I got an error message when I tried to go to the “link to greasemonkey script.”
You’re welcome, but it’s not a purely selfless act. I enjoy having avatars so it is all about me! 
I’m also glad to do what I can to find a workaround to Google’s ever tightening grip over how we use the internet for not entirely selfless reasons.
Yeah, I updated a script that Polerius thought of and all spinky did was write an entire web app, host it for us at his cost, improve it frequently, and then help me rewrite 3/4 of my own script… lazy bum!
As far as I know though the password snafu described above only interrupted things until the account was restored. Avatars were updating as recently as yesterday.
Google seems to have made an entire business model out of this philosophy. “Yeah, we suck, but people will still prefer to do things our way for various reasons. (and if they don’t we’ll make sure they have to.”)
Yes along with Google woes, the original site the script was hosted at, userscripts.org, has gone belly up and seems to be a ghost ship at the moment with no administrator. Try using the new link to install the script - SDMB Avatars
YAY!!!
Good lord, if I’m not easy.
Thank you, sir. 
I got the message saying “extensions cannot be added from this website.” :mad:
Which browser?
If that’s happening in Chrome it’s because extensions need to be installed by dropping them directly into the Chrome Extensions window when you’re installing them from anywhere other than the Google store. That started back in 2012 and is simple enough to do.
Any extension can be installed that way, but apparently Google still may or may not disable it despite your wishes. That hasn’t happened (yet) in my installation of Chrome for reasons I don’t know. If it happens in yours, for the moment at least the only way to have any extension that you didn’t get from Google is by using their development buildwhich they don’t limit in this way.
So you either support their app store and only their app store, or you beta test for them if you refuse and still want to use third party extensions.
"This don’t be evil mantra: It’s bullshit.” – Steve Jobs
Yeah, this is what the extensions page looks like to me (note the box to enable the avatar extension is grayed out).
The Chrome developer build has issues of its own for me. This is how the board looks to me through the dev build (interestingly it still shows an empty login box even though I’d logged in with the dev build not five seconds before taking that screenshot). I can still view individual threads but it’s a mess (in other news - wow those ads are annoying - autoplaying video ads on a message board? I’m glad I run adblock).
There’s always Firefox.
For Chrome users affected by Google’s recent shenanigans I found an interim solution to use the avatar script without needing to use the Google app store.
I investigated what would be required to save it as a Chrome extension and upload it to the app store. Besides being overly complicated for such a simple user script, they also want me to pay them a one time developer’s fee for the honor. It’s only 5 bucks but they can kiss my ass.
Instead I’ll just distribute the raw package that I would need to compile for their app store, and whoever wants to can enable that in the release version of Chrome with a few simple steps.
Chrome has a built-in way for developers to test their raw source files before compiling them into an extension and uploading it to the app store. So you can assume the role of the developer and “test” the avatar script without limitations.
-
Download the zip file containing the source files here and extract it. It will create a single folder named “SDMB Avatars Chrome” wherever you choose to extract it.
-
Open Chrome, and in the Chrome Extensions window check the box for “Developer Mode” and then click “Load unpacked extension” as shown here.
-
Choose the folder that you extracted in step 1 and press OK.
The SDMB Avatar script will be installed and enabled.
Thanks for this useful information
Thanks for your continued efforts. And that $5 is nothing but a shakedown. “Oh, there are a bunch of people distributing their own scripts for Chrome without paying the developer fee? Not anymore!”
Unfortunately now whenever I open Chrome with the extension enabled the browser gives me a popup telling me it doesn’t recommend running developer scripts. Thanks, Obama!
Yes, it’s working again! (Seriously, Chrome charges you? No wonder they disallowed all non-Chrome store extensions)
Thanks for the work-around!
You’re welcome.
One thing I noticed earlier and mentioned is something weird seems to be going on with avatars hosted on photobucket. I couldn’t see your avatar, nor AClockworkMelon’s and both are hosted at photobucket.
I did a little searching and found a lot of people complaining about this, like at this thread. So apparently Photobucket wants out of the direct linking business. When you direct link to a photobucket photo, they try to redirect the user to an html page with ads on it instead of directly to the image. Once someone has gone to a direct image this way one time, from then on they can see the image directly until I guess a cookie expires or some other means and then they won’t work again until they have loaded the ad page again.
The avatar script gets an empty image back when they do that so no avatar displays for most users most of the time if you have it hosted at photobucket.
My suggestion is postimg.org or another free site dedicated to hosting for direct image links.
Yeah, I’ve noticed this before. It never interrupted image links on forums and such before, though. I’ve actually already switched over to postimg for most of my image hosting needs but I’ll go ahead and switch over my avatar, too. Changing the url in the biography section of my profile is all I need to do, right?
Yes and once the new URL is entered into your profile it can take up to an hour for the change to get picked up by the avatar system.
Okay, now I’m getting a message that Developer Mode is somehow harmful to my computer. What gives? (IS it harmful to my computer?)
See this post of mine. It’s just warning you against using unapproved scripts that you didn’t get through the store. It looks like this is as good as it’s gonna get if we want to use the script with Chrome.
Yeah. Every time you launch Chrome it will show youthis reminder that you have an extension loaded in developer mode.
As long as SDMB Avatars is the only extension you have loaded in developer mode you can safely click cancel.
It’s not an elegant solution but as Clockwork said, it’s as good as it’s going to get for Chrome.
This new policy blocked a lot more than the avatar script. Many third party. large and well known companies who distribute their own browser add-ons directly are totally screwed by this. As far as I can tell many or most of them are refusing to give Google their source code which is the only way they can get it up on the Google store. Several very popular anti-virus programs have been broken by this and a host of others and several have advised customers not to use Chrome as they won’t be modifying their distribution channels to appease Google. If everyone refuses to play by Google’s rules they will be sitting alone in their walled garden pretty soon and someone else will be king of the interwebs.
So it won’t hurt my computer? (Sorry, I’m very paranoid after what happened to my old laptop!)
It’s literally the same script you’ve been running except it’s been flagged as one you’re “testing.” Chrome is warning that “testing” scripts might be dangerous. Just be careful what extensions you install, as usual.