I first considered simply adding a notice on the page on Userscripts.org on which the script can be downloaded saying that updates to the script needed to be made. However, it would have been preferable for me to post an actual update to the script rather than a notice saying that an update to the script would be made available soon. I tried to determine whether or not I could make corrections to the script so that what it adds to the page would appear as it previously did. And fortunately, after finding that only minor updates needed to be made to the script, a new version of the script was made available shortly after determining that updates needed to be made. Still, I was not sure exactly how long this script had a design that did not match how it appeared in this screen shot. If this script were one that I used as often as I previously did, these necessary updates would have been made in a more timely manner.

It may have been this need to update this script that made me consider making further improvements to its design. I have previously mentioned that I consider myself more interested in what is performed after data is submitted through a user interface than design of the user interface itself. However, I understand the importance of good user interface design, and sometimes I find that I need to focus on a more diverse group of topics. I have wanted to ensure that the design looked as professional as possible. For that reason, I decided to remove the rounded corners on the header above where the search form the script adds is added. And after successfully removing those rounded corners, these added search form elements now look more appropriate. And so I released another new version of the script that made more changes to the appearance of page elements on Digg. A screen shot of how Digg appears when using the new version of the script can be viewed by clicking the thumbnail below.

I am not sure how much time I will spend maintaining this script in the future. However, I will be sure to take time to determine whether or not it works properly, and I will respond to any feedback from end users about it.

There are many times that I have found that when I want to find something on Digg that I previously found interesting, it was a story that received many diggs. This is the reason I wrote the script that automatically sorts search results so that stories that received the most diggs are listed first. However, there are also many times that I would like to be able to do more to narrow down search results to find what I would like to find on Digg more quickly and efficiently. For example, if I remember the title of a story that appears on Digg, I would like to be able to search only the titles of stories. And with this script that gives these advanced options for searching Digg, I am now able to perform searches such as these from any page on Digg from which searches of Digg can be done. As a matter of fact, I had been able to do this for some time, as the script had been working properly for some time. I only needed to make a few adjustments to improve its design and functionality before releasing it.

However, there are a few other adjustments and improvements that could be made to this script. Greasemonkey scripts that are designed well fit in well with the designs of pages to which they are added. I have made attempts to make the design of what gets added to the page well incorporated with the design of Digg. However, I am not a CSS guru, much less a web design guru. And this might be apparent to some after seeing what this script does to pages on Digg. For example, the corners of the section added are not rounded, and the place where the script adds elements may not be considered the best place to add them. However, I was primarily interested in ensuring that the script’s functionality was correct, and I found the design satisfactory. And below is a link to a screen shot of Digg with the script running on it, and you can decide whether or not the design is satisfactory.

In addition, improvements could have been made to the script functionality-wise. For example, I included no option to include “buried” stories in search results. I personally do not often find that I want to find stories that are buried, so no feature to include buried stories in search results was included. Also, searches of the sections for images, videos, or podcasts can only be done when one of these sections are already selected. Some might want to be able to search one of these sections of Digg without having to go to one of these sections. Perhaps in a future version of this script, more options for fine-tuning Digg searches can be included.

If you have Greasemonkey installed, then you can install this script if you click here. Improvements to it could be made, and I am always interested in hearing suggestions on how improvements can be made to what I write. For now, I am relieved that this script that I said I was working on did not turn out to be considered vapourware.

It might be best for me to look for advice specific to blogs, as opposed to advice on how one can improve on one’s writing in general. I have found that people tend to read what is on a screen somewhat differently from how they read from a sheet of paper. This is something that perhaps I should have known and considered, and I may need to know what I can do differently to make what I write more appropriate for a blog. And so this has made me consider buying a book on this topic, despite that fact that these books often contain information that I may not find useful.

I have thought that I will look back on the first posts to my blog and consider them ones that were written before I became very good at blogging. I have expected to improve over time. However, I may not be able to do that without some advice, whether this advice can be found online or in a more old-fashioned way.

I recently came up with the idea of inserting links below embedded YouTube videos that would take the user to the YouTube page for the embedded video. When viewing a web page that has a video hosted on YouTube on it, the place where the video would be displayed can be clicked, and the video would be displayed there. And after viewing this video, one might want to view the page on YouTube for the video. One might want to get the information about how to embed the video in a web page. One might also want to check statistics on how many times it has been viewed. Perhaps one may want to read or post comments about the video on the page on which the video is hosted. And of course, there are those who may want to do what can only be done with the video by using Greasemonkey scripts that only work with the video when it is viewed on its YouTube page. For these reasons, it made sense for this kind of script to be made available.

I checked to see if any similar Greasemonkey scripts were already publicly available through Userscripts.org after I got this idea. And I saw one hosted on that site that I had not yet noticed before. There was this script there that was very similar to what I had in mind, in that it replaced the place in which the video would be viewed with a still image of the video. And when clicking on this still image, one would be taken to the YouTube page on which this video was hosted. I have periodically looked for scripts on Userscripts.org that were for YouTube and I had not noticed this one. Was it a coincidence that this script was recently added to the list of scripts with the “youtube” tag, or did I somehow subconsciously decide to “borrow” an idea from another script? In any case, I preferred having a choice between viewing the video where it was and going to the YouTube page for the video. And the script that I would write would give the user this choice.

So I decided to go about writing the script, knowing that if I had some difficulty with it, I could refer to the source code of scripts that did similar things. But I chose to avoid referring to the source code of these scripts. I could have looked up the answers to questions I had about writing this script, but I decided to put off looking up these answers until I finished working on this on my own. If I referred to the source code for these scripts, I could have released this script sooner. However, given the choice between getting this done quickly and taking on the challenge of finding out on my own how this could be done, I had to choose the latter option. The challenge of writing the script was one that I wanted to take on. It was not only the finished product that I was interested in.

After writing this script, I did refer to the source code of other scripts that work with embedded YouTube videos. I compared the way in which they were written to the way that I wrote mine. And although I did get some ideas on how they could be improved, I did not get all the answers that I wanted to find. I have found that YouTube videos do not always get embedded in web pages the way it is suggested on the pages for YouTube videos. In fact, if you click here or here you’ll see that the use of the <embed> tag may not always be used in embedding these videos. Some might copy and paste the code for embedding the video from the YouTube page for the video, but there are those who do not want to use a tag that has been deprecated in XHTML 1.0. In addition, an <embed> tag (that is not within an <object> tag) could also be used to embed videos. I have found that some Greasemonkey scripts that work with embedded videos do not handle the different ways in which videos are embedded. And I wanted to ensure that this script would be able to handle the different ways in which these videos can be embedded.

The script can be downloaded if you click here. And after downloading and installing it, you may want to try it out by visiting a page such as this one. If there are any pages with embedded videos that it does not work with, I would like to know about them. Any feedback on this script would be appreciated. And I am sure at least a few people will find this script useful, as the scripts that may or may not have led to me working on it are apparently being used by at least a few other people. It is however, interesting to note that this script that mine might be based on, was in turn based on this script.

At this time, I am working on two different Greasemonkey scripts that should be released shortly. Both of them will work with Digg, and one of them may make my previous script for Digg obsolete. Blog entries will be posted about these scripts here once they are released, as is the case with each one I write. They may be released soon, but not before I’ll need to enter at least one post here not related specifically to any software I have written. If I were able to make either of these scripts available at this time, this entry might not be here. So I maintain this blog by putting this entry here as something of a placeholder entry to inform users of my software of what I am doing. But would this be considered filler? That may depend on what one would define as filler. But perhaps it is an oversimplification to classify blog entries as filler and non-filler, and it might be best to not think of these entries in such a dichotomous way. This post might be here mostly because this blog is due for an entry, but it is serving the purpose of informing people who read this of what I am doing.

It is naturally easier to blog when there is something to blog about. And what this blog has been primarily about is the software that I write. And thus, it is easier for me to add to this blog when I have software posted here to write about. And as I try to keep this blog updated, I may occasionally need to write entries such as these that I, for one, do not consider as interesting as the software-specific entries. And as I want as little as possible of anything that could be considered filler here, I may be forced to release these scripts before they are quite as well-written as they could be. This blog, with the way I need to maintain it, has forced me to continue producing code to keep it interesting. However, it could also force me to release software that is not very well-written, with the way I now have these self-imposed deadlines for writing these scripts and their associated blog entries. Although I do plan on coming up with new versions of the software I write, I prefer not to release anything prematurely. Having said all of this, you may not be sure of exactly what I mean when I say this software may not be as good as it could be. Unfortunately, you may find out about what I mean when these scripts come out. However, when these scripts come out, I’ll be open to suggestions on how they can be improved. And opening discussions between myself and those who use what I produce is one of the main reasons for the existence of this blog.

When bringing up Digg, one is, by default, taken to the section that lists stories that are consider “popular” and have already received many diggs. This is one reason that I, for one, often digg stories that have already received many diggs. However, when searching through Digg stories, it does not list only the most popular stories in search results by default. As a result, the majority of search results consist of stories that are highly unlikely to be what I would like to find.

It might be best for me to illustrate the point that I am making with an example. A while ago, I was looking for an article on Digg about Firefox extensions. And since I viewed it quite a while ago, I did not remember the exact title of the article. So when searching for it from Digg’s main page, I entered “firefox extensions” as the search string. As one might imagine, although there may have been some interesting search results listed, I was not going to find what I wanted on the first page of results. Below is a screen shot of what I found on that first page.

I knew there had to be a better way to find what I wanted. What I want to find on Digg and what gets dugg by the community of users on Digg are rarely mutually exclusive, and this case was not an exception. I knew the article that I wanted to find received many diggs, so it would have been better for results to be listed with stories receiving more diggs listed first. And so by using the advanced search feature that appears on the page with search results, I chose to sort the results in order of which stories received the most diggs. And below is a screen shot of the result of this search.

In the results that came up, I found what I wanted to find on the first page of search results. However, I would like to be able to find what I want on the first page of results without having to enter advanced settings. And I have found that it has been more the rule than the exception that I would like to sort search results in order of which stories have received the most diggs. And so how could I make it so that, by default, search results would consist of stories that have been dugg most often? Well, that’s where the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox comes in. I decided to write a Greasemonkey script that would make it so that when searching for stories from Digg’s main page, results would be listed in order of which stories received the most diggs.

You can click here to download and install this Greasemonkey script if you’re using Firefox and you have the Greasemonkey extension installed. This script is a very simple one, but I have found it as useful as it is simple. With so many stories on Digg that can be found, there should be a way of being able to search through the many stories there in a quick and efficient way. And although there is more that could be done to improve searching for stories on Digg, I have found that using this script has made it easier to find what I want there. There might be others who will find this to be the case as well, which is why I have made this script available. It can be good to find what the community of users on Digg finds interesting. Therefore, you will also find this script useful if you want to avoid seeing my blog posts in the search results on Digg.