02 February 2010, 11:10

Chrome 4 natively supports Greasemonkey scripts

Previously only available as an extension for Firefox users, the latest 4.x version of Google's Chrome web browser features native support for Greasemonkey user scripts. Greasemonkey is a popular Firefox add-on that allows users to install scripts to customise web pages and make on-the-fly changes using JavaScript.

According to a post on the Chromium Blog by Google Software Engineer and Greasemonkey author Aaron Boodman, the user scripts are installed just like extensions, "because under the covers, the user script is actually converted into an extension". Boodman also notes that there are currently more than 40,000 scripts available on userscripts.org, but says that some of the user scripts won't work in Chrome yet due to the "differences between it and Firefox". Based on his analysis, he expects that 15 to 25 per cent of the scripts will not work in Chrome and advises that users consider letting the script's author know.

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