Jeffrey Sharkey is at it again, this time pumping out his OilCan before he hops over to Google. For those of you who do not know who Jeffery is, he is one of the developers behind CompareEverywhere. OilCan is basically “Greasemonkey on steroids” but for the Android platform. You can use OilCan to customize any website by inserting JavaScript to change the website.
Examples of what OilCan can do include, making a JavaScript call to scan a barcode, pick a contact, or launch into Maps or other Android apps. Say you would like to get rid of extra margins and columns on a website, just run a script with OilCan and you can give the page more real estate. There are thousands of Greasemonkey scripts out there for users who would like to tweak their Android experience.
There is even a script that allows you to long-press an application to uninstall it rather than going through all the needed steps. For more information there is an OilCan site for more information about the Userscript format and security model. You can download this tool by clicking on this link from your G1’s browser. Congratulations to Jeffery Sharkey on landing his sweet new job!
[Via JSharkey]
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He wrote TodoList, which is, obviously, a To-Do list app, that lets you use the touchscreen to literally strike through or "cross off" items you've done. Pretty slick. I still prefer QuickList for this function, but for different tastes, this is nice.
Also, slightly useless, slightly genious, the app called GroupHome is an app that categorizes and groups all of your installed apps into expandable drawers. Again, this isn't PERFECT in my opinion, but it's a great proof-of-concept. I wish there was an option built into the Android OS that let me have my apps drawer categorized... at least seperate the apps from the games, or something.
These can both be foud at his blog, along with many more projects... Sharkey seems to be a genious of sorts.
http://www.jsharkey.org/blog/
Next step would be to come up with a modified HOSTS file (see http://pages.swcp.com/~manos/blockads.html for examples) that would route all calls to known ad servers to localhost, and when used in conjunction with Greasemonkey scripts that suppress ad display, will result in a far improved web browsing experience.
Some things I have learned:
1.) It's not like Greasemonkey; it doesn't just install into the Browser. Rather, it is its own WebKit wrapper. (This would be a good thing if not for what follows.)
2.) It has caching issues.
2a.) No matter how many times I tell it to refresh a page it shows the page just as it was the first time you loaded it. The only way I've found to work around this is to uninstall OilCan and then re-install.
2b.) You can't update an installed userscript. Even if you uninstall and then re-install OilCan and then install the userscript anew, it will keep the userscript just as it was the first time you installed it. The only work-around is to change the script's name.
3.) I can't figure out how to pick a script from the SD card. I named it correctly but it never shows up.
4.) If uncheck a default script it will be checked again next time you run OilCan.
5.) If you delete a default script it will be back the next time you run OilCan.
I created what should be a fairly simple (and pretty much completely cloned from the existing half.com script) userscript for LibraryThing.com but right now nothing happens when I press the "Scan barcode" button and trying to debug it is too agonizing for me to continue.