Tampermonkey for Firefox released

Martin Brinkmann
Feb 9, 2016
Updated • Jun 25, 2017
Firefox, Firefox add-ons
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15

The author of Tampermonkey, a popular script loader for Chromium-based web browsers, has released a beta port of the add-on for the Firefox web browser.

The browser extension is only compatible with Firefox 46 and newer at the time of writing (the current stable version of Firefox is version 44.0.1). If things go as planned, Firefox 46 will be released to the stable channel on April 19, 2016.

Tampermonkey is a userscript manager which makes the handling of userscripts easier after it has been installed.

Just like Greasemonkey, it will pick up installation requests on sites like Greasyfork that act as repositories for scripts.

Tampermonkey for Firefox

Tampermonkey displays a dialog when you click on an install link highlighting information about the script that you are about to install (taken from the script itself), a warning message about malicious scripts and their potential impact, the includes (the sites it will work on), and the source code of the script.

It is a good idea to review these before you hit the install button on the page to make sure the script is not malicious.

The script is added to the Firefox browser if you hit install. You manage all installed scripts using Tampermonkey. The extension lists each scripts in its interface and highlights information suich as the supported sites, version, features and links as well.

You may use the manager to remove scripts but also to leave comments or visit the script homepage on the Internet (if the information is provided).

Another option that you have is to edit a script directly using Tampermonkey. This can be useful if you want to change the supported sites, or change the code of a script directly.

New scripts can be added manually to Tampermonkey as well, for instance by copying and pasting script content into the editor, or writing a script from scratch.

The toolbar button the extension adds on installation lists several important information including the scripts that run on the active page.

The interface opens with a serious delay currently but things like these are to be expected from a beta release, especially one that is released for a new add-on environment.

A comparison of the Chrome version of Tampermonkey with the newly released Firefox version shows that both share the same feature set with only minor differences.

The Chrome version offers better performance currently though, but that is likely going to change in the future.

Closing Words

The release of Tampermonkey for Firefox is a welcome addition even though it needs to be optimized to fix the performance issues that it ships with currently.

Now you: Do you use userscripts?

Summary
Article Name
Tampermonkey Beta for Firefox released
Description
The author of Tampermonkey, a popular script loader for Chromium-based web browsers, has released a beta port of the add-on for the Firefox web browser.
Author
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. Frank said on May 20, 2016 at 11:41 pm
    Reply

    Martin, can any of the script loaders for Firefox run scripts before the page loads? Opera used to have this feature, and I thought Scriptish did but it seems not?

  2. mkdante381 said on February 15, 2016 at 1:48 pm
    Reply

    This addon not work, because Webextensions on Firefox is not ready yet. Look on site http://arewewebextensionsyet.com/ Bugs, bugs and bugs

  3. S2015 said on February 9, 2016 at 11:59 pm
    Reply

    In someway, I do not like those badly-written script language or codes, which would make the browser unresponsive. As for security, it’s yet another long story.

  4. Ben said on February 9, 2016 at 10:35 pm
    Reply

    And why should I use this instead of greasemonkey?

  5. CHEF-KOCH said on February 9, 2016 at 12:40 pm
    Reply

    GreasyMonkey is still under development, they ‘often’ release beta versions but in this article it’s unclear wahat are the benefits over existent solutions like skipfish and greasymonkey.

    So if any1 tried this and can tell me something about it, it would be nice. :)

  6. aBHI said on February 9, 2016 at 12:38 pm
    Reply

    Where can I find nice useful scripts to run with Tampermonkey ?

  7. Pants said on February 9, 2016 at 11:55 am
    Reply

    I always prefer my monkeys greased .. don’t ask!

    1. nero said on February 15, 2016 at 2:08 pm
      Reply

      Well then don’t throw it out there ;)

  8. Jeronimo said on February 9, 2016 at 10:46 am
    Reply

    Martin, the article is not much useful (apart from just notifying that there is TamperMonkey for Firefox now) without a comparison with the existing alternative(s).

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on February 9, 2016 at 11:47 am
      Reply

      I tried to find a recent comparison but there does not seem to be one.

  9. RossN said on February 9, 2016 at 9:42 am
    Reply

    Greasemonkey is working fine for me. I tried Scriptish a while back, as it was superior in some ways, but struck a compatibility issue, so back to Greasemonkey.

    1. Dave said on February 9, 2016 at 12:12 pm
      Reply

      This. I prefer Scriptish really but it isn’t maintained anymore and some scripts don’t work.

      As I remember, Scriptish can load scripts like Opera, while Greasemonkey used to load scripts last. I’m not sure if this is still the case for Greasemonkey. It was said that the features of Scriptish would eventually be backported.

  10. kent said on February 9, 2016 at 9:04 am
    Reply

    Does it provide some features that greasemonkey lacks?

    Greasemonkey project is still alive, right? No new updates since Nov2015, but I see ongoing activity here https://github.com/greasemonkey/greasemonkey/issues

    1. stealthy said on February 10, 2016 at 8:10 am
      Reply

      It’s still alive. You can get latest betas from AMO:
      https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/versions/beta
      Latest beta was released two weeks ago.

  11. abcdef said on February 9, 2016 at 9:01 am
    Reply

    What should be mentioned is that it was ported as a WebExtension

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