Limiting Google Reader Options

If you’re like me then you’re an avid user of Google Reader for subscribing to RSS newsfeeds. When you click an orange RSS icon, Google Reader should fire up automatically (or you may be presented with an options page depending on your broswer set up and whether or not the site in question is using Feedburner. Either way, at some point you will be presented with an options page “Add to Google” and given the choice as to whether to add the feed to your Google Homepage or to Google Reader. (Click the graphic to the left to see an example).

Personally, I rarely use my Google Page directly, so I’d much rather jump straight into Google Reader without having to make this choice. Having hunted around for a hack, I finally discovered a Greasemonkey script that allows you to bypass this options page in the Firefox browser. You;ll have to install Greasemonkey to make it work and then download and install the cleverly named “Auto add to Google Reader” script.

It’s all very straightforward and saves a couple of seconds each time you subscribe to a new newsfeed, such as the Sciencetext feed for this site. If you’re subscribing to many feeds every day, that could add up to almost a minute saved by the end of the month. Now, what are you going to do with all that free time?

Caveat: There is a warning from crypto on the script page comments that something about the script may not be secure, I hope he can drop by and explain the details on that.