by one, and in fact will load the whole set if you tell it
to.
It also has support for you specifying the 'from' and 'to' stations you're
travelling between, and will highlight them for you, as well as omit stations
well before or well after yours, and any trains that don't actually stop at
your stations. This can compress the output a lot, allowing you to fit more
pages on your screen:
I can't see Cityrail having a problem with this script since it's just
taking their pages and cleaning them up, but we shall see.
If you're a firefox/greasemonkey user please try it out and post your
comments/feedback here or on the userscripts site.
Enjoy!
Tue 02 Oct 2007
Tags: web, firefox, greasemonkey, top list
I've been meaning to document the set of firefox extensions I'm currently
using, partly to share with others, partly so they're easy to find and install
when I start using a new machine, and partly to track the way my usage changes
over time. Here's the current list:
Obligatory Extensions
Greasemonkey - the
fantastic firefox user script manager, allowing
client-side javascript scripts to totally transform any web page before it
gets to you. For me, this is firefox's "killer feature" (and see below for
the user scripts I recommend).
Flash Block - disable
flash and shockwave content from running automatically, adding placeholders
to allow running manually if desired (plus per-site whitelists, etc.)
AdBlock Plus - block
ad images via a right-click menu option
Chris Pederick's
Web Developer Toolbar - a
fantastic collection of tools for web developers
Joe Hewitt's Firebug -
the premiere firefox web debugging tool - its html and css inspection
features are especially cool
Daniel Lindkvist's
Add Bookmark Here
extension, adding a menu item to bookmark toolbar dropdowns to add the
current page directly in the right location
Optional Extensions
Michael Kaply's Operator -
a very nice microformats toolbar, for discovering
the shiny new microformats embedded in web pages, and providing operations you
can perform on them
Zotero - a very
interesting extension to help capture and organise research information,
including webpages, notes, citations, and bibliographic information
Colorful Tabs - tabs +
eye candy - mmmmm!
Chris Pederick's
User Agent Switcher -
for braindead websites that only think they need IE
ForecastFox - nice
weather forecast widgets in your firefox status bar (and not just
US-centric)
Greasemonkey User Scripts
So what am I missing here?
Updates:
Since this post, I've added the following to my must-have list:
Tony Murray's Print Hint -
helps you find print stylesheets and/or printer-friendly versions of pages
the Style Sheet Chooser II
extension, which extends firefox's standard alternate stylesheet selection
functionality
Ron Beck's JSView
extension, allowing you to view external javascript and css styles used
by a page
The It's All Text
extension, allowing textareas to be editing using the external editor of
your choice.
The Live HTTP Headers
plugin - invaluable for times when you need to see exactly what is going on
between your browser and the server
Gareth Hunt's Modify Headers
plugin, for setting arbitrary HTTP headers for web development
Sebastian Tschan's Autofill Forms
extension - amazingly useful for autofilling forms quickly and efficiently
