The script itself is very simple.  For users who have multiple email accounts set up in their GMail account, when you go to send a message it pops up a warning telling you which address you’re sending from and gives you the option of canceling or continuing.  You can visit the script’s homepage at UserScripts.org to install it or to see any potential future enhancements.

As these types of projects generally do, this one wound up being a really good learning experience for me, as chronicled in this earlier post.  So, thanks “wmblewett”.  I hope you enjoy the script as much as I enjoyed the experience writing it.

Now, back to work on those extended features that have been requested.

Well, don’t get too excited.  First, it is fairly limited in what it can do.  Its greatest advantage for you is that it can give you handles to the various frames that it loads things into.  It does also give you some convenience methods for adding elements to the navigation box as well as other methods.

For performance reasons Google doesn’t load the API on every call to GMail.  It is only loaded if a script asks the API to initialize through a call to gmonkey.load.  This function takes a callback function as the first parameter which according to Google will be called when the API has successfully loaded.  My mileage has varied.  Greatly.

Even testing their ultra-simple example script I had serious issues with it not running much more often than it did run.  My own scripts would usually bomb at the same rate.

The issues were generally something to the effect of “vN is undefined” (calls to getCanvasElement, an undocumented function) or “a is undefined” (calls to registerViewChangeCallback).  Pretty much any short alpha-numeric combination coming up as “is undefined” is likely caused by this issue.

After much trial and error I seem to have found a viable work-around to the issue.  Instead of immediately making calls to the API functions when the load function completes, have it set a window timeout of 500ms.  This seems to resolve nearly all of the problems, though you will still occasionally get a hiccup.  For those occasions, simply catch the error and reload the page.  Is it an ugly hack?  Yes.  Does it work?  Seems to.

Here’s a quick example:

var gmail = null;
 
window.addEventListener('load', function() {
    if (unsafeWindow.gmonkey) {
        unsafeWindow.gmonkey.load('1.0', init);
    }
}, true);
 
function getCanvas() {
    try {
        gmail.getCanvasElement().addEventListener('click', function() { GM_log('Worked'); }, true);
        // Could also be a call like:
        gmail.registerViewChangeCallback(function() { GM_log('Also works'); });
    }
    catch (ex) {
        GM_log('3:'+ex.message);
        // This seems like a brutal hack, however the call to getCanvasElement
        // will sometimes fail when the page loads.  If that happens this seems
        // to resolve it eventually.
        window.location.reload();
    }
}
 
function init(g) {
    try {
        gmail = g;
        // Calls to the gmail API seem to fail far less often if you wait
        // for a bit to actually start using it.
        window.setTimeout(getCanvas, 500);
    }
    catch (ex) {
        GM_log('1:'+ex.message);
    }
}

I used this trick in my GMail Multiple From Address Extensions Greasemonkey script available at Userscripts.org.  I went through several different revisions on that site and probably a dozen more locally before I found this workaround.  So far it seems to work, though I’d love to hear if anyone has a different experience.

I’ve also experienced issues with Google’s scripts not honoring my calls to stopPropagation and preventDefault.  If anyone has any advice there I’m sure we’d all be interested.

update: I now have a native Firefox extension that you can download which does the same thing.  Right click and choose “Save Link”, then save it to your computer.  Then drag the file into a Firefox window and allow it to install.  Get it here. You can still use the GreaseMonkey script below if you prefer.

Well, problem solved.  My old friend GreaseMonkey and I got together for a minute and here’s what we came up with:

// ==UserScript==
// @name           Nealz Nuze Formatter
// @namespace      eric.biven
// @description    Restores Nealz Nuze to it's previous glory (with improvements).
// @include        http://boortz.com/*
// @include        http://www.boortz.com/*
// ==/UserScript==
 
var listenLive = document.getElementById('streamLink');
listenLive.style.cssFloat = 'right';
listenLive.style.width = '200px';
 
var header = document.getElementById('logoAdContainer');
header.removeChild(header.childNodes[1]);
header.appendChild(listenLive);
 
var ads = document.getElementById('rightColumnCell');
ads.parentNode.removeChild(ads);
 
var head = document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0];
if (head) {
    style = document.createElement('style');
    style.type = 'text/css';
    style.appendChild(document.createTextNode('.hrDivider, .blogFooter, .blogEntryByline { display: none; }'));
    style.appendChild(document.createTextNode('.blogEntry { padding-bottom:20px; }'));
    style.appendChild(document.createTextNode('.storyhed { padding-bottom:10px; display:block; }'));
    style.appendChild(document.createTextNode('.blogEntryBody > table { margin:10px 0px 10px 20px; }'));
    style.appendChild(document.createTextNode('#pageWrapper, #centerColumn { width:auto; }'));
    style.appendChild(document.createTextNode('.pageContainer { margin:0px 10px 0px 10px; }'));
 
    head.appendChild(style);
}

This script is available for download from UserScripts.org at http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/36900.  It will return the page to a look that is more familiar to readers.  I’ve taken the liberty of adding a little more white space around some items as well.

New Layout

If you aren’t familiar with GreaseMonkey, here’s a quick rundown.  GreaseMonkey is an addon for the Firefox web browser that lets you run scripts against pages and change how they look and/or behave.  In this case I’m removing ads, then changing the style of some elements.  You can install GreaseMonkey from here:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748

Once you’ve installed GreaseMonkey and restarted Firefox, make sure the little monkey icon down at the bottom of your Firefox window is brown.  If he’s grey, click on him (this enables GreaseMonkey).  Then click this link and allow the script to install:

http://userscripts.org/scripts/source/36900.user.js

Once the script is installed you’ll be able to view Nealz Nuze in all of its former glory.  Enjoy.

Read more about this at:

http://boortz.com/nealz_nuze/2008/11/dont-blame-me-nor-the-web-wenc.html

update: Now corrects their page width so that the text is always the width of your browser.

update: It should now work on Neal’s entire site and it moves the listen live link into the header of the page.