This article was originally posted on May 21, 2009 on The Daily Haggis

I don’t usually do tech/tutorial type entries, but in an effort to be more helpful to my FriendFeed peoples and to try to get some use out of this blog, I’m going to explain how to enable User Scripts in Google Chrome, which will then enable you to add AJ Batac’s excellent “Cleaner FriendFeed” userscript.

I love the new FriendFeed, but I really don’t like the color scheme. With FireFox it’s easy to install GreaseMonkey scripts and change the look and feel, but with Google Chrome it makes it a little more difficult. To make matters worse, you have to install the beta Chrome 2.0 and change the command line, as well as create a new directory typically hidden under the user folders.

Hopefully this tutorial will be easy enough for even the least techy types to understand.

Step 1: Enable and Download Google Chrome 2.0 Beta.

Google Chrome 1.0 doesn’t contain the code to enable UserScripts, so you’ll have to switch to Chrome 2.0 instead. To do this, download the Chrome Channel Changer Tool (link). Close any Chrome browser windows, run the file, click the “Beta” bubble and hit “OK”.

Open Chrome, click on the “Wrench” icon in the upper right hand corner and select “About Google Chrome.” If it doesn’t automatically check for updates, hit the update button. It will download Chrome 2.0 and give you a message to restart the browser to install it. Close all Chrome browser windows and then Reopen Google Chrome. You now have 2.0! Close the browser window again.

Step 2: Add “–enable-user-scripts” to the command line of Chrome
Now that you have Google Chrome 2.0 Beta installed, you’ll have to modify the shortcut to enable UserScripts to run. Find the icon that you use to launch Google Chrome the most often (your start menu, desktop, quicklaunch bar, etc), right click and choose “Properties.” You will see a window pop up that looks like the picture to the right.

On the “Target” line directly after “chrome.exe” add –enable-user-scripts (that’s two dashes, not one). Click OK. If it gives you an error for the path, add the –enable-user-scripts after the quotation marks (typically for WindowsXP installations.)

Step 3: Create The User Scripts directory
This is probably the most complicated part of the step, and will be different depending on which Operating System you are using. You will need to create a new directory under the Chrome system settings folder to store your greasemonkey/user scripts into.

Navigate to:
On Windows XP: %userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default
On Windows Vista\Windows 7: %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default

For example, for my Windows 7 the directory is
“C:\Users\Haggis\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default”
For WindowsXP that would have been
“C:\Documents and Settings\Haggis\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default”

Create a directory called “User Scripts” and navigate into the directory. Leave this window open for now.

Step 4: Installing AJ Batac’s Cleaner FF UserScript
Download AJ Batac’s Cleaner FF UserScript from here: Standard Display or Widescreen Display

When you click on the file, you’ll see a bunch of code that you probably won’t understand. That’s okay, just save the file on your desktop or download folder. Copy, drag and drop, or move the file from wherever you downloaded it to and drop it into that User Scripts folder we just created. It’s easier to save it somewhere else first and then move it since the User Scripts folder is located under hidden folders on your system, making it difficult to navigate to through the “Save As” window. The filename might be a little strange or long, I renamed mine “Friendfeed.user.js” and it still works fine.

Step 5: Test it!
Finally, pop open your brand new installation of Chrome 2.0 using the shortcut you modified from the earlier step. Navigate to FriendFeed and you should see the new style! If it didn’t work, trace back your steps and make sure you changed and saved everything as stated above. If your FF looks like the screenshot at the top of this article, you’ve done everything correctly! Welcome to a Cleaner FriendFeed.

NOTE: Steps 1-3 will also allow you to install other UserScripts other than just the FF styles!

To summarize, make sure you’ve done the following:

1. Download the Chrome Changer Tool and enabled the Beta.
2. Added “–enable-user-scripts” to the end of your shortcut command line
3. Created your “User Scripts” directory
4. Saved the Cleaner Friendfeed script into the User Scripts directory.

Special thanks to AJ Batac who did the excellent coding work for this script, and Lifehacker for the original tutorial and screenshots.