A bit of Greasemonkeying

I haven't written anything here in a while, so here's me trying to get back into the game with a bit of Greasemonkey goodness.

I started reading the online version of Practical Common Lisp by Peter Seibel. I like the style and like it so far (first two chapters done).

When I read a book, I just can't help myself reading the footnotes when I encounter them. I know it distracts from reading the main text, but a lot of times I come across pretty interesting tidbits, so I think it's worthwhile.

The online version has footnotes, but they were just text (not links). So you have to scroll down to the end of the page, but then you'd lose your position in the main text.

Hence, this little Greasemonkey script.

Quote of The Day

From the inimitable Mark Jason Dominus:

Advice to people wishing to become smarter: Get in the habit of assuming that everything is more complex than you imagine.

Must See Oscars

Jon Stewart to Host 2006 Academy Awards

The inimitable Jon: Although, as an avid watcher of the Oscars, I can't help but be a little disappointed with the choice.

Quote of the Day

From Bob Harris:

Basic human decency shouldn't have to be an act of rebellion

Incidentally, Bob Harris has appeared on my favorite game show Jeopardy! more than a dozen times, most recently in the 2002 "Million-Dollar Masters" tournament and the 2005 Ultimate Tourament of Champions.

Firefox 1.5 is out!

I am probably the 3,232,456th person to blog this, but Firefox 1.5 is finally out after three release candidates. Go get it!

From Mozillazine announcement:

Firefox 1.5 introduces several new features, including an improved software update system, faster Back / Forward page navigation, a new options to clear private browsing data, drag-and-drop reordering of browser tabs, a redesigned Options/Preferences window and more robust popup blocking. Standards support is also improved, with support for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), JavaScript 1.6 and additional CSS properties. Accessibility is much improved (including new DHTML accessibility features), security has been enhanced and Mac OS X support has also been improved.

Interesting Hello, World! tidbit

While I was reading Practical Common Lisp, I found the following footnote.

The venerable "hello, world" predates even the classic Kernighan and Ritchie C book that played a big role in its popularization. The original "hello, world" seems to have come from Brian Kernighan's "A Tutorial Introduction to the Language B" that was part of the Bell Laboratories Computing Science Technical Report #8: The Programming Language B published in January 1973. (It's available online at http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/bintro.html.)

Also interesting and related is the ACM "Hello World" project, where one will find how to print "Hello, World" in nearly 200 languages.

POST Interceptor in Greasemonkey Hacks

Mark Pilgrim's upcoming book Greasemonkey Hacks includes 100 Greasemonkey scripts. My POST Interceptor script is one of them. I am honored to be included in this excellent book, and in the company of such excellent scripts as, Book Burro.

Preorder at Amazon

Flocking to Flock?

Heard about Flock, the New Kid on the Browser Block via the Greasemonkey mailing list. I have read a few months ago about Bart Decrem starting a new venture called Round Two to develop Improved Firefox. It seems Round Two has become Flock now.

Flock home page says:

Flock has landed.

We're introducing the world's most innovative social browsing experience. We call it the two-way web.

Over the next few weeks, we'll be seeding invites to a few lucky folks.

On the face of it, it looks like Firefox bundled a bunch of popular extensions. The site is a bit skimpy on details and the extensions page lists the bundled extensions. How this is different from vanilla Firefox + the listed extensions remains to be seen. If all they are offering is the convenience of bundled extensions, it really doesn't appeal to me. But there's that mysterious two-way web thingy!

I am gonna reserve my judgement on this, until I play with it. Given that it is going to be available by invite only, it's gonna take some time, I guess.