Those involved in testing Google's Chrome browser found an unexpected surprise Saturday when a popular scripting tool, Greasemonkey, was included in the latest nightly builds of the browser.
Chrome developers still have some work to do before Chrome has a full Greasemonkey implementation, but soon enough, the integration will allow users to install scripts to enhance functionality and change the look of any web page.
It will also make a previously hacked Greasemonkey implementation, Greasemetal, obsolete.
At Chrome's launch in September, when Google mentioned the company would be looking to add an extensions API, Chrome developers also gave the impression it would be a long-time in coming. In other words, they would have to develop it from scratch.
Building extensions into the browser one by one is another way to go, although it seems like a stop-gap solution at the moment. At this point we have Gears (formerly Google Gears) built into the browser, and now Greasemonkey. Of course, it's probably no coincidence the original creator of Greasemonkey, Aaron Boodman, currently works at Google and added the implementation himself.
You can download the nightly build of Chrome, including the half-baked Greasemonkey implementation, for testing purposes at Chromium.org. Greasemonkey is currently available, and very popular, as an extension to Firefox and IE.
[via Google Operating System]
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