[Greasemonkey] Chickenfoot?

[chris feldmann]

On 12/17/05, Scott Turner <srt19170 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Has this been noted yet?

Well, now it has. Interesting; it's written in java and provides a
simple scripting language ala applescript:

      [In greasemonkey] the search box would be:

            document.getElementById('p').value = 'my search query';

       However, in Chickenfoot, the equivalent line of code would be:

             enter('search the web', 'my search query');"

I rather like that greasemonkey scripts are written in javascript,
seeing as how they're accessing the DOM, which is what javascript is
designed to do. The chickenfoot author(s) make the argument that their
scripting grammar makes it easy for the average user to write scripts:

"By offering commands such as click(), enter() and pick(), Chickenfoot
provides users with a higher level of abstraction over their actions
on a web page, which is more appropriate for an end-user programmer."

But it seems to me that the sorts of people who would be interested in
learning "click()" are the same sorst of people who would be
interested in learning document.addEventListener("click", function,
false);. The ven diagrams overlap extensively. And the latter is more
granular, more powerful, more useful. Not that this is some sort of
competition.

Doesn't yet provide the functions of the greasemonkey API:

"To be fair, Greasemonkey also extends JavaScript by providing users
with its own API. We are considering adding unofficial support for the
Greasemonkey API so that scripts may be ported to Chickenfoot without
any rewriting."

But I like the idea of a sidebar "script window." Except I hate sidebars.