17 Greasemonkey Scripts to Turbocharge Your Browser

Content Filtering

Here are two great scripts to help you shield--or unshield--your eyes from online filth, and one to take the mystery out of TinyURL addresses.

15. Profanity Filter

The Web's openness and impression of anonymity have redefined freedom of speech, but one side effect is that profanity has become ubiquitous online. The Profanity Filter script censors all of that awful Internet ***, replacing common expletives with three harmless asterisks. This script's default list of filtered words is large, but you can easily edit it to add words that you object to or to remove words that you don't find offensive. So if you never want to see the word "platypus" again, you don't have to.

16. Uncensor the Internet

On the other hand, you're not an idiot; and at sites that censor words with just a couple of figleaflike asterisks--such as "bull**it" or "platy**s"--you'd have to be pretty dim not to recognize what's being obscured. If that kind of ineffectual fastidiousness rubs you the wrong way, you can use the Uncensor the Internet script to restore partially censored words to unexpurgated form for maximum shock value.

17. Tin Foil Hat

URL-shortening service TinyURL is the de facto tool of choice for shrinking long Web addresses to ensure that they won't break in an e-mail window or take up too much space online. Ujnfortunately, the magically truncated URLs also provide no context with regard to where the link will take you. If you're as paranoid as I am, that kind of ambiguity can eat you alive. But after installing the Tin Foil Hat script, you can hover your mouse over any TinyURL link to reveal the actual destination of the TinyURL address. Never again will you be forced to click blindly through.

Los Angeles-based Adam Pash is a senior editor and blogger at Lifehacker.com. When he's not writing about technology or building Web sites, he's busy fighting his Xbox addiction.