Some weeks ago I made a blog post, about IE7Pro userscripts, the Greasemonkey-like plugin for Internet Explorer 7.
I’m still deeply in love with userscripts for both IE7Pro and Greasemonkey, but what a waste of time for spending
hours on writing big userscripts with DOM javascripting to extend that “untouchable” website/webapplication.
This should be different! Why not use jQuery for IE7Pro userscripts.

The idea is to load first the jQuery script and then the userscript.
Unfortunately a javascript include script like this will not work:

//load jQuery
inc("jquery.js");

/* jsHandler.js */
function inc(filename)
{
  var body = document.getElementsByTagName('body').item(0);
  script = document.createElement('script');
  script.src = filename;
  script.type = 'text/javascript';
  body.appendChild(script)
}

However, it’s still very easy to let jQuery run for userscripts.
First download the latest jQuery lib.

Incase of IE7Pro:
Rename the downloaded jQuery script to: jquery.ieuser.js and place it
in the userscript folder. (path\IEPro\userscripts).

Open the jquery.ieuser.js file and add the following comment block on the top of javascript lib file:

// ==UserScript==
// @name           jQuery
// @namespace      jQuery
// @include        *
// ==/UserScript==

Now you can reload the jQuery file from the preferences – userscript screen in IE7Pro, and enable jQuery.
To test it, create a new userscript with the following jQuery code. As soon as it runs, you know
that you can use jQuery for every page.

// ==UserScript==
// @name           Test
// @namespace      Test
// @include        *
// @author Lee Boonstra
// ==/UserScript==

$(document).ready(function(){
  alert("jQuery in userscripts do work!");
});

Setting target=”_blank” is not strict valid (x)html. But you want to open all your external URL’s in another window. And have you seen that nice icon on Wikipedia for all the external hyperlinks, which are created dynamicly?
Well today I wrote a Javascript function which does this functionality for you.

Just implement this Javascript (file) between your tags:

/**
 * Ladysign Standard Javascript
 */
function externalLinks() {
    var host = window.location.host;

    var anchors = document.getElementsByTagName("a");
    for (var i=0; i<=anchors.length; i++) {
        var domain = getDomain(anchors[i]);
        if (domain != undefined && anchors[i].href && host != domain){
           anchors[i].target = "_blank";
           anchors[i].className = "external";
        }
    }
}

function getDomain(url){
    var urlStr = url + "";
    var split_domain = new Array();
    split_domain = urlStr.split("/");
    return split_domain[2];
}

window.onload = externalLinks;

And add a stylesheet class “external” together with a nice icon:

  .external { background: transparent url(_img/external.png) no-repeat scroll right center; padding: 0 13px 0 0; }

Today I will write only good stuff about IE7Pro, the ultimate add-on / plug-in for Internet Explorer 7. Cause beside the handy features such as spelling checks and auto pre-fill on forms, download manager, clear privacy data option and session manager, it also contains the option to work with user scripts, just like GreaseMonkey for Mozilla Firefox does!

And that’s a good thing. Do you remember those, crappy and dirty websites, which only work for Internet Explorer. (Goodbye Firefox, Opera and Chrome).
You can easily change these websites, with your own client-side code and logics. With just a bit of DOM Javascript experience you can change (clientside) every page you want, that’s because IE7Pro (or GreaseMonkey) directly loads your script after the original page is loaded, so you can access page elements by Javascripting to page ID’s and tags.

1. Just install the plugin.
2. Go the the folder where you installed IE7Pro: C:\Program Files\IEPro\userscripts\
and create a new file with .ieuser.js extension: myFirstUserScript.ieuser.js
3. Make sure your userscript contains an //==UserScript== comment, with a @nam, @namespace, @description and @include comment.
Specially the include is needed, so Internet Explorer knows when your script should be loaded -before- the requested page is loaded.
Let’s say you want to modify Ebay.com. Then write down with the asterisk regex, that all pages within the ebay.com range should load your script first.
Such a comment header can look like this:

// ==UserScript==
// @name           myFirstUserScript
// @namespace      myFirstUserScript
// @description    My First User Script mods Ebay.com
// @include        *ebay.com*
// ==/UserScript==

//... here comes all your DOM Javascript coding.

4. Rightclick on the blue IE7Pro circle (statusbar – right bottom), and click on “Preferences (CTRL + F7) > User Scripts”.
Tick “enable userscripts”.
5. Press the “Reload All Scripts” button, and tick your newly created file.
6. Start coding in your myFirstUserScript.ieuser.js file!