Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Platypus.
Don't know how I missed this one, but Platypus is a fantastic extension to Firefox which generates Greasemonkey scripts in a (somewhat clumsy, currently) wsyiwyg type way. I'd seen that Firefox 1.1 (Deer Park) was going to allow per-site CSS, so you can stylise a site to your own preferences -- eg make text larger / etc. This goes way beyond that. it's still a little rough but this is very cool.
Since I need to suggest something for them to add - (I assume the context menu is coming/broken in 1.1a1) is to be able to assemble web pages portal style. For example, can I take two pages from bbc.co.uk, say news and weather and create my own new page? The news page is currently quite narrow -- I know they are thinking of relaxing that for some users -- but being able to add aribtrary page fragments would be very cool. A logical extension to being able to cut and paste elements within a page is to be able to paste on to a fresh new page. This could be local, and use platypus, or a server-side script could be generated to produce instant portals.
Obviously the custom aggregation side will raise copyright / control issues, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be fantastic to have. Firefox's wave of cool plugins, is definately driving some smart innovations on the web.
Don't know how I missed this one, but Platypus is a fantastic extension to Firefox which generates Greasemonkey scripts in a (somewhat clumsy, currently) wsyiwyg type way. I'd seen that Firefox 1.1 (Deer Park) was going to allow per-site CSS, so you can stylise a site to your own preferences -- eg make text larger / etc. This goes way beyond that. it's still a little rough but this is very cool.
Since I need to suggest something for them to add - (I assume the context menu is coming/broken in 1.1a1) is to be able to assemble web pages portal style. For example, can I take two pages from bbc.co.uk, say news and weather and create my own new page? The news page is currently quite narrow -- I know they are thinking of relaxing that for some users -- but being able to add aribtrary page fragments would be very cool. A logical extension to being able to cut and paste elements within a page is to be able to paste on to a fresh new page. This could be local, and use platypus, or a server-side script could be generated to produce instant portals.
Obviously the custom aggregation side will raise copyright / control issues, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be fantastic to have. Firefox's wave of cool plugins, is definately driving some smart innovations on the web.
