Friday, July 22, 2005

Scripting News: 7/19/2005

Scripting News: 7/19/2005

Still more discussion on Autolink. Overall this argument is now down to the "am to/are not" type of bickering. People on either side of the fence are not going to magically jump the fence, especially when a lot of the proponents seem to have the attitude of "suck it up."

Robert Scoble has the best argument of late. I have used GreaseMonkey until I started playing around with the new alpha release of Deer Park. The only thing I would add that GreaseMonkey needs is an opt-out for creators.

GreaseMonkey is different from Google, Microsoft and other autolink schemes because the user determines what kind of modifications will occur (and most of them seem to remove ads). If you feel that Amazon is an evil empire you can direct your ISBN links to Barns & Noble, or better yet get the price of several sites and pick the best price. Prefer MapQuest over Google Maps? No problem.

Truth be told I would not mind autolink sometimes, but a) I want to direct the links to where I want to go, not where someone wants me to go based upon their own financial interests and b) I can tell what are the modifications that I make to a page vs. what did the creator do.

A post note on opt-out - One big complaint that I have heard is autolink over riding links on internet stores. I also wonder about the Amazon Associate links.

No comments: