In the post, “How to Tweak Your iGoogle Page with Greasemonkey,” I wrote about a Greasemonkey script that allows you to easily minimize and maximize iGoogle gadgets. This script only works with FireFox and Greasemonkey. So, I’ve created a bookmarklet that should work in most browsers: Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, and Opera.

Depending on your browser, you can either drag the link above to your bookmark toolbar, or right click the link and add it to your favorites/bookmarks. Whenever you visit iGoogle, click the bookmarklet and you’ll be able to expand/minimize your Gadgets.

Through Twitter, some online forums, and readers contacting me via this blog, I have learned that there are many iGoogle users who want to be able to manipulate their homepage so that it is more user friendly. This makes sense. If iGoogle is going to be your start page, you want it to function as effortlessly as possible.

In this post, you will learn how to use Greasemonkey scripts to change the behavior of the page you are viewing. And one of the scripts is even brought to you by the Unofficial Google Gadget Blog!

What is Greasemonkey?

Greasemonkey is a Mozilla FireFox add-on that enhances the browser experience by letting the user change the page with scripts. Changes can be made to most web pages. With Greasemonkey, any change that is made will be carried out every time the page is loaded.  Just make sure to leave Greasemonkey on and any changes made to a web page will be “permanent.”

To continue, please install the following:

• Install Mozilla FireFox
  
• Install Greasemonkey
• Install Greasefire
• Restart Mozilla FireFox

Now, you should see two little monkeys, as pictured to the left and with fire surrounding it,  on the bottom right side of your web page. Click on the image and make sure that “Enabled” is checked.

Using Greasemonkey in iGoogle

Now that the set up is complete, go to your iGoogle page. Once on the page, click on the little monkey with the fire surrounding him . This will show you all the Greasemonkey scripts available for this web page.  You will see that 357 scripts are available for iGoogle.

Yikes! That’s a lot. So what now? Clicking on the “357 scripts” will open a new window that allows you to browse through all the scripts that are available.

To save time, I have posted links to two scripts that you can use right away. Click on the links and hit “Install.”

Minimize & Maximize Gadgets in iGoogle
This script adds a +/- icon to the title bar of every gadget. This allows you to easily minimize gadgets when not in use and maximize them right away when you do want to use them. This script really helps you to not delete the gadgets you love. (”Delete this gadget” & “Minimize this gadget” are right on top of each other.)

Resize Columns in iGoogle
This script allows you to change the width of your columns in iGoogle. Once the script is installed, you will see two little gray boxes in between your columns. Dragging your mouse left and right between the columns will resize them.

What’s Next?

You can also visit UserScripts.org to see what other scripts are available for the various pages you may visit on the web. This site is a directory of all the Greasemonkey scripts that web developers have written.

As you can see, Greasemonkey is a tool that allows you customize your web pages with as many features as you would like. Who wouldn’t want custom upgrades for your browser?

I often encounter this question, so I thought I’d write up a quick post on how to delete a gadget in iGoogle.

There are two ways.

Each gadget has a two icons in the top right corner of the title bar. Clicking the “arrow” icon on the left reveals a dropdown menu with ‘Delete this gadget’ as an option among others, which I will explain at some later date.

The second way to delete a gadget is by editing the Tab to which the gadget belongs. This is sometimes the only way to delete a gadget…gadgets with an apostrophe in their title break the dropdown menu mentioned in the first option. Anyhow, each tab has a similar arrow icon that reveals a dropdown menu when clicked. From there, choose ‘Edit this tab’ which will pull up a page where you can delete the gadgets on that tab.

While trying to use my iGoogle page today, I have received this error message in many of my gadgets. I am not sure what is going on with the homepage this morning.

Many users are reporting the same thing with their homepages.

What’s going on iGoogle? How can we share our love when you are broken?