Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension which allows the user to customize the look and functionality of web pages by installing scripts. Hundreds of Greasemonkey scripts are available at UserScripts.org and you can also write your own. The following are some of the best greasemonkey scripts that I found at Userscripts.org :

Show Password on MouseOver ( Install )

Moving the mouse over a password fields reveals the password text. Useful for viewing the login passwords stored by your browser.

YouTube “Lights Out” ( Install )

Adds an icon to the you tube video page, that greys out the rest of the page when clicked. This allows you to watch the video without any distractions. Click the icon once to change background to dark grey, click the background to change it to black, and click the background again to return the page to normal.

Flickr “Lights Out” ( Install )

Same as YouTube “Lights Out”. Works for Flickr.

Google Image Relinker with Mouseover ( Install )

Changes the links on the results page of google image search, so that they point directly to the original image. Hovering the mouse over a thumbnail shows a pop-up preview, and clicking on the thumbnail opens the original image in a new tab.

SkreemR 2.0 ( Install )

Cleans up the SkreemR.com search results page.

Inline Mp3 Player (WordPress version) ( Install )

Replaces links to mp3 files on any webpage with an mp3 player!! Very useful for previewing mp3 files before downloading.

Apple Trailer Download ( Install )

Lets you download trailers from Apple.com. It displays a small popup near the bottom right corner of the page, that contains download links for the video.

PirateHelper for GreaseMonkey ( Install )

This script does the following:

• Removes ads and other useless stuff
• Sorts search results by number of seeds (highest to lowest)
• Removes torrents with 0 seeds
• Resizes the search results table to fill screen width

Omnibar

Omnibar combines the address bar and search bar into a single bar (like what you have in Chrome). You can type search terms into the address bar and switch search engines with a single click. It displays suggestions for URLs and search terms as you type.

Tabkit

Tabkit displays all open tabs as a tree on the left-hand side. The tab bar at the top is removed which provides more vertical space for viewing web pages (useful for widescreen displays). All tabs from the same website are grouped by color and child pages are indented to form a tree like hierarchy. Browsing websites using a folder like tree structure may take a little time to get used to, but once you get used to it, it feels more natural than using a tab bar.

Note: Its not as ugly as it looks in the screenshot. You can remove the yellow and black highlights from the tab names, customize the colors and tweak other options.

NetVideoHunter

There are dozens of firefox addons for saving videos from websites. However this addon is my favourite and has never failed me even once. It can detect the download URL for any type of video on any website. It provides both the download URL and a button for saving the video to disk. You don’t even need to watch the entire video to download it. Just wait for the video to load (NetVideo hunter will detect it within seconds) and then click on the Download button to save it.

http://www.netvideohunter.com/pages/how-to-use

Adblock Plus

This addon needs no introduction. Adblock Plus blocks advertisements on webpages, making pages load faster and saving a lot of bandwidth. Ads are blocked on a web page using filter rules which define which item on the page is an ad and which items are not. There are a number of ready-made filter lists available which the user can subscribe to (for free). These lists block most of the adverts on web pages. In case they miss some, you can right-click on the ad and add it to the block list, and the ad will never be displayed again.

Flashblock

Flashblock replaces flash objects on web pages with an icon that can be clicked to download and view the flash content. Since flash animations are rather large in size they waste a lot of bandwidth and can also be very annoying. Most of the flash content on web pages consist of advertisements. Some websites have many videos embedded on the same page which start playing as soon as the page loads. Since most videos are displayed used a flash-based player, flashblock can block them too.

Download Them All (dTa)

The ultimate download manager for Firefox. Breaks up downloads into multiple parts and downloads them simultaneously to maximize the download speed. You will really max out your connection using this download manager. The graphics are cool too. Moving the mouse over a download shows a cool graph and other statistics. Also useful for bulk downloads. It can show a list of all download-able items on a page and let you select the items to download based on file type or url mask.

Note: Some servers don’t support multi-part downloads (free downloads from rapidshare for example). For downloading files from such servers, it is better to use the default download manager.

Download Statusbar

Firefox’s in-built download manager is very slow (compared to dTa). But if you don’t mind using it then the Download Statusbar addon is highly recommended. Instead of displaying the download status in a popup window, the information will be displayed neatly in the statusbar.

Scrapbook

Helps you create a scrapbook of all your favourite web pages and browse them offline.

It is very useful for collecting information on any topic from the internet. With a single click you can add any useful pages that you find to the scrapbook,  and browse them later at your convenience. Its a lot more convenient than creating bookmarks or keeping a lot of tabs open for later use.

The most useful feature of this addon is the “Edit before capture” option that it adds to the statusbar. On selecting this option a toolbar is displayed for editing the webpage. Using a tool called the DOM Eraser you can delete any element from the page with a single-click. This tool is extremely useful for deleting useless items from a webpage before taking a printout. It lets you delete banners, ads, sidebars, etc with a single click and take a clean printout that contains only the information that you need.

XMarks

This addon stores all your bookmarks on an online server that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. It is very easy to use. Simply install it and forget it. Your firefox bookmarks will be automatically synchronized with the online server whenever you go online. It can also backup site passwords that are stored by the browser. It has addons for IE, Chrome and Safari browsers also. Once installed XMarks will synchronise bookmarks (and optionally passwords also) across all your browsers and PCs. A must-have addon for all Firefox users.

GreaseMonkey

GreaseMonkey is an addon that can change the appearance and functionality of websites using user-defined scripts. Installing and activating a script will either modify the appearance of some site (improve the layout) or it may add some extra elements to the page (like a download button for downloading YouTube videos). Hundreds of scripts are available which do many different things. Check out the scripts at  UserScripts.org.

Read the following post for some really cool GreaseMonkey scripts:

Best GreaseMonkey Scripts

Directly upgrading Ubuntu from the internet can take a lot of time and internet bandwidth, so many people prefer doing a fresh install by downloading the ISO or by ordering a CD. Having to again install all your favourite applications on your new system can be a nightmare. Here are some tips that will make your life easier.

1) Backup all files in /var/cache/apt

Whenever you install a new application, all packages are downloaded to this location. Simply copy all files and folders in this location to some other place, and copy them back again after installing the new version of Ubuntu. When you try to install the same applications again, the packages in this folder will be used by apt instead of re-downloading them. It will save a lot of time and internet bandwidth. Also useful for installing packages when you are not connected to the internet.

Note: If you are connected to the internet and newer versions are available, then the newer packages will be downloaded and installed.

Note: Instead of doing this manually you can use an application called AptOnCD which will automatically burn these packages on a CD/DVD for you. Type apt-get install aptoncd in a terminal window to install it.

2) Create an installation script

Creating an installation script is very easy. After installing a fresh copy of Ubuntu simply connect to the internet and run the script. All your favourite apps will be downloaded and installed automatically. For example, consider the following script:

Save it to a file named update.sh in your home folder and run it by typing the following in a command window:

It will take some time and effort to identify the package names for all your favourite applications and to create the script. But once the script is created it will make your life a whole lot easier the next time you reinstall your OS.

One of the major highlights in Ubuntu 9.10(Karmic Koala) its the new GRUB2 boot loader which allows high-resolution images to be used as backgrounds in the boot screen. However, after installing Karmic you will realise that the background image is disabled by default and what you get is a simple black background.

Installing a splash image for GRUB2 is very simple. All you have to do is follow the steps given below:

Download the images

Open a command window, copy-paste the following text and press Enter:

This will install a number of images (in TGA format) in the /usr/share/images/grub folder. Open this folder to view the images you downloaded.

Install a splash image

Lets install Lake_mapourika_NZ.tga as the splash image.

Type the following in a command window:

This will open up the file /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme in gedit text editor with root priviledges.

Find the line:

Replace it with:

Save the file and exit.

Update your grub.cfg using the following command:

Thats it. Reboot your machine and enjoy the new boot screen.

Notes:

1) The line:

tells grub to look for Moraine_Lake_17092005 (in PNG or TGA format) in the following locations:

You can use any image in PNG or TGA format as the splash image by simply copying the image to any of these folders and changing the line as described above. You can also specify some other folder of your choice. Always remember to run sudo update-grub after editing the line otherwise your changes will not be saved.

2) The images that you get by installing the grub2-splashimages package are extremely boring (screenshot below).

You can download a number of high-resolution wallpapers from the following site and use them as the splash image.

http://www.desktopnexus.com/tag/ubuntu/

3) The default resolution for the boot screen is very low (640×480). If the image you use is larger than 640×480 pixels, then it will be cropped and the boot screen will look a little weird. You can increase the resolution to 1024×768 for better results.

Type the following in a command window:

This will open up the file /etc/default/grub in gedit text editor with root priviledges.

Find the line:

Replace it with:

Save the file and reboot.

4) Your graphics card supports a very limited number of video modes during boot time. Make sure that you are using a supported resolution. To see the video modes available at boot time, reboot your machine, press C at the boot screen and type vbeinfo

5) The syntax for editing the GRUB2 configuration files can be found on the following page:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Grub2

Problems with video playback (Compiz + ATI graphics card)

Problem:

# Playing a video with Totem, VLC or MPlayer gives a black screen

# Switching to fullscreen causes a crash

# The video stutters or freezes on fullscreen playback

Cause:

The problem is with Compiz and with the proprietary ATI graphics driver (fglrx). You will see many solutions which tell you to either disable compiz or use the xv or x11 video driver. This solution is what I was using till now. The disadvantage of using the X11 video output is that the playback will be poor (stutter, freeze, etc) and hardware acceleration is not used for video playback.

Solution:

Install the compizconfig-settings-manager package using Synaptic.

Open CompizConfig Settings Manager from System -> Preferences.

Select General from the left panel and General Options from the right panel.

There’s an option called Undirect Fullscreen Windows. Check this option.

This will fix all your video playback problems!

TIP: If you are using SMPlayer please note that the Spacebar is used for Pause only! It is not used to toggle between Play/Pause! You can change the default keyboard mapping from the Options->Preferences window.

Problems with LCD brightness

Problem:

# The media keys for adjusting LCD brightness sometimes work and sometimes don’t.

Solution

Open /etc/default/grub using GEdit.

Find the line

change it to

Save the file and close GEdit.

Open a terminal and type update-grub.

Reboot.

Thats it. The media keys for adjusting LCD brightness should work correctly now.

Calibrate your LCD

See the 3 pictures above?

The picture in the middle is the actual image.

The images on the left and right are from displays that are are not calibrated correctly. Both images have very poor contrast. The left one is too dark and the right one is too bright. Most laptops by default are configured with a default gamma of 1.0. This corresponds to the image on the right.

It is very important to calibrate your LCD display in order to get good color reproduction and contrast. These settings can be adjusted from the Catalyst Control Center (from the colors tab). The settings that I am using are given below. These settings are very easy on the eyes and give good results.

Gamma = 1.40
Brightness = 0 (default)
Contrast = 70
Hue = 0 (default)

After changing these values, adjust the LCD brightness using the media keys so that it doesn’t strain your eyes.

If your hardware is different then these values may not give good results. The following sites have some good tools for calibrating your LCD or monitor.

http://www.displaycalibration.com/brightness_contrast.html

http://www.photoscientia.co.uk/Gamma.htm

FFCoder v0.98 Beta

[added] Audio and Video streams can now be copied without re-encoding in Automatic mode
[fixed] Localization problems: Encoding would fail if the user’s system used regional settings in which comma is used as decimal separator
[fixed] Frame rate and frame size options not working for x264 codec
[fixed] Progress % in progress window was not accurate if only a part of the input file was selected for encoding
[updated] MediaInfo to v0.7.25

Download Update (2 MB)

Download links:

FFCoder 0.97 Beta (7-zip file) (19 MB)

FFCoder 0.97 Beta (Installer) (22 MB)

Nero AAC Encoder (1 MB) (Required)

Note: Nero AAC encoder is not included. Please download it and put NeroAacEnc.exe in the BIN folder

Changes:

[fixed] PCM codec selection not saved correctly in preset file
[fixed] “Copy to Clipboard” button on Log window not working
[fixed] Size of files above 1 GB wrongly displayed in input file list
[fixed] Audio sampling rate wrongly displayed on mouse tooltip for files in input list
[fixed] FFmpeg: “SBR not implemented error” with input files containing AAC audio
[fixed] In-built player: Check if format is supported before trying to play the file

[added] New Automatic mode (needs more testing)
[added] MKVMerge (will be used for creating MKV files in Automatic mode)
[added] MP4Box (will be used for creating mp4, 3gp and 3g2 files in Automatic mode)
[added] 5 new encoders: FLAC, MusePack, OptimFROG, Monkey’s Audio, Speex
[added] Help documentation
[added] Logo for different codecs

[improved] Dump audio track as MKA or WAV file
[improved] Dump video track as HuffYUV, AVI or MKV file
[improved] Use ffmpeg for decoding (piping) only if input format is unsupported, filters are being used or if partial encoding is selected
[improved] AVS files are now supported as input for all available encoders
[improved] New config window for audio and video filters
[improved] Only compatible codecs will be shown for each file format
[improved] More options in the GUI options window
[improved] Remember source folder between sessions
[improved] Increased max video bitrate to 10 Gbps for all codecs
[improved] Encoder log highlighting
[improved] Progress window for tools
[improved] FFmpeg: Copy initial non-key frames for better A-V sync
[improved] Files containing multiple A-V tracks will be analyzed more quickly when you add it to the list

[removed] FFmpeg: Theora video codec. Bitrate control doesn’t work, video produced is very poor quality.
[removed] FFmpeg: Libvorbis audio codec. Bitrate control doesn’t work.
[removed] Raw PCM output format. Use WAV/AIFF for encoding PCM audio
[removed] Right-click option for dumping audio track as raw file
[removed] Right-click option for loading audio track from separate file

[updated] FFmpeg to r20467
[updated] FFmpeg2theora to v0.25
[updated] x264 to r1318
[updated] MediaInfo to v0.7.24

Check out my new blog:

http://teejeesblog.blogspot.com/

I’m not getting time to work on this program so I am releasing the source code. The project has been uploaded to Sourceforge.net. If you are good in VB.NET programming then you can download the source code and develop it further, or you can use the code in your own program. Since the code is released under GNU GPL v3 any derived works will have to be open-source.

Download 7-ZIP SFX Maker 2.2 Source Code (600KB)

Add Google’s software repository to your system.

Go to System->Administration->Software Sources.
In the Third-Party Software tab click Add.
Copy/Paste the following line and click Add Source.

Install Google’s public keys

Download Google’s public key file from here:

https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub

Go to System->Administration->Software Sources.
In the Authentication tab click Import Key File…
Import the key file that you downloaded earlier.

Install picasa

Now open a terminal window and type the following

That it. Picasa will be downloaded and installed. You will find the Picasa under Applications->Graphics.

Note: Google is using wine to run Picasa under Linux. So the program will look a little ugly (screenshot below).

You can remove Picasa using the following line: