Userscripts.org

Hi MPH,

Chrome is a good browser, but it's userscript support pales in comparison to Greasemonkey. Greasemonkey lets scripts store data in a way that the script (and only that script) can access it regardless of what site you're looking at, and in a way that its safe even if you clear cookies etc. Chrome doesn't have this so FFixer resorts to using something called local storage, which is similar to cookies but has some advantages over it. I'm not sure if CCleaner has separate options for cookies and local storage, but clearing cookies in Chrome will also clear the local storage, making you lose all userscript settings.

As for your options:

1. If CCleaner lets you filter what it clears then set it to leave local storage alone. Clearing cookies and cache is no problem since FFixer doesn't use those. If CCleaner provides more advanced filters then maybe you could set it to only leave FFixer's settings - all FFixer's data is stored for "facebook.com" or one of Facebook's subdomains, depending on where you did the customizations. Also, the keys in local storage all start with "fbf-".

2. There is an extension for Chrome called Ninjakit which provides the Greasemonkey functions that Chrome doesn't support natively. I haven't tested it, but I would imagine that it stores data more like Greasemonkey and the data should be safe even after you run CCleaner.

3. You could modify the script to use the settings you want (but this would need to be done every time you upgrade). If you search the code for // Enable profile-specific settings you'll find where all the default values are set up. The boolean (true/false) options are defined in the "buf" variable - those with an exclamation in front the name default to false, the others default to true. Non-boolean options are defined in the "prefs" variable with the default value being the last string on the line.

4. You could just use the default settings.

5. You could stick with the browser that lets you browse the way you want to :)

The problem with that is that browsers don't give userscripts the ability to read/write files on the file system. Only full-fledged extensions can do that and I don't plan on making FFixer an extension because I want it to be cross-browser (it works in at least four major browsers right now, and some others too).

Eventually browsers should be adding the ability to read/write files using regular javascript. Once that happens I can cater better for the browsers that are missing functionality now.