I love my custom Google homepage aka iGoogle. I have subscribed to a number RSS feeds, keep GMail in a tab, and have my Google bookmarks on a tab. Its works well, and has a customizable look and feel. Me and iGoogle were getting along really well. Until about a week or two ago. That is when Google added a chat feature to the main page. Its really annoying and just gets in the way. I immediately wanted to remove.
I had never used Greasemonkey before, but had read about it so I was aware of its capabilities. The jist is that it allows you to write local Javascript files that can be applied to specific domains or web pages. Large repositories of Greasemonkey scripts are available online. I put two and two together – I would install Greasemonkey and install a script to remove Google chat.
Well, the first part went well but I had trouble finding a script that actually removed Google Chat from iGoogle. After about 5 minutes of research I realized how incredibly easy it is to author a Greasemonkey script. Here is the script I wrote to remove (or hide) Google Chat from iGoogle. Next up: figure out how to get jQuery into Greasemonkey.
// ==UserScript==
// @name Remove GMail Chat
// @namespace http://jasonjackson.com/scripts
// @include http://www.google.com/ig
// ==/UserScript==
(function() {
var chatNode = document.getElementById("bottom_nav");
chatNode.style.display = 'none';
})();
