Comparison between Monkeygrease and MouseHole

Tue Nov 8 12:01:27 EST 2005

A new Greasemonkey-style proxy was released yesterday.  It's written in 
Java.

Here's an overview I wrote up for the Greasemonkey list:

- Monkeygrease injects HTML elements into four possible positions on a 
page (top and bottom of <head> or top and bottom of <body>). MouseHole 
hands the user an XHTML object which can be freely transformed.

- Monkeygrease user scripts are written in XML.  MouseHole scripts can 
be written in Ruby or Javascript (GM-style).

- Monkeygrease requires Java and a configured web application server.  
MouseHole requires Ruby and leverages its own personal web server 
written in Ruby.  However, MouseHole's Windows installer has no 
prerequisites.

- Monkeygrease scripts must be added to an XML file by hand and requires 
a reboot.  MouseHole presents the user with an installation window when 
scripts are encountered on the web.

- Monkeygrease URL matching is done by hand in the XML config.  
MouseHole URL matching is done in the browser using an interface similar 
to GM.

- Monkeygrease offers no database API like GM does (GM_setValue, 
GM_getValue).  MouseHole offers each script a tiny, transparent object 
database. (i.e. myScript.db['lastVisited'] = Time.now.)

- I'm unsure about Monkeygrease's ability to do cross-domain 
XMLHttpRequest.  I can't see a way to do this.  I know MH and GM can 
both do this (i.e. BookBurro, you're on amazon.com and the user script 
is given permission to hit bn.com, powells.com, etc.)

- MouseHole also lets user scripts mount their own tiny web 
applications.  This is a huge advantage.  For example, there is a 
MouseWiki, an Instiki-clone which mounts at http://mouse.hole/wiki.  A 
better example is MouseCommand, which is a wiki for storing small Ruby 
scripts which can be execute via URL.  Think YubNub.  
<http://redhanded.hobix.com/inspect/wikiShellOnMousehole.html>

_why