There are things on many web sites that are annoying, but if I just have to use them once in a while, I shrug and keep going. However, when there is something annoying on a web site like Amazon.com, that I have to put up with all the time, I sometimes hit my frustration limit and try to fix it. A while back, I got tired of the search category on Amazon.com switching to the category of the currently viewed product. That's pretty much NEVER what I want. More recently, I had my fill of the Amazon Smile popup just below the search box grabbing the focus to tell me what I already know... I'm supporting a charity with BLA BLA BLA.... shut up already.
The easiest way to de-annoy a web site, if you know a little html and Javascript is to install a user-script browser plugin (like GreaseMonkey, TamperMonkey, or Scriptish), and add a user-script that will fix the web site's issues after it loads. That's how I managed to fix Amazon.com (and smile.amazon.com).
It was easy to fix the first issue by just setting the selection on the search category drop-down box back to index zero ("All") every time any amazon.com page loads. In the user-script, that just looks like this:
document.getElementById("searchDropdownBox").selectedIndex=0;
The second issue was a little trickier, but still not too tough. The issue may be unique to me and my habits, but I have to believe there are others who are aggravated by this usability failure. If you click in the search box, and then get the mouse cursor out of the way by moving it down a bit, you end up triggering a hover-pop-up for your Amazon Smile charity. That would be fine, except it takes focus away from the search text box and forces you to move the mouse cursor somewhere else, letting the pop-up go away, before you can type anything. There were a few things I would have bought at Amazon.com but that stupid pop-up just ticked me off and I decided they could do without my business those times.
So, to fix the moronic hover-pop-up, I found the page elements that trigger the pop-up, and switched their display style to hidden (which means the hover isn't triggered when the mouse cursor is over them). The following code goes in a user-script:
document.getElementById("nav-pldn-msg-wrapper").style.visibility = "hidden";
document.getElementById("nav-supra").style.visibility = "hidden";
document.getElementById("nav-pldn-org-name").style.visibility = "hidden";
document.getElementById("pldn-supporting-arrow").style.visibility = "hidden";
document.getElementById("pldn-supporting-arrow").style.display = "none";
This is just an example of how to de-annoy a web site you might use frequently enough to spend a little time suppressing those annoying "features." User-scripts are good for all kinds of things like this. Leave a comment if this was helpful or if you've figured out how to de-annoy a frustrating web site you use.
The whole user script is shown below:
// ==UserScript==
// @id FixAmazonAnnoyances
// @name FixAmazonAnnoyances
// @namespace http://deannoy.amazon.com/fixamazonannoyances
// @version 1.0
// @description Fix some of Amazon's annoying page automation
// @author Whirly
// @include https://*.amazon.com/*
// @run-at document-end
// ==/UserScript==
(function() {
'use strict';
// Pop the search back to "all" automatically to prevent the next search
// from being constrained to the department of whatever item might be displayed.
document.getElementById("searchDropdownBox").selectedIndex=0;
// hide the amazon smile hover-popup stuff that takes the focus away from
// the search box if the mouse is moved a bit after clicking in the search box
document.getElementById("nav-pldn-msg-wrapper").style.visibility = "hidden";
document.getElementById("nav-supra").style.visibility = "hidden";
document.getElementById("nav-pldn-org-name").style.visibility = "hidden";
document.getElementById("pldn-supporting-arrow").style.visibility = "hidden";
document.getElementById("pldn-supporting-arrow").style.display = "none";
})();
