Who knew Duncan Riley was such a Greasemonkey? My former colleague just made FriendFeed a lot more useful for people on Firefox. Using Greasemonkey, an add-on to Firefox that lets developers customize Webpages through the browser, he created some scripts that add tabs to FriendFeed and that make it even more of a super start page than it already is.
He got the idea from this app called FriendFeed Tabs that lets you add Techmeme as a tab. When you click on the tab, news aggregator site Techmeme appears within FriendFeed.
Duncan went further and added scripts to add tabs that show Google Reader, Facebook, Twitter, Netvibes, Plurk, ReadBurner, and his own version of a Techmeme tab inside of FriendFeed. He also created scripts for TechCrunch and CrunchGear. (Thanks, Duncan!) You need to add Greasemonkey to Firefox before you can install any of these scripts. But once you do, and relaunch your browser, whenever you go to FriendFeed the tabs will appear and you can scroll through the sites at your leisure.
Some of these tabs are redundant with FriendFeed itself, which lets you bring in RSS feeds and your Twitter feed, for instance. But the tabs let you access these sites and services in a more traditional view, and you can always toggle back to the FriendFeed stream. And now, for people who check more than one of these sites on a daily basis, they can simply access them all from FriendFeed. (Note: these scripts are essentially a hack, and there may be some issues, which Duncan describes in this post).
Very impressive Duncan, and I thought you could only write about tech, which you do well, but never expected you to develop. Will definitely be giving this a try, and props!
Does this work with Opera Userjs?
am i the only guy without a reader?
Yay, Grease Monkey!
But… WHY? Seriously, why? This is a post — really? You can have the same but MORE FUNCTIONAL TABS 20 pixels away IN Firefox. No coding, no flakiness.
Oh yeah… Friendfeed Will Rule Them All, or something.
it’s tabulicious! go duncan.
I don’t know what they’re putting into Friendfeed, but it seems to make everyone go bonkers. Sigh.
I agree with tim…this is completely stupid and useless. My browser already has tabs, and get this: I can open any site I want in them.
No offense to duncan, but I’m seriously disappointed that TC would cover this.
Very cool. I use the Techmeme tab for 2 month now, it will be great to have Techcrunch as well.
(and right on time for the new Greasemonky for FireFox 3.0: http://cybernetnews.com/2008/0.....firefox-3/)
@Tim and @Ryan
I think that the integrated and seamless experience of having tabs within a site is desirable. Especially from a workflow perspective. Having multiple tabs open drains resources and kills computer performance at times.
Plus, a lot of these scripts are things that work together. Like ReadBurner and Google Reader. You share, and then we rank. I am co-owner of ReadBurner but my thoughts have been this way for some time now.
isn’t it easier to get a FriendFeed feed into your RSS reader then try to bring everything you read into FriendFeed?
I do think it is cool anyways
Live Bookmarks on FF is the best!
Whats the benefit of going this route as opposed to just opening those sites within tabs in Firefox? OK, maybe you lose slight performance, but is it noticeable?
Why would someone want FriendFeed to act as the browser itself?
Hm, the power of Mozilla Prism + FriendFeed bundle + Greasemonkey + Duncan Riley’s scripts…
It’s just another option, folks. Remember, choice is good.
Just curious - are you guys investors in FriendFeed - you really give it a lot of play for a site that it a lot of who cares…
I am coining an acronym - YAG
Yet Another Googler def: someone who thinks that we all care because they are used to waking up in the morning and folks pay attention. read: Cuill, Mechanical Zoo, FriendFeed
“Having multiple tabs open drains resources and kills computer performance at times.”
@drew Not having system-wide and application-wide functionality available to my new tabs within a web page within a tab within a browser within an Operating System drains my ability to perform and my ability to use my resources. I can interact with browser tabs with my keyboard and mouse buttons. I cannot interact with these pointless tabs via as many control paths. Separate tabs do not restrict my sharing. I can have many more open tabs and many more open apps than one browser window can accommodate before seeing a performance hit. And if I do, I can reduce my tabload to a level that far exceeds this without revving up my laptop’s fans.
Duncan, I salute you. You are getting your hands dirty and sharing it back. If you and others think it cool and like it, so be it.
I don’t like being told it adds to my productivity when it reduces it, drew.
Pallab
No idea, it’s a greasemonkey script tested on Firefox under OSX and Vista.
ryan waggoner
Great that you’d prefer lots of tabs in Firefox, my problem was that I had so many services open all the time in Firefox I was getting lost (Plurk was the driver as well..yet another microblogging platform that I needed to have open). This way I have various services on hand from the one page (note I’m a heavy FF tab user anyway). I threw in the variety so people can chose, I’m not using the Google Reader tab for example because I’d rather have that in a dedicated Firefox tab, but some of the other services sit nicely as FriendFeed tabs.
works great with Firefox3 (now that greasemonkey is available) and on linux. Now if I could find a bloglines reader tab I’ll be all set
Ha ha ha ha… GM_getValue / GM_setValue, Is it WEB 3.0 ?