Greasemonkey Hacks

Hack #49. Find Similar Images

Explore the Web in a new way by finding other images of the same name.

I will be the first to admit that this hack has no practical purpose. I originally conceived it in an IRC channel, when someone posted a link to http://images.google.com/images?q=P5170003. That particular keyword is a filename used by a particular brand of digital camera. Some cameras generate filenames based on the date the photo was taken and a unique identifier within the camera; others simply use an incrementing identifier starting with 1. Many people take digital images and then simply publish them online, without giving the photo a more meaningful filename. The end result is that you can use Google Images to find a random selection of images published by different people. (This particular query finds photos taken on May 17, my wedding anniversary.)

Anyway, this hack converts all unlinked images into links to Google Images to find other random images with the same filename. If that sounds silly, that's because it is. It's also surprisingly fun, if you like that sort of thing.

The Code

This user script runs on all pages. It uses the document.images collection to find all the images on the page and wraps each of them in a link to http://images.google.com/images?q= plus the image filename. Firefox seriously dislikes replacing an element with another element that contains the original element, so we use the cloneNode method to make a copy of the original <img> element, put it in an ...