As I mentioned in my last blog post, the last Greasemonkey script that I released was one that may or may not have been inspired by a script that already existed. My script, which adds a link to the YouTube page for a video below places where that video is embedded, was similar this one that was already publicly available. I mentioned that I might have previously seen this script for replacing the place where an embedded video is played with a still image of the video that, when it is clicked, takes the user to the YouTube page for the video. However, after releasing this script, I searched Userscripts.org for scripts that are used with YouTube videos. And it was after doing this search that I discovered two scripts that add links below embedded videos to the YouTube pages for these videos, just as my script does.
Prior to writing this script, I searched for scripts on Userscripts.org that already performed this task of adding this link below embedded videos. And so I suppose I did not look carefully enough through the many scripts that were already there. Had I looked more carefully, I would have seen this script among the many scripts that could be found when searching for YouTube-related Greasemonkey scripts. In addition, I would have noticed that there was another script, based on the previous one, that had the additional feature of including the title of the embedded video in the link. Coincidentally, inclusion of the name of the video in the link was a feature that I considered adding to the script that I wrote. And after seeing these scripts there, I wondered why I did not look more carefully for similar scripts, and why I did not try harder to avoid writing something that was already written. I did previously mention that taking on the challenge of writing this script was one of the reasons I chose to write it. It might have taken less effort for me to look more thoroughly and carefully through scripts for YouTube that work with embedded videos, but I wanted to be able to say I could write this myself. However, is my script then redundant, and thus, not one that others would want to use? Not necessarily.
When I was writing this script, I was interested in seeing how the code that I wrote would compare with the code for a similar script that already existed. And after seeing this other script that performed the same task as mine, it was once again interesting to see the same problem solved with a different approach. In this other script, links would be added to videos that were embedded using the <object> tag. However, I ensured that the script that I wrote also added links below embedded videos that are embedded using only the <embed> tag. I wanted to ensure that this script would work with as many embedded videos as possible, and so I ensured that it would work with embedded videos that were embedded much differently from how it is suggested on YouTube. In fact, I was testing it out on this page that had the video embedded without the use of the <object> tag. I ensured that it worked there, as there may be other pages that embed videos this way. I’m not sure how often that page on which I tested the script gets visited, but I thought it might be visited at least often enough for me to try to make it work with that page. That SmartMirror, designed by students at the University of Waterloo, does look like an interesting idea, and thus, one that I think would lead to that page getting many hits. But being a UW graduate myself, I may be biased, and I digress.
When I first starting writing this script, I thought of simply getting it to work with videos when they are embedded the way it is suggested on YouTube, just so it would work with most embedded YouTube videos. However, it appears that my idea of making it work with as many embedded YouTube videos as possible turned out being a good one. Still, I may look to add more to this script to set it apart from scripts similar to it that already exist. But there are other scripts that I am working on (as I previously mentioned) and those ones are more likely to be what will be released next from me.