Quite a while ago, I mentioned that I was writing a Greasemonkey user script that would allow users to perform advanced searches on Digg without having to search for anything on Digg first. It was actually not long after I wrote the script for automatically sorting search results on Digg by which ones received the most “diggs” by default that I had this idea. And it was not long after I began work on this script that I got sidetracked with other work that I considered more of a priority at the time that I did this work. The few of you who have been reading what I have been posting here may know some reasons this script that would make my previous script for Digg obsolete was not released shortly after I began work on it. However, I have finally found some time to complete work on this script. And now that I consider this script ready to be released, it is the topic of this blog post.
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.