Greasemonkey is great. I'm having trouble justify the time to really dive into it with such a limited audience, but I'm having fun with it. Anyway, I've written a couple now, mostly for my personal use and fun, but they may be useful to others.
All my scripts are hosted at userscripts.org
SiteAdvisor Copilot
SiteAdvisor from McAfee is a Firefox extension that gives you a color-coded (green-yellow-red) web safety indicator for your current browser site and all search result sites. I've found this to be a very cool tool for both me and for the technically challenged folks in my life.
The problem is SiteAdvisor tells you about links from search sites only. It's often important to know about other links, especially targeted text advertisement links. SiteAdvisor Copilot adds this functionality.
McAfee's SiteAdvisor Plus goes one step further by optionally redirecting you to a SiteAdvisor site when you try to browse a red site. It's a nice bonus feature, but I think its also important to know what to expect before you click.
To run SiteAdvisor Copilot you need to be running Firefox, you need to have the SiteAdvisor extension installed (the Firefox version, either the free or the plus edition), the Greasemonkey extension installed, and then install the SiteAdvisor Copilot.
Note to would-be developers: It is trivially easy to change this Greasemonkey script to cut out McAfee's name while using their content, or to eliminate the need for SiteAdvisor to be installed at all. Please don't do it. McAfee owns the SiteAdvisor content, and they have the right to control their works and to try to make a buck. As much as possible I've tried to comply with their EULA and TOS while writing SiteAdvisor Copilot, as I would expect anyone to comply with whatever copyright/copyleft/copycenter license I attach to my own work.
Other than that, play all you want with the script!
Release Notes, Version 0.1:
- Implements rating icons for Google and AdBrite text ads
- Implemented clicking on the icons to see SiteAdvisor's info for the site. (this is important, don't take it out. The TOS says no screen scaping so in the spirit of the TOS we need to have their full and formatted content readily availible.)
- Ignores all pages from the following search engines: Google, Yahoo!, MSN
Expected Next Versions:
- 0.1.1 - Someone is going to find some bugs to be fixed
- 0.2 - Add the rest of the major text-based ads, ignore the rest of the major search engines
- 0.3 - Add additional (basic) text link checking
Possible future stuff as I work towards version 1.0:
- Check all text links from a page, not just the ad links
- Determine method and implement marking image add links
- Investigate possiblity of inspecting Flash links, Adobe PDF links, or other plugin links
- Inspect and mark AJAX-loaded additional links after the fact
- Use the SiteAdvisor dhtml popup, but this will take lots of work to populate the call
- Determine all search engines that need to be excluded, and when to include those domains
- Add a one-day local cache of results so users don't overwhelm SiteAdvisor's service
Known Issues/Limitations:
- Only presents green/yellow/red icons, not the grey (unknown), which comes out as red
- Hovering over a Google ad's SiteAdvisor image leaves the google add highlighted, and the SiteAdvisor image is underlined, which may make users think clicking will open the site
All ideas, bug reports and suggestions are welcome. Email me at sheppoor@dataexperts.com