Skip to main content

Writing your first UserScript, Template as a beginner's tutorial

UserScripts are fun, useful and often productive. A lot of sites have small improvements you think could add a lot of value. And just because you are not the author of the site, you need not give up. With some basic javascript skills, you could write a userscript, install it on your browser, and make the site behave.

Step 1. Build a script from the template

Start with the following template and modify what you want
// ==UserScript==
//
//Displayable Name of your script 
// @name           My First Script 
//
// brief description
// @description    Alerts Hello   
//
//URI (preferably your own site, so browser can avert naming collisions
// @namespace      http://www.sarathonline.com/dyn/userscripts/hello/
//
// Your name, userscript userid link (optional)   
// @author         sarathonline (http://userscripts.org/users/****) 
//
// If you want to license out
// @license        GNU GPL v3 (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html) 
//
//(optional) may be used by browsers to display an about link
// @homepage       http://www.sarathonline.com/dyn/userscripts/hello/ 
//
//Version Number
// @version        1.0
//
// Urls process this user script on
// @include        http://*
//
// Add any library dependencies here, so they are loaded before your script is loaded.
//
// @require        https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.0/jquery.min.js
//
// @history        1.0 first version
// @history        1.0b first beta version, who knew!!
//
// ==/UserScript==


//And of course your code!!
$(function(){
window.alert("Hello.. My Extension processed you..");
});

Thats it, You have your first userscript. By convention user scripts are

Step 2. Host your UserScript on web.

You have by now authored yourscript.user.js file. Now you need to distribute this as an extension. To do that you need to find a home for this file on the web. If can host a js file, on your own website. You could. However, if you do that on www.userscripts.org, your script is instantly available to a much larger audience. userscripts.org is a free user script hosting site, that also doubles as a market place. userscripts.org also provides an easier way to edit the code online, in case you need to update.

Step 3. Share and Install (coming)

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

One page Stock

Alright.. That was a long absence. The whole last week I dint blog. I dint go away. I was "occupied". I was learning stock trading. Its very fascinating. I have a good weeeked blog for you all. Here is my experience. I can literally hyper-link every word from the following paragraphs, but I am writing it as simple as I can so you can look up the italicised words in wikipedia . I got a paper trading account from a brokerage firm . You need one brokerage account first. Then it can be an Equity account where all your money is yours or a Margin account , where some of the money is lent by the brokerage firm. Then I get Buying power , which is the dollor value of how much stocks you can buy. I can make profit by simple rules. Buy when Price is low. Sell when price is high. There is another more intersting way of earning money. Selling short . Thats when price is not high, per say, but when are confident that the price WILL go down. then buy back when its lowest. This is what
Read More >>

Appcache manifest file issues/caveats

Application cache (appcache) is a powerful feature in HTML5. However, it does come with baggage. Many (see links below) advocated ferociously against it due to tricky issues it comes with. For someone who is just testing waters, these issues may throw them off grid. Knowing them before hand helps reduce some unpredictable effects.
Read More >>

classpath*: making your Modular Spring Resources

Spring gives multiple options to load XML resources for building contexts. the reference documentation does explain this feature quite well. However, I am taking my shot at explaining the different practical scenarios ( by order of growing modularisation) For Example, A simplest Spring based web Context Loader can be configured with resources like this <context-param> <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name> <param-value>applicationContext.xml</param-value> </context-param> <listener> <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class> </listener> You just need to put applicationContext.xml in WEB-INF/ folder of your webapp. However, Typically an application is n-tiered. You can also have multiple files setup and in relative paths. like <param-value> context-files/applicationContext.xml context-files/dao.xml context-files/service.xml </param-value>
Read More >>