Did you know that you can customize the way you see a website in your browser?  We’ve all heard of the Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox, right?  If not, check out the articles that have been written here on MakeUseOf and you’ll be sure to find out some neat stuff about it.

Basically, Greasemonkey allows users to write and implement scripts that customize the way you interact with websites.

Until now, people who knew nothing about writing scripts have been limited to just installing scripts made available by others.  Well, not anymore my friends!  Now we have a whole new, user-friendly, no scripting necessary way of changing the way we interact with our favorite websites.  Sound too good to be true?  I thought so too!  Please check out the Customize Your Web Firefox add-on.

The way this add-on works is really neat.  Basically when you are on a site you want to customize Firefox, click on the hand-dandy icon in your Firefox tray and start customizing.

In this post I would like to walk you through how to set up a few customizations I have found useful.

Automatic clicking

With this add-on you can make it so that a specific button is clicked upon the load of a website.  For instance, when I head over to the login screen for my blog, timmyjohnboy, I always have to click on “log in.”  I already have the username and password fields auto-filled but perhaps I’m just too lazy to click the stupid button.  Come on, you can’t tell me you’ve never felt that way!

Anyways, just click on the icon (or press F10) and you’ll be given a bunch of options.

You’ll also notice that as you move your mouse across the site, the objects highlight and if you click them, you’re given some options.

For what we want to do, and that is saving us from the overbearing task of clicking the “log in” button, click “click.”  Then a window pops up giving you the options you’re looking for.

Make sure the left button is chosen and make sure that the repetition behavior is set to “run always” if you want this to happen every time.  Then, hit “OK.”  Then, in the script properties sidebar, click save for the settings to be saved.

OK, now I can be automatically logged in just by making a few adjustments!  This can obviously be done for any website where you want to automatically click any button.

Get ride of elements you don’t want to see!

For the sake of demonstration, let’s head over to GodlySheep and get rid of Brett’s nifty little sheep icon!  OK, I am not saying that I don’t like the icon, I really do!  It just makes a really good object to make an example of!

Basically just follow the same steps (browse to godlysheep.com, click the icon in the tray, and click on the sheep graphic) but this time click on “remove.”

Just like before, make sure that the repetition behavior is set to “run always.”  Then click the same “save” button.  This is what you should now see:

Cool, huh?  This trick can be applied to many different objects, including ads!  For instance, if you’re like me and you hate those MySpace ads, all you have to do if remove them!

Move objects or elements (cut, copy, and paste)

Let’s say we also want to rearrange the sidebar on GodlySheep.com to better suit your usage patterns.  Let’s move the banner below the navigation links.  All it takes is some simple cut and paste actions.  Click the banner and then click cut,

choose the appropriate settings, and then click the navigation area and click paste after.

That’s all it really takes.  Always make sure you save your changes.

It is also necessary for me to mention that changes you make can ALWAYS be deleted so don’t worry too much about ruining something. You can also do many MANY more modifications with Customize Your Web, including toggling the visibility of objects, keyboard shortcuts and so much more!

Whilst exploring this add-on to customize Firefox, let us know what tricks you like the most!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Makeuseof/~3/WvtudOTHSQI/

Comments

• 10/24/2009, Tweets that mention Customize Your Firefox Browsing Experience On Your Favorite Websites « Amit Agarwal -- Topsy.com writes: [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Amit Agarwal, ram kumar. ram kumar said: Customize Your Firefox Browsing Experience On Your Favorite Websites http://bte.tc/rfA #RTW [...]
• 10/24/2009, uberVU - social comments writes: Social comments and analytics for this post... This post was mentioned on Twitter by raj77in: Customize Your Firefox Browsing Experience On Your Favorite Websites http://bit.ly/1V3syT...
• 05/10/2010, timmyjohnboy writes: Thanks for liking my makeuseof article so much that you reposted it:)
• 05/11/2010, Amit Agarwal writes: Thanks to you for writing such a great post... I was thinking of doing a writeup on Greasemonkey and such things but probably I would not have done justice to it :)

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A very nice article on firefox can be found here. Though written for Ubuntu should be applicable to all distro’s.

http://www.ubuntu-inside.me/2009/07/17-cool-firefox-aboutconfig-tricks.html

Most of it was done in my machine even before I read the article but good to see all of them together

Comments

• 06/18/2010, Tweets that mention 17 Cool firefox tweaks. | Amit Agarwal -- Topsy.com writes: [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Amit Agarwal, Amit Agarwal. Amit Agarwal said: 17 Cool firefox tweaks. http://bte.tc/chsG #OPP [...]
• 06/20/2010, Palmer Bedgood writes: Thanks for the interesting post! May I ask where you get your sources from?
• 07/13/2010, Andrew Pelt writes: found your site on del.icio.us today and really liked it.. i bookmarked it and will be back to check it out some more later ..

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Click: “I laugh — LAUGH! — when a tech journalist writes something to the effect of, “for lightweight tasks such as Web browsing,” when you know, and I know, that there ain’t nothing light about using present-day Web browser on present-day Web pages filled with Javascript, Flash and enough CSS to fill a book.”

URL: http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-10-22-030-35-OP-HW-SW

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Comments

• 11/05/2009, uberVU - social comments writes: Social comments and analytics for this post... This post was mentioned on Friendfeed by Amit Agarwal: I just post They own your CPU (and so so in Windows and Mac, too) on http://ping.fm/yMVoC...
• 05/18/2010, Tweets that mention They own your CPU (and so so in Windows and Mac, too) | Amit Agarwal -- Topsy.com writes: [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Amit Agarwal. Amit Agarwal said: They own your CPU (and so so in Windows and Mac, too) http://bte.tc/bGGA #OPP [...]

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The link above will take you to the Mozilla wiki for the UI and theme mockups for the Firefox 4.0 release. Quite interesting but what I did not like is that the Linux mockup looks more like chrome. Not sure why mozilla would want to do that

The post is brought to you by lekhonee-gnome v0.9

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• Firefox 4: fast, powerful, and empowering (Mike Beltzner/beltzner) (techmeme.com)
• Firefox 4 coming soon; beta as early as June (blogs.chron.com)
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Comments

• 05/11/2010, Tweets that mention Firefox 4.0 mockups for LInux/Windows and Mac | Amit Agarwal -- Topsy.com writes: [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Amit Agarwal. Amit Agarwal said: Firefox 4.0 mockups for LInux/Windows and Mac http://bit.ly/9t59Wd [...]

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I use the split screen in vim very in-frequently, so I did not really know how to move from one screen to the other. There is also very little or no documentation that I found on this on the first page of google, so here it is :
press “ctrl+w and ctrl + w” to change to other window.

If you are not sure how to get the split screen, then you can type help split in vim to get the help on split screen.

Most simply said you can do so by “ctrl+w s”

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Couple of days back my TeraByte HDD crashed and I lost almost everything, including my homedir. I will tell you my experiences and how my measures helped me lose not much data. So I will begin with one of the most important aspects. My BROWSER.

I have all my passwords stored in the browser and I rely on them so it is not stored anywhere else. Also, I have lot of bookmarks which help me do lot of stuff. Meaning, all these are very important for me. So, I had a backup plan for my passwords and bookmarks.

Xmarks (formerly Foxmarks)

It allows you to save your bookmarks on their site or on your own URL.

If you have your own domain and you have a hosting provider, like I do, then you can configure Xmarks to save the bookmarks and the passwords on your domain. So, I downloaded this addon as soon as I could get my hands on a working system and installed this extension, configured Xmarks and was back will all passwords and bookmarks. Great to be up and running so fast.
BTW, I am yet to get a replacement for my HDD, working on Live Distro till then.

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Download feedly here. Feedly is the way to go if you have lot of subscriptions or otherwise too if you would like to see some changes in the way the google reader looks. Here’s the description:

A magazine-like startpage. A fast and stylish way to read and share the content of your favorite sites and services. Provides seamless integration with Google Reader, Twitter, Frienfeed, Delicious and YouTube.

and a screenshot:

Well, this has definitely made my life easier.

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