Firefox with Greasemonkey: The YouTube Auto Buffer Greasemonkey script tweaks the popular video sharing site to fix some of its most common annoyances. Specifically, it stops videos from automatically playing, turns on HD/HQ playback for all videos, and hides in-video advertisements.

All three of the tweaks YouTube Auto Buffer makes can be toggled, so if you’d really like to get rid of in-video ads but don’t want to always watch videos in HD or prefer that videos play automatically, you can just disable the two unwanted features. Or at least they can be toggled in theory. I had trouble getting my preferences to stick, so your mileage may vary.

Either way, it’s a nice little script that aims to fix some users’ common YouTube annoyances. For some other YouTube-specific tweaks, check out our very own Better YouTube Firefox extension. (With any luck, maybe we can convince Gina to incorporate some of the YouTube Auto Buffer features into said add-on.)

YouTube Auto Buffer is a free download, works with Firefox and the Greasemonkey extension.

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Windows/Mac/Linux: Most developers did a bang-up job preparing their extensions for the Firefox 3.5 update, but on the Firefox 3.5 release day, one very popular extension didn’t make the cut: Google’s browser plug-in, Gears.

It’s a week later, and still no update from the folks at Google, but a few adventurous users have hacked together their own Firefox 3.5 compatible builds of Gears. We wouldn’t recommend that just anyone go download and install these Gears builds willy-nilly, but if you’re desperate to get Gears back up and running and you don’t mind a little risk (namely of your browser’s stability), it’s worth a go.

For Windows and Linux versions, check out these custom extension builds from this thread on the Gears Users Google Group. Mac users can try gearsff35osx on Google Code.

I’ve only tested the Windows version and so far everything’s working as expected. You’re mileage may vary, and as we said, if you’re not willing to take on a little beta-style risk (these aren’t official builds), you’re best off waiting for the official release from Google (which one would assume should be coming very soon). If you give it a try, let’s hear how the unofficial builds work for you in the comments. Thanks Matt and Eric!

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