Greasemonkey + Google = chaos

Matthew Gertner on Greasemonkey (see my earlier post): 'anything close to widespread adoption is going to create a big mess'.

The Gmail account I run in Firefox with Greasemonkey running + Arantius' Gmail 'delete button' script + Persistent.info's 'persistent searches' for Gmail functions very weirdly. It won't open the Gmail Help window, for example, and in "email composition" mode it won't add hyper-links to text. Disable Greasemonkey, and therefore these two scripts, and all is fine again.

In IE, running Google's latest Google Toolbar, I can't now get beyond 'Loading' when opening a Gmail account. (I used to have no problem, but I guess Google is tweaking Gmail all the time.) Temporarily remove the Google Toolbar, and the Gmail account loads.

This is very quick, on-the-hoof feedback, but it would seem that messing around with browsers and web-services that run therein will create problems for end-users. If even Google isn't getting this right …  A pity: I really like those two Firefox/Greasemonkey Gmail scripts.

(1/ None of the above seems to be anything to do with ad- or pop-up- or script-blockers.  2/ Persistent.info's posting has a disclaimer: 'I happen to work for Google. This script was produced without any internal knowledge of Gmail, and is not endorsed by Google in any way. If you have any problems with it, please only contact me.')