Cruiser

The Internet is paved with porn. Now you can cruise the gutters of the information super highway at high speed, with one hand on the wheel.

Cruiser is a GreaseMonkey script for the Firefox Google Chrome (Beta) web browser. Cruiser is available from userscripts.org.

Last updates: Userscripts.org: 07 Apr 2009, This site: 7 Apr 2009

 Description

Cruiser is a GreaseMonkey script for the Firefox web browser that automatically converts web picture galleries to simple, interactive galleries. The transformed galleries have full keyboard and mouse support and let you view the full sized images without having to ever click on a link.

  [screenshot]

With Cruiser you get

 Installation

  Firefox

You need to install the add-on GreaseMonkey for Firefox.

Get Cruiser from userscripts.org* and click on the "install this script" button. To install it you may need to use
Tools > GreaseMonkey > Install User Script
Check the Change History page here to see if a later version exists!

After you install it, you'll probably want to customize Firefox. Use one of the tabbed browsing add-ons or do this:

Type about:config into your location bar

Setting Value Reason
brower.link.open_newwindow3To open links in a new tab
dom.allow_scripts_to_close_windowstrueTo enable window close key.
browser.tabs.closeButtons3To put the tab close button on the far right so you don't have to move the mouse so much.

You can also edit the script if you want to...

See the start of the script for how to customize it... it's easy.

Cruiser looks best in fullscreen mode. Use F11 to toggle full screen mode. The AutoHide Firefox extension is highly recommended!

  Google Chrome

Be sure you are using Chrome 2 or later or a nightly build of Chromium. Copy the script into the User Scripts directory and start as shown in the Change History page here. Detailed instructions for user scripts are found elsewhere on the web and change occasionally as the beta changes.

*A more recent version might be available on the Change History page.

 How To Use

 Easy

1) Display any web page containing pictures you can click on. This will show just pictures in the site index

2) If there are picture links (blue borders) in the site index, use
or or to show interactive gallery

3) If there are page links (red borders) in the site index:

Of course, you can also click on pictures to view them.
Use the or buttons to close the site.

Use the in the site index to show hidden text links.

 Advanced

See the Keys and Mouse section or the interactive help to for more controls.
Play with it. Don't be afraid to try other keys. This should be fairly intuitive.

 Screen Shots

This is how one sample site is shown by Cruiser:

Original
 
Site Index
Original site's thumbnails
 
Interactive Index
Actual linked-to pictures
[screenshot] [screenshot] [screenshot]
    
Text Links List
Interactive Help
[screenshot]
[screenshot]

 Keys and Mouse

Cruiser looks best in fullscreen mode. Use F11 to toggle full screen mode. The AutoHide Firefox extension is highly recommended!

Available Keys and mouse actions depend on what you are doing, but in general...

 General overview

Mouse over keys to see description

 Site Index Screen (the 1st screen)

[screenshot]
What you want to do Right handed Left handed Mouse
Show pictures and indexes if picture links exist Right Arrow, Pad-0   Click 'Fetch' button or move mouse wheel
Launch linked sites if links exist Enter (if 'Launch' button has the focus)   Click 'Launch' button
Manually specify where the next launch starts Left and Right Arrows   Click '<' and '>' buttons

 Interactive Index

[screenshot]
What you want to do Right handed Left handed Mouse
Next picture Right Arrow, Space Bar Left Arrow, Space Bar Mouse Wheel Down (when fit-to-window or mouse is over picture)
Previous picture Left Arrow, spacebar   Mouse Wheel Up (when fit-to-window or mouse is over picture)
Actual Size Down Arrow, Shift Shift Move mouse to upper left corner
Fit to Window Up Arrow, Shift Shift Move mouse to upper left corner
Show thumbnails while viewing picture Enter, Pad-0 Escape Click on a picture
Show picture while viewing thumbnails Enter, Pad-0 Escape Click on a picture
Increase Thumbnail Size Plus    
Decrease Thumbnail Size Minus    
Quit (close tab) Pad-1, Backslash Q Use normal close box

 How Cruiser works

Please see the text of the script for now. Someday I may even add comments.

Basically the script:

  1. Finds all images that are links (<a> tags)
  2. Massages those links to remove redirections and some tracking info and links to banned sites
  3. Generates a main page of the index.
  4. Sets up mouse and keyboard actions by assigning scripts to events. These scripts must be entirely self contained so they are a little unusual. If you try to read it and wonder why quotes are so odd, that is why.
  5. The self contained scripts handle the generation of the index and picture galleries by manipulating the DOM.
  6. No images are linked. All graphics (the arrow at the bottom of the page, the rounded corners on the help screen) are done with CSS only.

Cruiser only does page manipulation (via DOM and innerHTML) and sets a few events (load, keyboard, mouse and resize). It does not make any calls to other web sites. There is no use of Ajax, cookies, eval(), cross site scripting or any other potentially dangerous technologies.

If you are concerned, please read the code for yourself.

 Troubleshooting and Known Problems

Problem Suggestion
Page isn't changed at all Cruiser has not found any reason to modify the page
  • Less than 2 images on the page are links that are not in the bannedLinks list
  • Site uses some constructs that Cruiser can't handle (like frames)
  • Cruiser or GreaseMonkey is disabled
Index gets generated but images are not shown This can happen when links do not point to valid .jpg files
  • Link says it is an image, but web site is really returning another page
  • Link looks like an image link but is not (may contain invalid characters)

Reload the page and click on the images in the site index to view images in new tabs

Colors, fonts or layouts are wrong Many web sites override page styles that Cruiser does not force. Working as designed (broken as designed?)
Cruiser is opening new windows You need to tweak Firefox settings. please reread the Installation page.
The close window keys don't work You need to tweak Firefox settings. please reread the Installation page.
My browser or system got slow when I launched a bunch of sites. Don't try to open too many sites at a time. You can reduce the number if sites launched with each click of the 'Launch' button by modifying the variable SITES_PER_LAUNCH in the script.
Some pictures that are valid links are missing

Too many invalid pictures are showing up
Cruiser filters pictures by checking the ratio of height to width or width to height.

You can set a preferred ratio range by modifying the variable SIZERATIO in the script.

 Change History

If there is a copy of Cruiser that is newer than the copy on userscripts.org it will be available on this page.

Date Changes
07 Apr '09
Same as version
on userscripts.org
  • Fixed buttons broken in Firefox by 13 Mar 09 update
13 Mar '09
  • Sort of works with Google Chrome 2 (nightly build). Still a bit funky. Sizing problems and busted links in Chromium. Tested starting Chromium with --user-data-dir="c:\foo" --enable-user-scripts --enable-greasemonkey --disable-popup-blocking
05 Jun '08
  • Added R key in 1st screen to reload the page without Cruiser changing it
  • Better usability for script generation. Now just use C key or click a link on the top of the page.
    Especially useful with a script that monitors the clipboard because then you can just use C, Ctrl-C to download all images.
    Sample Monitor written in Object Rexx
25 Apr '08
  • Better fake popups for help and text links using simpler CSS
  • H key shows help on all pages
21 Mar '08
  • Added L key and Show Text Links link to show all hidden text links in a pop-up window.
  • When pages don't convert because of no picture links, links to banned sites show as  Banned  and are deactivated. Banned sites can be configured in the customization section of the script.
  • If only 1 picture among 11 or more does not point to an image, don't show that picture since it usually links to crap.
  • Removes links to sites likely to contain underage crap! I don't have any toleration for that.
16 Mar '08
  • Fixed sorting of pictures with names ending in numbers that have no leading zeros. Files that used to sort as [1, 10, 11, ..., 2, 20, 21, ...] now order as [1, 2, 3, ..., 10, 11, ...] so sequences look right
  • Added support for links to .jpeg files in addition to .jpg files
  • Improved code to change linked URLs to remove redirections and remove affiliate information. See the ScumCheat extension.
02 Mar '08
  • Change default of closing video-only sites to off
  • Changed automatic closing of video-only sites to close sites with all videos plus one picture
26 Feb '08
  • Added an immediate close list so sites that really suck will close automatically
  • Added an immediate close option for sites that only have pictures that link to mpg or wmv files
  • Added comments to customization section
  • Made customizing 'banned links' and 'banned pictures' easier by moving customization to the beginning of the script
  • Changed the way URLs are changed to remove some referrer information
17 Feb '08
  • Fixed automatic scrolling on index page when launching sites
  • Fixed automatic scrolling on index page when scrolled away from highlighted sites
  • Fixed handling of sites with commas in the address (fewer page not found errors, error 404)
01 Jan '08
  • Move headings around for visibility
  • Fix documentation on shift key
17 Nov '07
  • Fix "fit to window" to work better with different window sizes
  • Fix sites using .JPG extension instead of .jpg
  • Mouse wheel performance improvement by not resizing invisible pictures
14 Nov '07
  • Help menu fade in
  • Help and size buttons float with scrolling
  • Document in help A and Shift as size toggles
  • Fix background color on some web pages
  • Add borders and positioning to gallery help
13 Nov '07
  • Fixed failure to resize pictures linked from pages with strict DOCTYPE
  • Added toggle button for 'Fit to Window'/'Actual Size'. This button fades in as you move the cursor to the upper right corner.
  • Added hotkey 'A' to toggle between fit and actual sizes. (Not in help screen)
  • Renamed to Cruiser to clean up name in installed script list.
9 Nov '07
  • Pages with one picture larger than 600x600 now treated as single page gallery
  • Updated web site page in help link
  • Slightly better handling of links that look like jpg links but are not
7 Nov '07
  • Mouse Wheel works in actual size mode when mouse is over picture
  • Fixed help formatting error
  • Center smaller pictures in screen when possible

 Other GreaseMonkey Scripts

Script Updated Description Customizations
OpenCommonText 15 Jul '08
This script finds links that have the same text and adds a button to the top right to open those links 9 at a time. This is useful for sites that just have a bunch of links to galleries but use the same text for every link.
  • Links with numbers at the ends of the link text are considered the same link text.
  • Links that point to the same URL are opened only once.
  • Some links that use redirection are resolved before opening.
  • If there are no links with matching text, this script does nothing.

OpenCommonText is most useful if Cruiser is also installed, though it works fine on its own.

  • Number of pictures to open at once
  • Delay between opens

Scum Cheat 05 Mar '08
This is pretty out of date now
ScumCheat keeps many porn sites from getting paid for traffic. It alters links to remove redirections and many of the strings that porn web sites use to make money from traffic. Yeah, we all look at porn on the Internet, but its a luxury. Just cause we look at it doesn't mean that the scum who make it or distribute it should make any money from it.

Removes most data for ccbill, nats, coupon and others.

ScumCheat is already built in to Cruiser, but this extension is good when Cruiser is not in use.

  • None, unless you want to add some regular expressions

 Developer Info

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