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Five More Useful Greasemonkey Scripts for YouTube

It was two blog posts ago that I released and wrote about a Greasemonkey script that adds links below embedded YouTube videos that, when clicked, take the user to the YouTube page on which the embedded video can be found. And it was during this time period that I describe as “two blog posts ago” that I have tried to find more and better ways of getting people to consider this script useful. In fact, I have been asked if this script was actually useful at all. I have mentioned a few ways in which it could be considered useful in that blog post that I use here as a reference point for measuring the passage of time. I mentioned that after seeing one of these embedded videos, some might want to view what is on the YouTube page for the video. Examples of what one might want to see on this page are comments on the video, the code for embedding the video, and links to related and similar videos. Another reason for viewing these YouTube pages that I mentioned is that there are Greasemonkey scripts that work with these YouTube pages that make it so one would want to view the page for the video, rather than the embedded video. And in this post, I discuss a few of these scripts.

Before I do begin discussion of these scripts, I should note that a discussion of Greasemonkey scripts for YouTube is already available elsewhere. It is on that social networking news blog named Mashable where there is a blog post titled “12 Essential Greasemonkey Hacks for YouTube.” I should mention that before finding out about this post, I did consider writing a blog entry in which I discuss useful Greasemonkey scripts for YouTube. And so it is quite fortunate that I found out about this post before publishing this entry, as I certainly would prefer that this post not be considered redundant by the many people who have already read that post on Mashable. I am writing this entry to complement that post that I mention, as listing twelve of these scripts is, in my opinion, not quite enough. There are other scripts like these that deserve to be mentioned, and so it is here that I mention another five of these scripts that YouTube users may be interested in using. And so without any further ado, here are another five Greasemonkey scripts for YouTube that are worth a look.

  1. YouTube Resizer. It was shortly after reading this blog post on Lifehacker about stretching YouTube videos to fit the width of the browser that I found out about this script. Adam Pash wrote about wanting to make YouTube videos larger, without having to having to use the “hugely pixelated fullscreen interface.” He mentioned that a bookmarklet or Greasemonkey script that redirects the user to a page in which the video display is larger would be good to have. Then I checked to see if a Greasemonkey script for doing this already exists, and I found this one, which is similar to what is described in that post, except that this one is better. It makes the area for displaying the video larger, without redirecting the user to another page.
  2. YouTube Prevent Autoplay. Have you ever wanted go to the page for a YouTube video without having the video immediately play? Perhaps you simply would like to read through comments on these videos, even if it sometimes seems that the majority of these comments are spam. Or you may only want to look for videos that are considered similar to the one you are bringing up. And this script is also one that is quite useful when testing out Greasemonkey scripts that work with YouTube pages, as I have found out. There may be a number of reasons for wanting the video on the page to be played only when you tell it to do so, and I personally have kept this script enabled at all times.
  3. YouTube BetterTitles. The individual who wrote this script puts it best by describing it as follows: “Many pages on YouTube have the same title: ‘YouTube – Broadcast Yourself.’ If you have several tabs open, things get confusing. This simple script changes the title on some often-used YouTube pages. Examples for improved titles include ‘Manage contacts’ or ‘Most Recent (page 3).'” So if you find that you would like to have several videos open in separate tabs, as I sometimes do, then this script is essential.
  4. YouTube Better Embed. I have mentioned in a previous blog post that the code for embedding videos that is included on the YouTube pages on which YouTube videos can be viewed is not compliant with XHTML 1.0. And so if you would like to copy and paste the code for embedding a YouTube video into the code for a web page, and would like to do so without using any tags that are considered deprecated, then you’ll find this script useful.
  5. YouTube Comments Next to Videos. There may be times that you would like to peruse comments comments on a YouTube video while watching the video. And this script, which was inspired by the design of Google Video pages, enables you to do so by putting these comments next to the video. There is the script named “YouTube Googler” that makes the design of YouTube video pages similar to the design of pages on Google Video. However, if it is only this one feature that you would like to borrow from Google Video, then this is the script that you would want.

In this post, I have mentioned scripts such as these as reasons to want to visit the YouTube page on which a YouTube video is located, after finding a YouTube video embedded in a web page. Some have already found these scripts that I mention useful, judging by the number of times they have been downloaded. And for this reason, perhaps a few more people will consider the script that I wrote for embedded YouTube videos useful. I may have more to learn about marketing of the software that I write, and informing people of what I write and why it can be useful is something that I would like to do well. And marketing of what I write is something I have considered writing an entire blog post about, and that may be a post that will appear a few blog posts from now. And hopefully “a few blog posts from now” will not be considered a very long time when measured in days or weeks.

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