There are a ton of Firefox add-ons or Greasemonkey user scripts that can change the look, feel, and behavior of web sites. For example, did you know that there are at least 292 Greasemonkey scripts for Gmail alone? They let you do everything from login to multiple Gmail accounts simultaneously to setting a 2 minute time limit for any new message or thread to keep you from wasting all day writing an email.

But when you visit a web site, how do you know if there are better ways to view it? Greasefire is a Firefox add-on that will tell you if there are any user scripts for the page you're visiting. When you have Greasefire and Greasemonkey installed a little monkey will show up in the bottom right corner of your Firefox status bar. If there are scripts available for the site you're viewing, the monkey's background color will change to red. And when you right click on the icon you'll see the number of available scripts. Click on that number and a window will open telling you more about those scripts.

Last week another plugin was released with a similar purpose. App Discover will theoretically tell you if there are any user scripts, Firefox add-ons, or even Adobe AIR clients that will enhance your web experience for a specific page. But unlike Greasefire, App Discover will only work on web pages where the publisher has added a bit of code to the page to let the plugin know about recommended user scripts or add-ons. And since the plugin is so new, right now the number of sites optimized for use with App Discover is hovering around zero. But that could change at any time, making this one plugin worth keeping an eye on.

[via Firefox Facts and ReadWriteWeb]

It's been about a week since Google launched the public beta of its open source web browser, Google Chrome. While the browser certainly ain't perfect by a long shot, it does render pages quickly and has a few innovative features like an unconventional placement for tabs and a unified search box/location bar.

Over the past week there's been a flurry of activity surrounding the browser. Not from Google developers, but by third party developers who have done their best to make Google at least as useful as Firefox or Safari. A few folks have taken a different approach and tried to make Firefox look and feel a bit more like Chrome. Here are a few of our favorite Google Chrome updates from week one.


Themes

If you like Google Chrome's layout but can't stand the bland light blue color scheme, you're in luck. It turns out that all you need to do to change the browser's theme is replace a single default.dll. Your first step should be to the ChromeSpot message boards where dozens of users have posted custom themes. You can also find custom themes at Google Chrome Themes. (Link removed due to allegations that the developers were stealing themes without crediting the authors).

One you find a theme you like, you should backup your default theme by making a copy of your default.dll file. It's located in \Documents and Settings\[username\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\[version number]\Themes in Windows XP. Then just download the theme of your choice and unzip the new default.dll location to the same location.

If you're using Windows Vista the path should be \Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\[version number]\Themes\

Unfortunately since Google hasn't yet built a theme manager for Chrome there's no simple way to switch between mulitple themes from within the browser settings. If you're looking for an easier way to switch between themes you can try the Chrome Automatic Theme Switcher, but it won't work with the latest build of Chrome.

[via Lifehacker and Google Blogoscoped]