jatiN mahindrA doT coM

Back in December, I happened to click on a Greasemonkey script in Chrome and was shocked that it just worked. At the time, I wrote a note within Google that said

Whoa. I just clicked on a Greasemonkey script in the latest dev version of Chrome (4.0.266.0 on Linux). Chrome offered to install the GM script, so I said okay. The script ran perfectly in Chrome with no changes at all! I don’t know how many Greasemonkey scripts will run in Chrome unchanged, but at least some will.

Last week brought that news as an official announcement. My guess is that scripts that don’t use specific Greasemonkey APIs should be fine.

(Side-note: I found a good post from November that claims that ~60% of Greasemonkey scripts don’t use any sort of special API calls at all. The top API calls appear to be GM_getValue and GM_setValue (16.5% of Greasemonkey scripts), plus GM_xmlhttpRequest (15.5% of Greasemonkey scripts). It’s unclear which of these functions might be worth supporting. Some could have security implications (GM_xmlhttpRequest). Others like the get/setValue functions could be done by using other ways to store data.)

So this is cool. There’s a good chance that your favorite Greasemonkey script might just work in Chrome. Personally, I recommend the dev channel version of Chrome. It gets all the cool features early, and it’s been very stable/fast for me.

Related posts:

1. New Chrome For Mac Beta Boasts Extensions
2. New Chrome For Mac Beta Boasts Extensions
3. Google Chrome Extensions Not Limited to Gallery
4. Chrome Wins Browser Speed Test
5. Google Launches New Chrome Version
6. Google Chrome For Mac Beta Arrives
7. Link Signaling Google Chrome Extensions Surfaces
8. Google Celebrates a Year of Chrome
9. Chrome Market Share: One Year Later
10. Chrome marketshare for March 2009
11. IE and Google Chrome Browsers Get Upgraded
12. How to Write a Chrome Extension in Three Easy Steps