Grease Monkeying Around

I'm wasting time but, since I'm wasting it I may as well waste it a little more efficiently. I'm all for open source, though not a programmer myself, I appreciate those who's hobby is to tweak, create, and produce high quality software. One of the best aspects of course is for the casual end user who just doesn't know the difference from a bug from a crash, with open source a fix may be as simple as saying hey look what just happened. You could say I am an apostle of open source.

Open source goes beyond just software it delves into making even pay for use software more usable by customizations. One of the best way to customize everything is via Grease Monkey Scripts (GM). GM itself may not be open source (the info I've looked at for this article is not clear on it) but the customizations that can be implemented by GM are endless and open.

From the Greasespot Blog (http://www.greasespot.net/2009/09/who-uses-greasemonkey-part-2.html#links) 91.5% of GM scripts are Window Users. Hum, does that tell Microsoft something? It should & they do take it into consideration.

A quick Google search for GM scripts produced more then a hundred pages of scripts many of the articles begin with "The Best GM Scripts to Use..." It's an easy fill in the blank. I'll highlight just a few of those pages for productivity, deviantArt, and for crossovers like myself Flickr.

For the most up to date info on Grease Monkey and the GM Scripts visit:
the Wiki
http://wiki.greasespot.net/Main_Page
the Blog Greasespot
http://www.greasespot.net/

For deviantArt we can thank a few of our own who highlight specifically what GM is and does.
In the news, from Sathoro
http://news.deviantart.com/article/68563/
In journals, from Philho
http://philho.deviantart.com/journal/15970524/
http://kabukikatze.deviantart.com/journal/24602932/
In miscellaneous regions
http://swik.net/lightbox+Greasemonkey
From UserScripts.org
http://userscripts.org/scripts/search?q=deviantart&x=0&y=0
That was a fast search that pulled 177 different scripts. I haven't looked at more then a page full of these & I will say, interesting. Some of these I may use others I'll disregard.

For crossover users on Flickr check out:
Slick Affiliate
http://slickaffiliate.com/best-of-greasemonkey-scripts-firefox/
Flickr Hacks
http://www.flickr.com/groups/flickrhacks/

For productivity which does include vast manipulations of G-mail and other big G services. These links produce a mixed bag of what can be done.
From Y! Tech
http://tech.yahoo.com/gd/17-greasemonkey-scripts-to-turbocharge-your-browser/209049
Irony strikes with this article for it highlights how to control a few G-mail features while only touching on one Y! owned web page.
From Lifehacker
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/top-10-greasemonkey-scripts-to-improve-your-productivity.html
Another mis-labeled article on how to control G-mail but then again how integrated is the Big G in not only our surfing lives but now into our un-virtual lives as well?

What then are my favorite GM scripts? To many, I've got more then a megabyte of saved scripts. Most of these scripts are to manipulate Flick. dA does a great job of handling their own services in a user friendly way I have little use of manipulating it.