If you are a geek, you may have heard of the Firefox extension called GreaseMonkey which lets you to add bits of DHTML ("user scripts") to any web page to change its design or behavior. This basically enables you to remix the Web and either add features to your favorite web sites or fix broken UI design.

Over the Memorial day weekend, I got the hookup on where to obtain a similar application for Internet Explorer named Trixie. Below are some excerpts from the Trixie website

What is a Trixie script?

Any Greasemonkey script is a Trixie script.  Though, due to differences between Firefox and Internet Explorer, not all Greasemonkey scripts can be executed within IE.  Trixie makes no attempt to allow Greasemonkey scripts to run unaltered, since it is best to have the script author account for the differences and have the script run on both browsers if he/she so chooses.

Refer to the excellent Greasemonkey documentation to learn how to write Greasemonkey/Trixie scripts.  Note that some of the information there won't be applicable to Internet Explorer and Trixie.

Installing Trixie

Trixie requires the Microsoft .NET framework to be installed.

To install Trixie, download and run TrixieSetup  (latest version: 0.2.0).  You should ideally close all instances of Internet Explorer before doing this.  By default, TrixieSetup installs Trixie to your Program Files\Bhelpuri\Trixie directory (you can of course change this location).  It also installs a few scripts to the Program Files\Bhelpuri\Trixie\Scripts directory.

Restart IE after installing Trixie.  Once you have restarted, go to the Tools menu.  You should see a menu item called "Trixie Options".  Selecting that will show you the list of scripts installed and which one's are enabled or disabled.

Once you have installed Trixie, you browse the Web just like you always do.  Trixie works in the background executing the scripts on the designated pages and customizing them to your needs.

I've been using Trixie for the past few days and so far it rocks. I also looked at the code via Reflector and it taught me a thing or two about writing browser plugins with C#. So far my favorite Trixie Script is the one that adds site statistics to an MSN Spaces blog when you view your own space.

It looks like I need to spend some time reading Dive Into Greasemonkey so I can write my own user scripts to fix annoyances in web sites I use frequently. Remix the web, indeed.

Update: It took me a few minutes to figure out why the project was called Trixie. If you're a Speed Racer fan, you probably figured it out after reading the second paragraph of this post. :)