[Greasemonkey] Chickenfoot?

[Jeremy Dunck]

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

I just saw it yesterday, when it made delicious/popular.  But I hadn't
had time to write up a response.  ;-)

>       [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');"

So, yeah, it's a domain-specific language, which is useful.  By using
javascript, you hope to leverage the existing knowledge of the million
web developers.  By using the DSL of chickenfoot, you hope to simplify
the task to the point that novices can do something useful with a
minimum of complexity.

I think that the use of JS will limit GM's reach (after it reaches all
the web geeks), and Chickenfoot could go another mile.  But I don't
think Chickenfoot could get much momentum without GM turning people on
to the practical usefulness of this "private page modification" idea. 
In other words, I think Chickenfoot could actually take off, with
enough people interested in tweaking their web.

> The chickenfoot author(s) make the argument that their
> scripting grammar makes it easy for the average user to write scripts:

My main beef with that line of reasoning is the current lack of
documentation on how stuff works.  :)  I see lots of neat examples,
but have no idea what I could, myself, write.  Of course, with JS,
there are loads of extant tutorials.  ;-)

> 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);.

Maybe, but it's pretty common for DSLs to be used to simplify complex
tasks.  Think of a DSL as an adapter class over a more flexible but
more verbose library.  ;-)

So, to sum up: Chickenfoot is kinda neat, except I don't know how to
use it.  It might succeed, except I don't know where to find scripts
to learn from.  It might be easier than GM, but I don't know how to
find out for sure.