greasemonkey
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Quick Armory remixes Armory and achievement data with Greasemonkey
Erorus sent us some cool Armory-related tools he's been working on -- you can find them all at QuickArmory.com. Aside from the usual Armory lookup (with a much faster loading design), he's got an Heirloom item tracker (you put in your level and it will show you what the Heirloom items look like throughout the game), an Arena Points calculator, and perhaps most interesting, an Achievement Tracker. That last one actually does something a little different from most Armory sites -- it uses the Greasemonkey Firefox script to have your browser pull information from the Armory rather than Erorus' servers doing it. The output ends up looking more or less the same, but basically his site tells your browser what information to get, and your browser gets the info rather than his server. Interesting way of getting around the problem of stability, though the tradeoff is that you've got to use Firefox and install the addon to use his site.None of the tools provide quite as much functionality as some of the other more specialized Armory sites out there, but Erorus does some new and interesting things with the Armory information, on the Achievement tracker especially. If you can't get enough of your character's stats (and in this case, happen to also use Firefox), they're worth checking out.
Second Life versus BBCode - an open letter to Philip Linden
Second Life user Jesse Barnett today posted an open letter to Philip Rosedale (aka Philip Linden) in the Second Life forums, with copies in the Public JIRA issue tracker, and in the Second Life developer mailing list. 'Well actually there is one thing we have asked and that is for bbcode to be reenabled and yet the official linden response is that "Sorry, we don't have 5 minutes to answer that question."' It all pretty much boils down to the vBulletin-based official forums (or what is left of them) and the fact that BBCode support for them is either broken or disabled (it was disabled in response to a cross-site scripting vulnerability, but why it remains off is an open question). While there are some workarounds, such as using GreaseMonkey to modify pages on the fly, those few users who use the official forums since the forums' fangs were pulled, find the issue vexatious.
Skip the interceptor with Greasemonkey
Frequent visitors to the official WoW forums will no doubt be familiar with the Forum Interceptor that Blizzard has in place for your "protection." Briefly, any time you click a link in a forum thread that doesn't lead to a Blizzard-owned domain, a bit of JavaScript loads an Interceptor page that tells you to be wary of keyloggers and things, and that the internet is a dangerous place. Possibly useful to people under the age of ten; otherwise, it gets old fast.Fortunately, there are ways around it. Opening a link in a new tab (middle-click) works in most browsers. But what if you don't want to think about it all the time? Shouldn't links in the forums work just like links everywhere else on the freaking internet? Yes, they should. And that's why we have Greasemonkey. Greasemonkey is a Firefox plug-in that lets users install userscripts that do things to websites. If that sounds vague, it is; userscripts can perform all sorts of tricks. The script we're interested in, called Shelter from a Blizzard, does precisely one thing: makes links on the WoW forums point directly to their destinations, skipping the interceptor page.If you're running Firefox, and want this magic in your very own browser, here's what you do: Install Greasemonkey, if you don't already have it. Once you're done installing, restart your browser. Go to Shelter from a Blizzard's page, and click the "Install This Script" button at the right. That's it! From now on all WoW forum pages you load will be de-intercepted.
MsgFiler brings keyboard shortcuts to Mail organization
Organizing emails in Mail.app can be a pain, and sometimes using rules can only go so far. If you need a helping hand to manage all that correspondence, MsgFiler brings some on-the-fly automation to filing messages you've selected. Simply pressing cmd-9 will open a panel that allows you to type the names of folders. Pressing Enter to chose one sends all selected messages to said folder, offering flexibility in your filing habits. A demonstration movie is available at tow.com in case you need to see some examples. MsgFiler typically sells for $12, but is on sale for a limited time for $8.Now all we need is an equivalent of that Greasemonkey script that also allows for label navigation via the keyboard, and Mail.app just might make it back into my Dock.[via Daring Fireball]
A browser just for Gmail
In a dual gesture of both kicking Mail.app to the curb and flexing the power of Xcode, Michael McCracken has built his own streamlined browser just for using Gmail. Quirky browser behaviors and avoiding the distractions that come from multiple browser windows and bookmark bars prompted this 10-line coding experiment.The resulting WebMail.app is exactly what Michael set out to create: a very slim Gmail viewer (you don't even get an address bar) based on WebKit. It works well, though there are quirks when having to do anything browser-related with it. Clicking a link in a message, for example, creates a new window in WebMail.app, not your default browser. Minor quirks aside, if you're in the same boat as Michael and you want a browser window just for using Gmail so you can retain things like your labels and alternate-email address abilities, this might be right up your alley.Personally, I'm very tempted to use this since I too have joined the ranks of kicking Mail.app to the curb (running it only on occasion to download and archive my email). However, some of the Greasemonkey scripts for Gmail that I've been using in Firefox have become indispensable to how I work with Gmail; being able to move between labels, trash messages and even label messages all with a couple strokes of the keyboard rivals even desktop email app functionality. It would be great to see someone run with WebMail.app (Michael bundles the source in his download) and add some javascript ninja coding to combine the beauty of WebKit with the functionality of those Gmail script abilities to create one rockin' Gmail app.*sigh* A Gmail-using blogger can dream, can't he?[via Hawk Wings]
Creammonkey is great - but where are the scripts?
I found a Safari plugin by the name of Creammonkey, which is more or less an attempt at bringing Greasemonkey's abilities to Safari's side of the fence. For those unfamiliar with Greasemonkey: it's a Firefox extension that allows savvy javascript ninjas to add functionality to websites and services, such as enabling colored labels in Gmail or displaying in-bound links for a site you're visiting.It's hard to argue that the idea of adding functionality to websites isn't cool. Even in its infancy, the promises of Creammonkey sound really slick, but my one problem so far is: where are the scripts? Creammonkey is more or less a platform, and I'm having a really hard time tracking down any scripts to plug into it - including those pictured in this screenshot I borrowed.So, to the devs of Creammonkey (or the fantastic folks at PimpMySafari): could you put together some links to scripts that'll help make Creammonkey shine? Also, to you TUAW readers: does anyone care to link scripts they've found or created? Let's get this javascript party started.
