delorean_dmc-12_side — DeLorean DMC-12 (Credits: Photo by Kevin Abato, www.grenexmedia.com, edited by me.

While the web (besides time machines) is styled much nicer than ever, this does not always mean, it’s your style, nor that user experience is much better for you.

Two powerful tools, UserStyles and Greasemonkey (Tampermonkey for Chrome), come to help. They both inject additional functionality (CSS and/or JavaScript) into existing websites, allowing to transform or extend their use.

In my spare time, I have created some (hopefully) handy scripts and styles:

A slimmed down StackExchange

To get rid of the distracting side bar on some of the StackExchange sites, I have created the StackWatchers user style. This also improves the reading experience on narrow windows.

Better UX with NxFilter

To have a better visual distinction for blocked requests by the DNS filtering tool NxFilter, I have created NxFilterColorizer, a user script that colorizes the table row depending on the block indicator text. It also applies a CSS class that allows further styling with a user style.

Find the keyboard focus

Ever got lost in a large input form? FocusFinder comes to the rescue. This is a simple user style, that globally highlights the currently focused or hovered input field or action item. This helps visually navigating and observing the structure of a website.

Upcoming: Header linkify

A user script that prepends clickable links to HTML headers. This allows to share a direct link to any part of a HTML document.

NxFilter is the best free solution for a self-hosted DNS server/filter I have found so far. Today I got my Raspberry Pi, so how about running NxFilter on a headless Raspberry Pi in a family’s home network?

Note: This article is based on a Raspberry Pi Model 2B and NxFilter Version 3.5.1. Never versions of either product may behave differently.

Prerequisites

The current Desktop version of Raspbian, the default Debian-based Operating System for the Raspberry Pi already comes with all required packages (Java, unzip, wget)

Install Raspbian on the Raspberry Pi. You can do this also headless, without an attached Keyboard and Screen, for example by following the official guide on how to install an Operating System on an SD card, or this more generic guide for a fully automated, configured installation.
Enable SSH
Connect to your Raspberry via SSH, using the default (or configured) Username/Password.
Optional: Update Raspbian to the latest version.
Recommended: Change the default password.
If you used the lite version of Raspian, you need to install JAVA.

Installing NxFilter

Note: This guide roughly follows the the unix installation instructions from the NxFilter manual:

Download the latest version of NxFilter with wget

wget http://www.nxfilter.org/download/nxfilter-3.5.1.zip

Unzip to the installation folder (requires root-access)
```
sudo unzip nxfilter-3.5.1.zip -d /nxfilter
```
Change to the installation folder
```
cd /nxfilter/bin
```
Make the necessary scripts executable
```
sudo chmod +x *.sh
```

Manual Startup

Run
```
sudo ./startup.sh
```

Automatic Startup at each Raspberry boot

Add the line /nxfilter/bin/startup.sh -d near the end of the file /etc/rc.local
```
cd /etc
sudo nano rc.local
```
After doing so, the end of the file should look something like
```
# NxFilter Autostart
/nxfilter/bin/startup.sh -d
exit 0
```
Reboot
```
sudo reboot
```

Configuration of NxFilter

Using another machine with a browser, navigate to http://youripaddress/admin Default Username and Password is admin/admin.
Change default password via “Config/Admin”
See the manual for all configuration options.

Tag: nxfilter

The web, with (your) Style