TOPIC: GOOGLE CHROME EXTENSIONS
Resolving a glitch in the ChatGPT interface on Firefox using Tampermonkey
19th July 2025It may be caused either by a new version of Firefox or an update on the OpenAI side, but the ChatGPT prompt box lost its ability to show a cursor while I am entering text. The Ask anything text also disappeared. In Brave, all looked well, and it still persisted in clean Firefox sessions with no extensions loaded. Thus, it was a case of moving browser or getting a fix in Firefox.
The latter has not been needed because I found a fix of sorts. For that, I needed to install the Tampermonkey extension. Then, I could add a new script to override the behaviour that I was seeing:
// ==UserScript==
// @name ChatGPT Prompt Box Fix (Firefox)
// @namespace http://tampermonkey.net/
// @version 1.0
// @description Forces the ChatGPT prompt box textarea to remain visible in Firefox
// @author You
// @match https://chatgpt.com/*
// @grant none
// ==/UserScript==
(function () {
'use strict';
const waitForTextarea = () => {
const textarea = document.querySelector('textarea');
if (textarea) {
textarea.style.display = 'block';
const observer = new MutationObserver(() => {
if (textarea.style.display === 'none') {
console.log('Textarea display:none overridden');
textarea.style.display = 'block';
}
});
observer.observe(textarea, { attributes: true, attributeFilter: ['style'] });
} else {
setTimeout(waitForTextarea, 300); // Keep retrying until textarea appears
}
};
waitForTextarea();
})();In short, this deals with a rogue display: none; line in the CSS, which equally well could have been inserted by JavaScript from somewhere that I cannot track down. The extra code is executed within a self-contained function to prevent interference with other elements and is restricted to the ChatGPT domain, which avoids unwanted impacts on the display of other websites.
The first step is to search for the relevant element on the page, retrying at intervals if necessary. Once located, the element's visibility is ensured by explicitly setting its display property to block. Continued monitoring of the element thwarts any dynamic attempts to hide it by changing its style. When such an action is detected, the script automatically overrides such changes to maintain its visibility, thereby ensuring consistent accessibility.
However, challenges with finding the affected element mean that I get the advisory text duplicated. Thus, I see two instances of Ask anything. However, that is a small price to pay for having a flashing cursor telling me where I am in the interface. Such is the nature of modern web coding that its complexity hinders debugging, thus posing the question as to why we are making such things so complicated in the first place.
Enhancing focus and wellbeing by eliminating digital distractions while browsing the web
23rd March 2025Such is the state of the world at the moment that I ration my news intake for the sake of my mental wellbeing. That also includes the content that websites present to me. Last November, I was none too please to see Perplexity showing me something unwanted on its home page. However, there appeared to be no way to turn this off, in contrast to the default page shown in a new browser tab. Then, I decided to tolerate the intrusion, only for the practice to develop over time.
Then, I happened on uBlock Origin after finding that it will block unwanted parts of web pages. While it was a bit hit-and-miss to get things going on the Perplexity website, it did the job after some trial and error. Things can change, which means the blocking may need refinement. Even so, I can handle that. When YouTube became another place where I needed to block distractions like previews of other videos during a webinar.
Now, uBlock Origin has become the only ad blocker that and I still use with Firefox. Others like Ghostery broke websites, especially that of the UK Met Office with its cookie blocking; the Ryanair one was another casualty, and became one that fell foul of Pi-hole too. Thus, they were left after me for a single shot approach. Though some websites may complain, anything that cuts out distractions has to help productivity and emotional wellbeing.
Little helpers
22nd September 2024This could have been a piece that appeared on my outdoors blog until I got second thoughts. One reason why I might have done so is that I am making more use of Perplexity for searching the web and gaining more value from its output. However, that is proving more useful in writing what you find on here. Knowing the sources for a dynamically generated article adds more confidence when fact checking, and it is remarkable what comes up that you would find quickly with Google. There is added value with this one.
A better candidate would have been Anthropic's Claude. That has come in handy when writing trip reports. Being able to use a stub to prototype a blog entry really has its uses. The reality is that everything gets rewritten before anything gets published; these tools are never so good as to feature everything that you want to mention, even if they do a good job of mimicking your writing tone and style. Nevertheless, being able to work with the content beyond doing a brain dump from one's memory is an undeniable advance.
Sometimes, there are occasions when using Bing's access to OpenAI through Copilot helps with production of images. In reality, I do have an extensive personal library of images, so they possibly should suffice in many ways. However, curiosity about the technology overrides the effort that photo processing requires.
While there may be some level of controversy surrounding the use of AI tools in content creation, using such tooling for proofing content should not raise too much ire. Grammarly comes up a lot, though it is LanguageTool that I use to avoid excessive butting into my writing style. That has changed to comply with rules that had passed me without my noticing, but there are other things that need to be turned off. Configuring the proof tools in other ways might be better, so that is something to explore, or we could end up with too much standardisation of writing; there needs to be room for human creativity at all times.
All of these are just a sample of what is available. Just checking in with The Rundown AI will reveal that there is an onslaught of innovation right now. Hype also is a problem, yet we need to learn to use these tools. The changeover is equivalent to the explosive increase in availability of personal computing a generation ago. That brought its own share of challenges (some were on the curve while others were not) until everything settled down, and it will be the same with what is happening now.
Making the LanguageTool embedded HTTP Server work on Windows 11
11th August 2024My choice of Markdown editor is VS Code or VSCodium, the latter being a fork of the former with Microsoft telemetry removed. In either case, I use the LanguageTool Linter extension for the required grammar and spelling checks. Pointing that to the remote web service offered by LanguageTool could get punitive, even if I am a subscriber. Thus, I use a locally installed equivalent instead.
In my usual Linux system, that is how I work. However, I have replicated the set-up on a Windows laptop for added flexibility. The needed the JRE, so that was downloaded from the Oracle website and then installed. The next step is to download the LanguageTool embedded HTTP Server zip file and decompress it to a chosen location. To run the server, the command like the following is issued from the Windows Terminal (the single line may break over two here):
java -cp "[Chosen Location]\LanguageTool-stable\LanguageTool-6.4\languagetool-server.jar" org.languagetool.server.HTTPServer --port 8081 --allow-origin
That is enough to get things going because it fulfils the default settings of the LanguageTool Linter extension in VS Code or VSCodium. The fastText application is unavailable for Windows, so I did without it. So far, things are operating acceptably, even if there is a way to address more memory should that be required.
Why all the commas?
4th December 2022In recent times, I have been making use of Grammarly for proofreading what I write for online consumption. That has applied as much to what I write in Markdown form, as it has with what is authored using content management systems like WordPress and Textpattern.
The free version does nag you to upgrade to a paid subscription, but is not my main irritation. That would be its inflexibility because you cannot turn off rules that you think intrusive, at least in the free version. This comment is particularly applicable to the unofficial plugin that you can install in Visual Studio Code. To me, the add-on for Firefox feels less scrupulous.
There are other options though, and one that I have encountered is LanguageTool. This also offers a Firefox add-on, but there are others not only for other browsers but also Microsoft Word. Recent versions of LibreOffice Writer can connect to a LanguageTool server using in-built functionality, too. There are also dedicated editors for iOS, macOS or Windows.
The one operating that does not get specific add-on support is Linux, but there is another option there. That uses an embedded HTTP server that I installed using Homebrew and set to start automatically using cron. This really helps when using the LanguageTool Linter extension in Visual Studio Code because it can connect to that instead of the public API, which bans your IP address if you overuse it. The extension is also configurable with the ability to add exceptions (both grammatical and spelling), though I appear to have enabled smart formatting only to have it mess up quotes in a Markdown file that then caused Hugo rendering to fail.
Like Grammarly, there is an online editor that offers more if you choose an annual subscription. That is cheaper than the one from Grammarly, so that caused me to go for that instead to get rephrasing suggestions both in the online editor and through a browser add-on. It is better not to get nagged all the time...
The title may surprise you, but I have been using co-ordinating conjunctions without commas for as long as I can remember. Both Grammarly and LanguageTool pick up on these, so I had to do some investigation to find a gap in my education, especially since LanguageTool is so good at finding them. What I also found is how repetitive my writing style can be, which also means that rephrasing has been needed. That, after all, is the point of a proofreading tool, and it can rankle if you have fixed opinions about grammar or enjoy creative writing.
Putting some off-copyright texts from other authors triggers all kinds of messages, but you just have to ignore these. Turning off checks needs care, even if turning them on again is easy to do. There, however, is the danger that artificial intelligence tools could make writing too uniform, since there is only so much that these technologies can do. They should make you look at your text more intently, though, which is never a bad thing because computers still struggle with meaning.