GM_YT

This repository contains a userscript with userstyles for YouTube, meant to be used with the Greasemonkey extension for Gecko-based browsers. These browsers include Firefox, SeaMonkey, GNU IceCat, Debian Iceweasel, and others that are compatible.

For those not in the know, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greasemonkey for a description on how this works.

I primarily refer to the userscript file as a userstyle, because I don't use actual scripting beyond applying CSS. My preference for Greasemonkey is described further below under the Rationale chapter.

Purpose. The userstyles do the following:

• Adjust the video viewing design for smaller displays, such as those with a 1024x768 resolution.

  This was the primary rationale, as the target audience would be users with computers and computer monitors that cannot display in any greater resolution. Nowadays, these are typically notebook computers and netbooks that are still perfectly capable of video playback on YouTube.

  The other reason was, that I wanted the browser window showing YouTube to be narrower, especially if I wanted it side-by-side with another window. This works well with wider screens.

  With the design, I've tried to avoid the appearance of horizontal scrollbars.

  The design is meant to be fluid and responsive, whilst for the most part avoiding @media hooks, which can be resource-intensive. (Though at some point, YouTube's own @media CSS kicks in when reducing window widths to much less than 1024px.)

• Design: The search bar at the top is not fixed anymore and scrolls with the rest of the page, and thus won't take away screen real estate.

• Specific font color for links to viewed videos.

• The likes/dislikes bar shows red colour (default was blue).

• Change the background color from an all-white to a light gray;

• I think I changed the font to Arial and Helvetica, which offer better legibility because of font rendering issues in Firefox on Windows xp. Font changes are not widespread, so they're not applied everywhere.

• Font size was changed on some UI elements to avoid the 2015/2016+ design disease of bigger text everywhere (presumably to appease people with large-resolution tablets).

• Font size changes when hovering over a comment to better view font-based emoticons. But that hover feature may be a bit jarring.

  • The emoticons themselves require the latest version of the Symbola font. I hear that font is free software, and available here: http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/
  • Open Sans Condensed Light is also used. It should be possible obtain the font from here: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Open+Sans+Condensed?selection.family=Open+Sans+Condensed:300

Some pre-requisites:

• The styles are meant for use on Gecko-based browsers. These include Firefox, SeaMonkey, GNU IceCat, and Debian Iceweasel (of which most are typically running on Windows xp).
• The styles have been developed and tested in an environment, where NoScript and Adblock Plus browser extensions are active; If you're not using either of these add-ons, your experience may be different.
• But the styles themselves do not block advertisements, and are not meant to do so. If you like someone's work on YouTube, don't hesitate to unblock their ads.

Code characteristics:

• Instead of using !important in a CSS declaration, I investigate the code to supersede the existing selector with its element name: If a selector contains .selectorname, I supersede it with DIV.selectorname. DIV is just an example; any other element name can be put, depending on which is used.

Errata

• Dead code still exists, because I created the styles for personal use, and haven't removed much anything from years past (2013+).
• Some (interactive) notifications are not exactly visible. Sorry about that.
• There's development-related CSS meant to adjust letter-spacing. You might see "long title" at the ends of long titles.

Rationale

• I created this repository, because I spread the userstyles to a couple other computers, and there needed to be a way to auto-update them when necessary.

Greasemonkey was chosen perhaps for the following reasons:

• Historic purposes: When I needed custom CSS to change CSS for a webpage in an early version of Firefox, then the only add-on that worked, was Greasemonkey. Stylish worked in newer browser versions, and I really appreciate Stylish on Firefox and Icecat for mobile.
• Usability;
• The possibility to easily apply styles locally;
• The possibility to include comments in userstyles.

A bit of legal stuff

• All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. No trademark or copyright infringement intended.
• I haven't decided on the license yet, because the userstyle locally changes the appearance of a proprietary website.