0 Comments Greasemonkey Script for GoComics

One of the online sites I read cartoons from occasionally is GoComics.com, but unless you sign-up and get a paid subscription it is plagued with multiple ads and limited features. Even with my broadband Internet speed currently tested at 85.94 Mbps their pages regularly take 10-15 seconds to fully load each page there with ads.

I understand ad-revenue is a source of income and I try to let it be, but they also disable the cartoons being clickable for a larger view or to save (besides other things).

Of course to save the cartoon image a simple keyboard PrtScn button, or screenshot program such as open-source Greenshot can get around any limitation of what you see at least. The cartoon link can be found in the page source, or found with Firefox Inspector to manually view/save the full-size version.

So with a bit of trial-and-error I put together a Greasemonkey script to fix a few of those issues, rather than do it by hand for each one.

Years ago (80s and 90s) I became fluent with some programming languages, so I tend to be able to hammer out what I need still with other languages. The script runs fine for me, but don't expect it to be optimized or top-notch. 😊

I'd recommend removing the ad removal portion of the script so GoComics receives their ad revenue, but that is your choice. To remove it from the script load it in Greasemonkey and simply delete the lines below line number 39, and save the changes.

Personally I always use the AdBlocker Plus extension anyway online, as ads are so bad everywhere.

The script I wrote...

• Re-enables the cartoon images to be clickable
• Links the image to the cartoon full-size version (not the scaled version to fit their page - so some are huge and others are the same size depending on the cartoon)
• And has basic ad removal routines
  
  • Including the top banner, left side, right side floating, along the bottom, and whatever else.
  • AdBlock Plus blocks 8 items total on the site. The only ad left with my script is one that displays when comments are clicked/shown (as it is handled after the script is ran on page-load).

To make it easier for the script to be accessed and for updates, I have shared my Greasemonkey script at Github Gist.

Below is the hosted script, you can copy/paste it yourself into Greasemonkey via the New User Script... Greasemonkey button - or download it and add it that way too.