A new Firefox extension that lets people customize their experience of the sites they visit is stirring excitement among Web surfers and consternation among security experts.
The extension, dubbed Greasemonkey, lets people run what’s known as a “user script,” which alters a Web page as it’s downloaded.
That capability has gained the extension an avid following of Web surfers who want to customize the sites they visit, removing design glitches and stripping sites of ads. But the extension comes with substantial security risks, and could stir trouble among site owners who object to individual, custom redesigns of their pages.
By manipulating the Dynamic HTML, or DHTML, of a Web page, Greasemonkey scripts can perform a host of tasks, according to the GreaseMonkey UserScripts page. They can, for example, transform story links on The New York Times site and take readers to ad-free, printable versions. They can also change Slashdot’s colors and make the site “less ugly,” the page says.
Others are designed to execute more substantial changes, such as making connections to Yahoo Mail and Gmail more secure. One, called “Butler,” is meant to remove ads on Google results pages, add links to competing search sites, and removes image copy restrictions from Google Print. (CNET News.com’s tests of various scripts showed that some were more successful than others at delivering promised results.)
In what could signal a trend toward user scripts, Norwegian browser maker Opera Software acknowledging Greasemonkey on its Web site and picked up the idea, adding the functionality to beta 3 of Opera 8.
The idea of letting Web site visitors alter pages they visit isn’t new. Many pages use the World Wide Web Consortium’s Cascading Style Sheets recommendation to let users do just that–adjust the site’s font size and colors and other style elements.
In other cases, Web sites have balked at alterations. Google, for example, got into hot water with some sites after its toolbar began inserting hyperlinks into pages through its AutoLink feature.
In 2001, Microsoft abandoned the Smart Tags feature in Windows XP, which would have linked words in a Web page to pages of Microsoft’s choosing.
Regardless of how Web sites react to Greasemonkey–Google wasn’t immediately available for comment on the various Google-oriented Greasemonkey scripts–the extension will have to face down substantial security concerns.
Read the complete Story @ Cnet News
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