Although it seems strangely obsessed with religion related matters I usually find something interesting to read at signposts. There was a time however when their site design left something to be desired, well in my opinion anyway. It would have been nice to get the content without the gothic feel.

Innovation by Aaron Boodman, has made this a reality. He has released a plugin to Firefox browser call GreaseMonkey that lets Boodman's Java­Script - or anyone else's - alter a Web page as it's downloaded. The site serves the same old data, but you get to decide what Firefox displays. Greasemonkey junkies have posted more than 600 downloadable site mods, or user scripts, at www.greasemonkeyed.com.

Some mods fix buggy javascript on pages, more complex routines that mix content from multiple sites, upsetting the carefully calibrated sales environments at big online retailers. For example you can modify the Amazon page to add a yellow postit note in the corner with up-to-the-second price quotes scraped from Barnes & Noble, Powell's Books, and other competitors.

The fundamental concept behind greasemonkey is that the code delivered by html is executed on your PC and ipso facto you should be able to have control over what is executed and how. It turns browsers (the people browsing not the software) into active participants rather than receivers of predetermined content. Predictably sites such as Amazon are not amused by this latest development are are placing code on their pages to counter greasemonkey code. Ultimately however they are doomed because their html code is executed in a technical environment which they do not control, your PC.