Firefox 1.5-compatible Greasemonkey beta now available

I've posted a beta of the next version of Greasemonkey to userscripts.org. You can access it at:

http://userscripts.org/greasemonkey-0.6.2.xpi

This is for Firefox Beta 1.5 only and will not install on other Firefoxes. If you use a version of the browser prior to 1.5, then you should continue using Greasemonkey 0.5.3.

It's a beta, which means that it will likely break some number of your existing, working scripts. Please report these on the mailing list and to the script author. Many breakages will be up to the script author to correct. Typically, the changes required are minor. Authors should consult the Greasemonkey Wiki or mailing list for help.

There is currently no Greasemonkey 0.5.x for Firefox 1.5 beta. It's my hope that user script authors will update their scripts so that such a release is not necessary. So please, bug script authors whose scripts break :-).


What's new?

• Monkey menu: Click the monkey to get quick access to enabling and disabling each of your scripts. You can also see at a glance which scripts ran on the current page.
  
  
• New install UI: We no longer pop up two modal dialogs everytime you install a script. Instead, a simple animated status message to the left of the monkey tells you everything went OK.
  
  
• New injection system: We now use a much stabler injection system which is only available to Firefox 1.5. This should solve all double-injects or non-injects (except for document.domain issues discussed below).
  
  
• New migration system: Greasemonkey no longer tries to migrate the script folder's location on install, which was causing install headaches for some users. Instead, it uses the old location if a previous version was already installed.
  
  
• Fastback support: Previous Greasemonkeys interfered with Firefox 1.5's awesome Fastback feature. This release does not.
  

Known Issues:

• Update: If you install Greasemonkey 0.6.2 without any prior version installed, installing scripts will not work. You'll see a "file not found error. We'll be updating soon to fix this and are sorry for the bug. Meanwhile, the following will fix you up:
  
  
  
  1. cd <your profile directory>
  
  
  2. mkdir gm_scripts
  
  
  3. Unix: touch gm_scripts/config.xml
  
  
  4. Windows: echo "" > gm_scripts\config.xml
  
  
  
  


• Greasemonkey 0.6.2 does not inject on websites which use the document.domain javascript property. Notable examples are search.ebay.com and yahoo.com. This is due to a Firefox bug which will be fixed before 1.5 ships.
  
  
• Scripts which use any of the properties of the location object fail with NS_ERROR_INVALID_POINTER. This is due to a Firefox bug which will be fixed before 1.5 ships. As a temporary workaround, script authors may wrap code which accesses the location object with a window.setTimeout call. So for instance, instead of window.location.replace('foo'), use window.setTimeout(function(){ window.location.replace('foo') });.
  

XPCNativeWrapper reminders:

The window and document properties in Greasemonkey 0.6.x are XPCNativeWrapper objects, which have many annoying limitations as compared to the normal DOM objects. You can keep up with all the details as documented on the Greasemonkey wiki.

General update

This bug with migration which everyone keeps encountering is really frustrating. It occurs on a large percentage of machines, but not for any of the Greasemonkey developers. For anyone who is still seeing problems where GM appears to not work at all after upgrading to 0.5.x, please see the directions here for a simple fix.

I have created a patch which forgoes automatic migration completely and just warns the user that they need to move the folder by hand, but I'm not sure whether to push it yet. I suppose it depends on how many people who were using 0.3.x have not yet upgraded.

In other news, I've made quite a bit of progress on a new Greasemonkey - 0.6 - which uses a more stable injection technique which should solve a whole other class of problems. It works really well, is super simple, and uses standard APIs. So I don't expect it to have the same inconsistency across machines that the 0.5 series does.

Unless I keep getting a ton of reports about bad migrations, I think I'll just leave 0.5.3 as the last of that branch and focus on 0.6, which will not have auto-migration, and thus cannot have this nasty migration bug.

I guarantee that nobody is more frustrated by these bugs than me. But 0.6 should be a lot better. So just hang on, and we can all forget 0.5 as soon as possible :-).

0.5.3 available

Though still in the review queue on mozilla update, 0.5.3 is available for download directly from userscripts.org right now.

This update solves the problems with migration from 0.3.5 that some people where having with 0.5.1. It also fixes the "Install User Script" menu item always available bug that pissed a lot of people off.


I'm still working on improving the injection system, which will solve all the random injection problems people are having. This will show up in Greasemonkey 0.6.

0.5.2 late

Somebody discovered a new injection issue (:: sigh ::) in 0.5.2, so I put it off slightly. I'll be rolling back that commit and then reposting it hopefully tonight.

These issues are highly personal, and seem to have to do with network connection, cpu speed, etc. Which is why I'm moving Greasemonkey back to a simpler injection system which should be more fool-proof.

Many people are using 0.5.x without trouble (everyone who tested the alphas on the mailing list, for example). For those of you for whom it isn't, I'm not ignoring you. The next version of Greasemonkey should work much better.

0.3.5 -> 0.5.1 migration madness

There is a bug in the migration code for Greasemonkey 0.5.1 which is affecting some windows users. 0.5.2 fixes this issue, and has been circulated through the mailing list and is looking good, but I won't be able to post it until tonight.

If you want to fix your 0.5.1, I don't think it's a good idea to edit the profile files directly unless you really know what you're doing. Instead, these steps should fix most people's corruption.

• Shut down Firefox.
• Find your profile directory
• Move profileDir/extensions/{e4a8a97b-f2ed-450b-b12d-ee082ba24781}/chrome/
  greasemonkey/content/scripts/ to profileDir/scripts.
  
• Remove profileDir/gm_scripts if it exists
• Rename profileDir/scripts to profileDir/gm_scripts
• Restart Firefox