Doing Cool and Useful Things With Javascript
Ahmed Tarek Hasan
Senior Software Design Engineer @ASML (Advanced Semiconductor Material Lithography) | Technical Blogger | Development Simply Put (DevelopmentSimplyPut.com)
Some of you may notice that from time to time I share a tool or a script to do something with popular sites and services. May be some of them are useful to some of you or may be not, but anyways I got questions from some of you about these tools and scripts and I have been answering these questions separately. But, since these questions keep coming, this means that may be others are interested into knowing more about this topic but are just shy to ask or something.
So, I believe that it is now obvious that the main purpose of this article will be to provide some answers for some of these questions I usually receive.
Why do I do it?
Because at some point the tool or the script is useful for someone and I'd like to share it with other people. But, the second reason would be that it is fun. I really enjoy doing these stuff as they keep my sense of logic and my technical skills sharp.
How do I do it?
I mainly do it using Javascript and other Javascript libraries like JQuery. There is no magic behind, if you have experience writing some code in Javascript then you can also do it. But, there are other things which you may need to have experience with but it depends on the task or the logic you need to execute.
For example, if you just need to manipulate the HTML structure of a page or something then it is enough to have experience with writing Javascript and/or using JQuery. But, if you need to do something like simulating a request which is already done by a website but do it in another way or add some tweaks, then you may need to have experience with using listeners and request tracking tools like Fiddler or something similar.
What do I need to do it?
As I told you, you need the appropriate technical experience depending on the task or logic you need to execute and in addition to this you will need to have the passion and patience as it sometimes seams to be hard and even boring but once you see a partial output and gain you feel challenged and encouraged to keep working on it.
What can I do?
You can do many things. May be you need to manipulate the UI structure of some website to make it more usable to you. Or may be you need to add a feature to some website which you think will be useful. Or may be you need to connect different services which are originally separated and isolated. Or may be you just need to get notified when something happens on an opened website on your browser.
You have too many things to do, just think of something useful and you will find one.
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Do you have any real-world examples?
Sure, I already have my share of building some of these useful tools and scripts.
I also have a lot more but they are not published. Some of them are related to URL shortening services. Others are related to bulk deleting messages from a Slack Channel. Others are related to grabbing download links from online courses platforms (links are already provided by the course platform but scattered around many pages)
Do you have any useful resources?
Sure, I can provide you with many resources but most of them are search results from google which you can get by yourself in some few clicks. What I can help you with is just providing you with an article and some search keywords
That's it. I hope this article somehow helped you know some info about this topic and I am curious to see what you can do :)