Augmented Browsing with Userscripts for POC, MVP and beyond!

[#1]

Hi Community!

I'm presenting this topic at São Paulo User Group (🇧🇷) and would like to share it abroad to other Groups as well!

The examples are on Jira but Userscripts work for any web page or app!

If you'd like me to present the topic to an Atlassian Community Event of your local Group, please leave a comment below! 😃

Augmented Browsing

Just like Augmented Reality (made famous by Pokemon Go a few years ago), Augmented Browsing relies on the user having a device that alters or injects elements into the webpage/app so the user has an improved browsing experience than others without the devices.

The device we're talking is a browser extension/plugin called "Userscript Manager". There are several available (Greasemonkey, Tampermonkey, Violentmonkey...) and they all work the same. You can download Userscripts through them and they manage the updates and when to execute each script in which site.

The technology came out in 2005 with Greasemonkey for Firefox and is still far from being widely known even to web developers.

Userscripts

Userscripts are usually written in JavaScript and are meant to interact with a specific page or app. Users with a Userscript Manager extension can also create their own from scratch.

Among the things we can do with Userscripts are showing fields from another system in the screen, retrieving further information from the system, changing colors, injecting buttons that perform some action when clicked, filling forms with pre-defined values and so on!

Knowledge of JavaScript, HTML and CSS are surely welcomed, but we'll see we can get things working even with lousy and ugly scripts (I'm still learning JS and have little knowledge of HTML/CSS still).

POC and MVP

This technology can help Adminds, Developers and Product leads by making it simpler to test a feature than building it in the app itself or purchasing an app.

We can have the Userscripts run on pilot volunteers, gather feedback, adjust, fix bugs, improve and adjust again until we're confident of it's utility and it makes sense to port it into the product or purchase an app to that end.

And beyond!

We may also live with Userscripts, too!

We can build Userscripts to make for the absence of a feature in a product we've been asking for a while, or to perform tasks quite specific for us.

We need to bear in mind that the system may change so we'd ned to hurry to fix the Userscript, but other than that, we're cool. :)

The examples I'll show are all in this repo and licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0, so enjoy them! 😄

https://bitbucket.org/rodrigocmz/ace-userscripts/src/master/

Cheers! 🍻

Rodrigo Martinez
Jira DC Premier Support Engineer

[Michael Mirandi]

👋 Hey @Rodrigo Martinez,

I just came across the work you're doing at jaus.atlassian.net. I'm a fan of "Augmented Browsing" and am part of a team that launched a low-code extension builder, PixieBrix.

We're seeing interest in interacting with the Jira API from Chrome. Here are 2 examples:

• New Jira Issue from Selected Text

• Display Jira issues by type and board

Also, @Brittany Joiner recently shared an interesting PixieBrix/Trello extension in the Trello forum: 

• Using Trello to Fight the Patriarchy

Would be great to get your feedback if you'd like to check it out.

Cheers,

Mike