The Perceptus Back Story

A little while ago my custom user script for Chrome stopped working. I’m currently using the “dev channel” at home. When I first switched to Chrome, that was the only version that supported user scripts (basically GreaseMonkey from FireFox integrated into Chrome).

My script is simple, it makes some font and color changes to a few websites that I view regularly to make them more legible (IMHO). I should bundle it into an extension some day…

Anyway, it took a bit of research to figure out what happened. Look here on the Google Chrome blog:

[r33013] Disable –enable-user-scripts. (Issue: 27520)
NOTE: You can now install user scripts by navigating to them. You will have to reinstall your current scripts (they aren’t migrated).

— http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2009/12/dev-channel-has-been-updated-to-4.html

So, scripts are still supported, but I have to install it again. I didn’t quite understand “navigating to them” meant, but it actually means exactly what it says. In the address bar browse the file system, e.g. go to here:
C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\User Scripts

Then double click on your .JS file, and a little extension installation prompt pops up. It’s pretty cool actually.

Hmm… now that Google Chrome regular version supports extensions, I might be able to take myself off the dev channel.

Tags: beta, chrome, dev channel, google, greasemonkey, user script, userscript

This entry was posted on Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 12:23 am and is filed under software, tools, web browser. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.