In some ways, we've taken a few steps back from a programmable web—two things I miss: bookmarklets and user scripts. Imagine having a bookmarked shortcut to do complex things like taking screenshots or saving a PDF. Or running scripts to automatically change the styling of websites, removing annoying sections
  • @kevincox
    6•2 years ago

    What happened to bookmarklets and user scripts? I must have missed the boat because I’m still using them.

    I keep all of my user scripts at https://userscripts.kevincox.ca/ and use a few made by others.

    I only have one bookmarklet, it generates email addresses for me and injects them into a form. But I use it frequently.

    I do agree that most people have moved to browser extensions. It is a shame that browsers didn’t just integrate and improve user scripts. You could imagine that WebExtensions could have just been extra APIs instead of a big browser-integrated thing with a mandatory app store. I think this is a common problem that we keep running into, centralized stores rather than decentralized installation methods.