pure google

so people have been talking about greasemonkey for the last several weeks. it gives a person the ability to install a small bit of javascript in firefox that modifies the behavior of a specific webpage. what’s cool is that people are starting to contribute the scripts they’ve written so that other people can use and modify them.

on several occasions i’ve cursed the “news” link on the google interface, not because i don’t like google news (i love it), but because i habitually click it every time i open a new firefox window (which defaults to google)—and it inevitably distracts me from whatever i originally intended to do.

well tonight the greasemonkey lovefest and my desire to obliterate that link coalesced—i decided to see what i could do about it. after some hacking around in a downloaded copy of google’s home page, i wrote a script that “cleansed” it of everything except the logo and the text box. the way it was originally intended to be. the command line of the internet.

google interface after being modified by pure google greasemonkey script
ah, now isn’t that nice?

and then, the glutton for punishment that i am, i tried the extension on some of google’s 105 interfaces for other languages and it totally bombed. turns out the google homepage is subtly different from language to language. i’ll spare you the gorey details, but now this script should work for all of them, including xhosa and bork bork bork. if it doesn’t let me know.

so anyway, check it out: pure_google-1.2.user.js

instructions

  1. install greasemonkey if you haven’t already and restart firefox
  2. right-click on the pure_google link above
  3. select Install User Script…

updates
v1.2 (tested in 116 languages!)

  • updated site heuristic based on number of tables in layout due to google.com change
  • updated code to account for tbody around table cells in search box

v1.1

  • fixed button removal code due to google interface change

v1.0

  • initial release

also see: my google maps greasemonkey extension that defaults to your home address in the directions mode

Thursday, April 28, 2005 12:45am
Tech

relatedposts

23 comments

name
blog (optional)
comment
Gibbon's Garage
4/28/05 10:08am

For example Justin Watt stripped the tabs off the Google home page because he kept hitting the “news” tab and getting diverted from real work. Nothing makes a person feel better than getting to scratch an itch.

Ben Hyde
4/28/05 10:58am

First you scratch the itch and pretty soon your hacking a whole arm off.

justin
4/28/05 11:25am

ben, have you seen this boingboing post? Amputee wannabes (hehe)

Kansas
4/28/05 11:27am

Sweet.

abe
4/28/05 12:34pm

dude. googlebar.

justin
4/28/05 12:37pm

granted, but this means i can keep google.com as my homepage (rather than about:blank) and still see the different logos they do every so often.

simple pleasures.

jackson
4/28/05 2:29pm

i had no idea there was a bork, bork, bork version of google.

Dom
5/18/05 12:52pm

However trendy you may think yourself, refusing to use capital letters inhibits readability.

Graham
5/18/05 4:05pm

I think Google broke your script. It doesn’t seem to work for me anymore.

justin
5/19/05 2:23pm

graham, hmm, it still works for me on http://www.google.com. but since the script depends on the current layout of the google interface, it’s possible that they’ve temporarily changed something that’s interfering with the script.

justin
5/19/05 2:23pm

and dom, real nice attitude.

tyrantmizar
5/21/05 1:59pm

I also think Google broke your script. The only things that I see missing are the Login bar and the links above the search box.

View it here

justin
5/21/05 2:18pm

tyrantmizar, what google URL are you using? it works just fine for me at http://www.google.com/, but it will not work at something like http://www.google.com/webhp. it’s configured to only work with the raw homepage, so that it doesn’t inadvertantly nuke your results.

tyrantmizar
5/21/05 7:09pm

I’m using http://www.google.com/
But, for some reason, the Pure Google script works in the other googles (i.e. google.co.uk).
Also, the pure google script works in a different profile. Disabling all extensions except Greasemonkey doesn’t change anything. I’ve uninstalled the script, reinstalled, even cut and pasted the script into the javascript file. Nothing seems to change it.

Most likely, its some obscure about:config switch that I changed, or something of the sort. Do you have anything to suggest (short of using a different profile)?

tyrantmizar
5/21/05 7:11pm

Wait, I found it. You cannot be logged in to a Gmail or a Google Groups account. I signed out, and it reverted to what it should look like.

That darn login bar!!

justin
5/21/05 9:14pm

oh geez. thanks for troubleshooting that.

given my priorities right now, i’m going to consider that wontfix, but if anyone wants to take a stab, be my guest.

JRaspass
6/27/05 4:16am

Is it possible to edit this script in order to make it remove everything but the option to “search pages from the web or UK” on the google.co.uk site.

justin
6/27/05 9:34am

JRaspass, sure. Just save pure_google-1.1.user.js to your desktop, comment out line 40 (by adding two forward slashes to the beginning of the line), then install it by opening the file in your browser and going to Tools > Install User Script…

//seach_table_rows[i].setAttribute(”style”, “display:none;”);

John
8/26/05 3:03pm

Justin this is awesome. Someone dugg this at digg.com, and I pointed them here in the comments cause there is a blogspot page with similar layout.

BTW: Tis’ true that if you are logged into your google account the page does not load the same. :o)

justin
8/26/05 5:13pm

John, thanks for the heads up, I’m not sure about how the blogspot implementation works, the nice thing about the greasemonkey script is that the themed Google logos still show up, just not anything else.

Funny that they used the same name. I’ve never seen that before, so I’m assuming either they borrowed the idea, or came up with the same name independently.

First example I’ve seen of people using their blogspot accounts for hosting non-blog content.

austin
10/16/05 2:51pm

broken :(

justin
10/27/05 7:25pm

Updated due to changes in the Google.com interface.

rob
12/11/07 9:22am

this doesn’t seem to be working anymore. :( It shows all the top links but doesn’t show the text input, so I have to disable it to search Google for anything.