Since debuting in December, more than 2,000 extensions have been created for Google Chrome. Now, Chrome users have access to about 40,000 more, thanks to support for Greasemonkey scripts in Chrome 4.0 for Windows and the Chrome Developer builds for Mac and Linux.

We've covered Greasemonkey and the browser-awesome it can provide in the past, but if you aren't familiar, the plugin (originally for Firefox) allows site-specific JavaScript user scripts to run on a page, providing additional options and functionality. So, for example, you can install a script that will give additional YouTube viewing or download options or pipe in data from other sources and display it alongside other content.

In Chrome 4.0, you can go to Userscripts.org, the big clearinghouse for Greasemonkey scripts, and install many of the more than 40,000 scripts directly in Chrome (about 15-25% of the scripts won't work yet). On the backend, Chrome will convert those scripts into a Chrome Extension, which you can then manage and uninstall the scripts with ease.







This is a huge boon for productivity lovers. Greasemonkey scripts are a great way to add easy functionality to webpages, and the fact that they can be installed and uninstalled the same way as regular Chrome Extensions flat-out rocks. If you are running the development version of Chrome for Mac (or the Chromium Nightly Builds) or the beta for the Linux version of Chrome, you should also have Greasemonkey support.

Because I primarily use Safari, I haven't really had access to many of my favorite scripts ever since Snow Leopard made the browser 64-bit and my GreaseKit input manager stopped working (and no, I didn't want to recompile). Now I can have my favorite rendering engine (WebKit) along with some awesome browser-enhancing scripts.

Do you use Greasemonkey or userscripts? What are your favorites? Let us know!