# I made a SDMB-improving Greasemonkey script. Looking for feedback/beta testers **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [September 14, 2009, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-made-a-sdmb-improving-greasemonkey-script-looking-for-feedback-beta-testers/509973 "2009-09-14T00:11:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2009, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-made-a-sdmb-improving-greasemonkey-script-looking-for-feedback-beta-testers/509973/101 "2009-09-16T19:06:47Z")
That makes sense, **Lib** , and I think this would be a fascinating discussion to continue with you, but we probably shouldn’t keep hijacking **aaron** ’s thread. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2009, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-made-a-sdmb-improving-greasemonkey-script-looking-for-feedback-beta-testers/509973/102 "2009-09-16T19:25:28Z")
> [@MsWhatsit](#): > > The updates window keeps popping up every time I load a new page on the site, and it won’t go away, even if I hit the close button. I’m having a similar problem. Now that I’ve updated, mostly everything is working. But a little gray box, which I assume is the update icon, appears in the bottom right corner. If I click on it, I get the update message. If I close that message, the box disappears. But it comes back on every new page. Still, it’s just a minor annoyance compared to the badges not working earlier. I’m glad you were able to fix that without my help. Oh, and I did just update Greasemonkey to the latest version (0.8.20090123.1), if that matters. [COLOR=#637b96]**(3) Wierdaaron SDMB Script Updates:** [Close] You are using a beta version of this Greasemonkey script. [Send me a PM](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/private.php?do=newpm) if you have a problem. - wierdaaron - wierdaaron This version adds Amazon link mouseover thumbnail thingies (test it out [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=531729) or anywhere else), and I’m testing a feature where any other link gives you a website preview when you mouse-over it. Please let me know if this works uniformly, and if it seems to slow everything down or not. - wierdaaron Woah! That is weird. [del]That happened because I didn’t clear the gray box before posting.[/del] It happens every time I post with the script enabled. That’s more than a cosmetic problem[/COLOR][COLOR=#637b96]. I have to disable it and refresh to post without that addendum. [/COLOR] ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2009, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-made-a-sdmb-improving-greasemonkey-script-looking-for-feedback-beta-testers/509973/103 "2009-09-16T19:26:20Z")
> [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > That makes sense, **Lib** , and I think this would be a fascinating discussion to continue with you, but we probably shouldn’t keep hijacking **aaron** ’s thread. Agreed. Thank you both for your curiosity and your reasonableness. ---
**Author:** ![wierdaaron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/eada6e/32.png) [@wierdaaron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wierdaaron)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2009, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-made-a-sdmb-improving-greasemonkey-script-looking-for-feedback-beta-testers/509973/104 "2009-09-16T19:31:53Z")
wtf… Something’s jacky with your end, alright. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2009, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-made-a-sdmb-improving-greasemonkey-script-looking-for-feedback-beta-testers/509973/105 "2009-09-16T19:36:24Z")
With regards to biology, I’d just like to point out that biologists _can_ perform experiments, in a sense that astronomers or cosmologists cannot. A biologist might, for instance, hypothesize that a certain chemical will discriminate between cancer cells and non-cancer cells in its toxicity, and then test that hypothesis by administering the chemical to cultured cells, or live animals, and observing the results on each type of cell. Sure, by most physicists’ standards, that’s a pretty messy experiment, with lots of noise, but it still looks to me to be pretty unambiguously an experiment. An astronomer, by contrast, can’t deposit teratons of hydrogen onto the surface of a white dwarf to see what happens; he can only hope to wait for that to occur naturally while he’s watching, and hope that the circumstances under which it happens are close to the circumstances he’s interested in. ---
**Author:** ![spinky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@spinky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spinky)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2009, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-made-a-sdmb-improving-greasemonkey-script-looking-for-feedback-beta-testers/509973/106 "2009-09-16T19:38:30Z")
> [@wierdaaron](#): > > **Amazon Monetization For Me (Dolla Dolla Bills Y’All)** I’d like to take this opportunity to encourage people **not** to get all “OMG HE’S TRYING TO MAKE MONEY OFF US” about this. He’s putting a lot of work into this script, and letting a little trickle of cash come back to him for it is no skin off our nose. And you can apparently turn it off. BTW, **aaron** , I haven’t tried the new version of the script yet, so maybe you already did this, but a way to turn the individual features on and off would be nice. In particular, the amazon awesomeification and the website previews are features I really find not only useless but actively annoying because they slow the page load down and things that pop up just because I roll the mouse over them make me want to kill things, and I question whether seeing a microscopic version of a web page before clicking the link to it ever helped anyone in any way. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2009, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-made-a-sdmb-improving-greasemonkey-script-looking-for-feedback-beta-testers/509973/107 "2009-09-16T19:39:27Z")
I just requested the script so I haven’t started testing it yet, but… Would it be possible for you to add something that awesome-ifies IMDB links? Amazon at least tags their links so you can see the book title in the URL when you mouseover, but I hate hate hate when we’re talking movies or TV shows and people reply with “[this](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071853/)”. Gives you no info, and if you’re not on an ad-blocking browser you get all sorts of IMDB ad crap when you click through. If you could just title the link with the movie/show name that’d be soooo great. ---
**Author:** ![wierdaaron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/eada6e/32.png) [@wierdaaron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wierdaaron)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2009, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-made-a-sdmb-improving-greasemonkey-script-looking-for-feedback-beta-testers/509973/108 "2009-09-16T19:44:33Z")
> [@ntucker](#): > > I’d like to take this opportunity to encourage people **not** to get all “OMG HE’S TRYING TO MAKE MONEY OFF US” about this. He’s putting a lot of work into this script, and letting a little trickle of cash come back to him for it is no skin off our nose. And you can apparently turn it off. It’s not that you can turn it off, it’s that you have to turn it on in the first place, and then elect to use that searchbox instead of the default one. > [@ntucker](#): > > BTW, **aaron** , I haven’t tried the new version of the script yet, so maybe you already did this, but a way to turn the individual features on and off would be nice. In particular, the amazon awesomeification and the website previews are features I really find not only useless but actively annoying because they slow the page load down and things that pop up just because I roll the mouse over them make me want to kill things, and I question whether seeing a microscopic version of a web page before clicking the link to it ever helped anyone in any way. Why do you hate things that are awesome??? I could make it so you can trigger awesomization off with a variable-swap, though that would get un-did when you installed an update. A cookie would probably be better. I’ll add that to my list. Not my nixon-list. My todo list. ---
**Author:** ![spinky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@spinky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spinky)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2009, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-made-a-sdmb-improving-greasemonkey-script-looking-for-feedback-beta-testers/509973/109 "2009-09-16T19:53:10Z")
> [@wierdaaron](#): > > Why do you hate things that are awesome??? It’s just the way I am. 🙂 As an example of the unawesomeness that awesomeness adds, when I load that thread with all the amazon links and measure the time between seeing the page content and the page becoming responsive (e.g. when I can scroll), it takes 10 seconds with optifix enabled, but only 3 seconds without it. ---
**Author:** ![wierdaaron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/eada6e/32.png) [@wierdaaron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wierdaaron)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2009, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-made-a-sdmb-improving-greasemonkey-script-looking-for-feedback-beta-testers/509973/110 "2009-09-16T19:57:30Z")
Balls. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2009, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-made-a-sdmb-improving-greasemonkey-script-looking-for-feedback-beta-testers/509973/111 "2009-09-16T20:09:54Z")
I would still like to get a copy, **wierdaaron**. ---
**Author:** ![wierdaaron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/eada6e/32.png) [@wierdaaron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wierdaaron)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2009, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-made-a-sdmb-improving-greasemonkey-script-looking-for-feedback-beta-testers/509973/112 "2009-09-16T20:18:23Z")
PM Sent! I ran some speed tests and I can’t get any discernible difference in response lag with optifix on/off. Maybe your whacky linux version handles javascript different. I’ll put a toggle on it before 1.0 either way. ---
**Author:** ![spinky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@spinky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spinky)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2009, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-made-a-sdmb-improving-greasemonkey-script-looking-for-feedback-beta-testers/509973/113 "2009-09-16T20:33:33Z")
> [@wierdaaron](#): > > Maybe your whacky linux version handles javascript different. You linux hataz are all the same. 😉 That gives me an idea for a whole new dimension to the badges: anti-badges. You’d get the linux badge, but the universal red-circle-with-line-through-it would be overlaid. You could use this to predict arguments by noting when an X-er and an Anti-X-er are in the same thread replying to each other. (Note: neither of these is a serious suggestion). ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2009, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-made-a-sdmb-improving-greasemonkey-script-looking-for-feedback-beta-testers/509973/114 "2009-09-16T20:40:11Z")
First impressions: [ul] [li]I see no speed issues at all[/li][li]I quite like the highlighting of my posts and places where people quote me. Makes it easy to see what’s going on.[/li][li]When I first loaded it, every page I loaded had a popup saying I had a new PM from wierdaaron. I viewed the PM, and the popups kept coming. I finally had to delete the message to make it stop. Has this happened to anyone else?[/li][li]It looks a little odd having icons in different sizes. I’d prefer to see them all be the same height - 30 pixels would be good.[/li][li]I think the atheist icon looks like a scientist icon. I agree with those that would like to see something different. There are a lot of scientists who aren’t atheists, and I’d venture to guess that a very tiny percentage of atheists are scientists. [/li][/ul] Questions: [ul] [li]How do we know what badges are available? Is there a public list somewhere? (in the meantime, mark me male, mod, mac-user)[/li][li]Are you creating new badge icons or waiting for people to submit designs (e.g. writer, teacher…)?[/li][li]How do you turn off the Amazon links? I own a bookstore, and I don’t want my competitor’s logos and links in my face every time I use the SDMB.[/li][/ul] I’ll submit more after I have a chance to spend more time with it. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2009, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-made-a-sdmb-improving-greasemonkey-script-looking-for-feedback-beta-testers/509973/115 "2009-09-16T22:04:23Z")
> [@](#): > > I’ll add that to my list. Not my nixon-list. My todo list. What about your Mikado list? ---
**Author:** ![wierdaaron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/eada6e/32.png) [@wierdaaron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wierdaaron)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2009, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-made-a-sdmb-improving-greasemonkey-script-looking-for-feedback-beta-testers/509973/116 "2009-09-17T00:23:41Z")
> [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > [ul] > > [li]When I first loaded it, every page I loaded had a popup saying I had a new PM from wierdaaron. I viewed the PM, and the popups kept coming. I finally had to delete the message to make it stop. Has this happened to anyone else?[/li][/ul] I’ve not run into that, but then I dont use PM popups. When I turned them on, I didn’t get any errant notifications. Might be some other javascript/cookie problem for you > [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > [ul] > [li]It looks a little odd having icons in different sizes. I’d prefer to see them all be the same height - 30 pixels would be good.[/li][/ul] Except for the gender things, everything is a uniform height. Nothing’s final, though, and new categories and such I’ll probably hold off on until the whole trait database thing is moved somewhere more efficient and interactive. > [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > [ul] > [li]How do you turn off the Amazon links? I own a bookstore, and I don’t want my competitor’s logos and links in my face every time I use the SDMB.[/li][/ul] Like.. what, some other website? Pretty sure bookstores, like the kind made out of wood with front doors, don’t exist anymore. I’ll be adding a menu of sorts to turn on/off various elements of the awesomizer, including amazon links. Actually, though, I’m thinking about ditching the amazon icon next to amazon links and just _awesomizing_ the links themselves. Knowing when a link is a photo or video is one thing, knowing when it’s amazon seems much less pertinent. Unless you’re an amazonaholic (addicted to amazonahol) like I am. ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Cymbeline](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/green_cymbeline/32/9244_2.png) [@Green\_Cymbeline](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Cymbeline)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2009, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-made-a-sdmb-improving-greasemonkey-script-looking-for-feedback-beta-testers/509973/117 "2009-09-17T03:39:42Z")
Another idea, have a small icon appear by Wikipedia links, like the icon appears next to Amazon links – although you don’t need a pop-up preview window, just an icon letting you know it’s a Wiki link… Here is an icon, 15x12: [http://brookenelson.com/wikipedia.gif](http://brookenelson.com/wikipedia.gif) ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2009, 7:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-made-a-sdmb-improving-greasemonkey-script-looking-for-feedback-beta-testers/509973/118 "2009-09-17T07:56:06Z")
Wow, this is a cool idea. I’d like to try this out! It might be a good idea to ask one of our resident graphic designer posters to make icons that are of a consistent design, with a nice web2.0 style to them. Maybe. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2009, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-made-a-sdmb-improving-greasemonkey-script-looking-for-feedback-beta-testers/509973/119 "2009-09-17T15:02:21Z")
Been using it for a day now and so far it’s all good. I don’t notice any slowness whatsoever (FF 3.5.3 on XP sp3). ---
**Author:** ![ianjohnson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a3d4f5/32.png) [@ianjohnson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ianjohnson)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2009, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-made-a-sdmb-improving-greasemonkey-script-looking-for-feedback-beta-testers/509973/120 "2009-09-18T01:06:11Z")
I’m having a problem with the script update message appearing in a post. In editing I kept trying different combinations of deleting and trying to dismiss the message but couldn’t get it to clear before the edit window ran out (and why is there an edit window anyway?) This would be my second attempt. So I have to click the little gray line at the bottom of the post window to bring up the notification. Then I have to select the text within the gray window and delete it, but I am still left with “Thumbnails provided by Thumbshots”. How do I keep this from happening?[URL=“[http://www.thumbshots.com](http://www.thumbshots.com)”] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-made-a-sdmb-improving-greasemonkey-script-looking-for-feedback-beta-testers/509973.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-made-a-sdmb-improving-greasemonkey-script-looking-for-feedback-beta-testers/509973.md?page=7)