Better Amazon Userscript, User Friendly Amazon Product Pages

Many companies seem to add more and more information and features to specific pages on their websites. A prime example is Google Search which turned from a minimalistic page into a complex one with lots of elements on each search results page. Another example is Amazon and its product pages.

These pages are filled with information, ads and other information related to the product - or not. That's a lot for users who simply want to read the product description of a product on Amazon, or who want to read a few customer reviews but do not see ads, what other customers have bought in addition to the item, or which items get frequently bought together.

While some Amazon customers may appreciate the information, others may prefer a more streamlined page on Amazon that provides them with only the information that they are interested in.

Better Amazon is a userscript for Mozilla Firefox (with the Greasemonkey add-on installed) and Google Chrome that turns the Amazon product page into a user friendly version. The userscript works on all localized Amazon shops, including Amazon.com to Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de.

Better Amazon

It only does its magic on product pages. The three most notable changes are the following:

• Displays the average product rating of the product in big letters next to the item name.
• Removal of ads on the Amazon page.
• Collapsible sections so that only the most important information are displayed right away. The collapsed sections can be expanded when necessary.

Collapsible items can be expanded with a simple click. This way it is for instance possible to expand the customer reviews to read the reviews. Collapsing the items puts them all above the fold or near the fold to access them directly without having to scroll down to the desired section on the page.

Sections can be collapsed again with another click. Firefox and Chrome users find the Better Amazon userscript at the official Userscript repository.

Update: The author of the script has posted instructions on how to make the userscript load in the Opera web browser. The feature set of the script has been improved as well, like the automatic removal of fixed sections like Feedback on Amazon, or the related external websites listing.

New features have been added to the script in recent time. Among them an option to define which content groups you want open when you open pages on Amazon and which you want collapsed. Another interesting feature is the added gray background to the user review section to improve its readability.

Update 2: The script is only working partially at the time of this update (March 30th, 2014). While the average score is still display and ads appear to be removed, the option to collapse parts of the product page appears to be broken.

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