The Origin
I've been using ADS-B Exchange a lot to get a better idea how various types of aircraft behave under various conditions. I'm often curious about where a particular aircraft came from, is going, or both. For a while I'd:- click the aircraft's icon on the map, or select its row in the listing on the right side
- double-click the callsign at upper left corner of the aircraft info panel that appears on the left side, then copy the selected text
- in another browser tab, paste the copied callsign into a search
- locate flightaware.com in the results, and click the link to go to the flight info page
As a prototype I wrote a bare-bones Firefox browser extension. Very easy but this is much too specialized a task to bother with a whole plug-in just for it.
The Solution
Better to use the Greasemonkey extension (or one of the alternatives such as Violentmonkey or Tampermonkey, which leads to a debate I won't get into here). Once installed in your browser Greasemonkey allows you to load one or more "user scripts", which operate when URLs that the author/user defines are visited.My user script is nearly identical to the JavaScript portion of the prototype Firefox extension, with some Greasemonkey-specific comments added to the top.
JavaScript:
// ==UserScript==
// @name ADS-B to FlightAware
// @version 0.1
// @namespace pony-pasture-aviation/gm-scripts
// @grant GM.openInTab
// @match https://globe.adsbexchange.com/*
// ==/UserScript==
'use strict';
// Get the element (it's a <span>) that displays the callsign at upper left of the aircraft info panel.
let callsignElement = document.getElementById('selected_callsign');
// Apply styling to simulate a link — underline the callsign and set the mouse pointer to pointing hand
// when mousing over the element.
callsignElement.style.textDecoration = 'underline';
callsignElement.style.cursor = 'pointer';
// When the callsign is clicked, open FlightAware in a new browser tab, with a lookup for the callsign,
// and switch to view that tab.
callsignElement.onclick = function(e) {
GM.openInTab('https://flightaware.com/live/flight/'+callsignElement.textContent, false);
};
That's all there is to it. If you prefer a different provider instead of flightaware.com, as long as their URL ends in or includes the callsign you can modify the first argument to GM.openInTab() to suit.
How To
To use it, first install Greasemonkey. Click the monkey-face icon in your browser's extensions toolbar, choose "New user script…" from the drop-down menu, copy the JavaScript text above, and paste it in. Save it, go to ADS-B Exchange - tracking thousands of aircraft, click an aircraft icon or select a row in the listing, and the callsign at upper left should underlined. Click it to do a lookup on flightaware.com.Hope this helps someone else. If it doesn't work for you please tell me what you expected to happen and what you got instead; a screenshot might be helpful.
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