Having [given up][audresp] on ever getting audible.com to care about their site's usability problems (especially the javascript links which render tabbed browsing unusable), I had considered writing a Firefox extension to fix the links. Maintaining one extension is enough to fill what spare time I have, however.

Enter Greasemonkey: a killer extension which allows you to assign "user scripts" -- Javascript snippets which perform some sort of fixup once a page is loaded -- to certain sites.

Bingo.

So, if you like Audible, but hate the useless interface:

  1. Bookmark this page. You'll need to come back after restarting Firefox.
  2. Install Greasemonkey here.
  3. Restart Firefox (told you).
  4. Load the Audible fix user script.
  5. From the Tools menu, select Install User Script.
  6. Click OK on the ensuing dialog.
  7. Load up an audible.com page.

Everything look the same? Good. Hover over a link, however. Look at the status line. Instead of, say, javascript:linkThis('/store/product.jsp','&productID=BK_TIME_000350'), you should see an actual http:... or https:... link. You can open it as usual, in a new tab, in a new window -- all the normal things you can do with a link.

Except save it across sessions or pass it to a friend to help sell an audio book. Audible will have to fix that particular brain-fart themselves.

Update: the script now creates bookmarkable links, as well. Details...</strong>