Slashdot Mirror

Extensions are both the best and worst feature of Firefox. Best, because dozens of people have provided simple tweaks and useful features in the form of easily-installable extensions. Worst, because a badly-written extension can ruin your whole day.

Ex

use mouse gestures - only closes the active tab...

The best extension I've used on mozilla/firefox/opera, and the main reason I switched

http://optimoz.mozdev.org/gestures

Maybe try this firefox extension: Gmail S/MIME I have not tried yet - was googling for greasemonkey + gpg + gmail. Should be possible to use same trick and get enigMAIL (currently works only on thunderbird or mozilla mail) to encrypt most any web based email.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Enigmail all the way, baby. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32) - GPGshell v3.40 iD8DBQFDKNDpqTO+fYacSNoRAiDLAJ9SwsCk9L0zS3BSDLVddS qYuybq5ACfXu3i PxFublPT97snB4HRNh9Ku3Y= =kt/N -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Flashblock works fine with Mozilla too.

Try Greasemonkey with this or this to automagically insert links to mirrors after any link on /. (only works on Firefox as far as I know).

Gmail also does that - just append +whatever.
---
but make sure that the last line
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey

Firefox bittorrent (firepuddle):
http://firepuddle.mozdev.org/

The problem with handling freenet protocols is that you'd need some sort of freenet gateway.. and last time I ran one of those at home it used up around 120Mb of RAM and a significant portion of my broadband connection 24x7.

I suppose the plugin could redirect you to some other gateway, but that's just URL rewritng, seems like a better candidate for a greasemonkey script than a full plugin.

These are a few sites that I found helpful. Some are a little old but I got something out of all of them.

http://www.xulplanet.com/
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Dev_:_Extensions
http://roachfiend.com/archives/2004/12/08/how-to-c reate-firefox-extensions/
http://businesslogs.com/technology/firefox_extensi on_tutorial.php
http://www.bengoodger.com/software/mb/extensions/p ackaging/extensions.html
http://mozilla-firefox-extension-dev.blogspot.com/
http://books.mozdev.org/index.html
http://www.mozilla.org/xpfe/gettingstarted.html

Of course another good way to learn about extensions is to download a few and look at the code. That has probably been the biggest help to me once the tutorials, etc. gave me the basic idea of what is going on.

http://firepuddle.mozdev.org/ might help sometime soon...

You'll also need the MIDI renderer timidity, which is likely already installed.

The optional AP Computer Science exams they give at my school allow you to use any names you wish for your variables, classes, and methods.

I am so taking them this year.
---
What subliminal message?
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey

I seriously almost had this as FP myself. I clicked on the story and opened it in a background tab, then went and looked at something else for five minutes. I came back, and noticed... there were NO COMMENTS. I refreshed the page, hoping it would still be blank (yeah right) and thought of this same thing to post. BUt of course, now there's 38 comments. Crap, I need to pay more attention. Would have been my first FP too.
---
If nobody notices, it's not illegal.
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey

They were looking for an antonym, and I guess they figured Slashcode could do a demonstration.
---
If nobody notices, it's not illegal.
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey

Thanks for the note. This is a known problem with Firefox and the FlashBlock
extension. We are aware of the issue, but I'm afraid there's very little we
can do to fix a problem with a client browser. If I could adjust our HTML
to make things work, I would, but that doesn't appear to be possible.

I recommend uninstalling Firefox and doing a clean install without
Flashblock. From that I hear, that should fix the problem.

Best of luck,
Scott

Adblock + FlashBlock + Hosts file = snappy and happy

Adblock + FlashBlock + Hosts file = snappy and happy

And I never liked pressing down on the mouse wheel because it can turn unless you're careful about applying the pressure

That's exactly why I DO like pressing down on the mouse wheel.
Install MozGest and map "scroll left" to :1+, "scroll right" to :1- and have vertical AND horizontal scroll with a single mouse button: Normal turn - vertical scroll. Turn while having it pressed - horizontal scroll.

Of course if you want just to press middle, thumb button is priceless.

Lets look at some of the things you quoted - apache, php. Both relatively large, complex pieces of software and open to external (and internal) attack. Your comment of "Saying "it's okay" to write software with security holes, because shucks, some kind soul will fix it for you." Is rather misguided. I doubt anyone on those projects is deliberately writing bad code, they will be trying as hard as they can. On something large and complex it is inevitable there will be bugs, some of those will turn out to be security related. People are not perfect, there will always be something that a single individual will miss: I'm sure, if you wrote a large piece of software then I or other ./ers could find some faults (just as you may be able to with software I wrote). No matter how good you may think you are at programming you *will* make a mistake (I'm assuming a degree of arrogance given the "since maybe 95% of the coders out there can't code properly." comment). Shame I have never had the chance to interview you, would be amusing you see you sit some of the programming tests I have had to devise and administer over the years. As for "Working for someone else without getting paid." In terms of reporting a bug. I assume from other comments you work involves OSS systems in some way, so OSS existence in effect helps to pay you. Lets assume you work for a company, say you do not report a bug you find... say that letter a nasty exploit comes out, using that bug, and causes lots of damage (not to your system obv. but to others worldwide). Reputation of that particular bit of OSS plummets. Your company CEO, despite the fact you ensured his system was fine, decides to bring in a different product, for arguments sake not OSS..., your job goes. So end result is lost job, overall reputation of OSS software damaged to some extent, great result for a bit of arrogance. A key thing is the attitude of people once you report a problem; OSS development people will (generally) be glad of your help in spotting a problem, after all it is about community involvement, just because someone is not involved in day to day coding does not stop them contributing by code audit, testing the code, documenting the software etc. A bug report is not a criticism, its an aid to improving the software. The response for "commercial" / "closed" software is likely (not guaranteed) to be slightly different - more bureaucracy, coders might not even be told of the bug or not be allowed to investigate it Maybe you should read your comment and see how arrogant it came over. It exuded the sort of "I'm all right Jack" approach. By your reasoning its an "oh shucks" thing that lots of people died in New Orleans because they were too poor to own their own transport and so could not evacuate. Remember life is not just about you, its about people working together, things might seem to be OK for a while with a selfish tack, but sooner or later generosity to your fellow man is needed. Regard placing a OSS bug report as just one minor little selfless act you can do. Its not a big life saving thing, but its all part of doing the right thing.
--
Dave
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey
--
Cheers Dave
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey

Lets look at some of the things you quoted - apache, php. Both relatively large, complex pieces of software and open to external (and internal) attack. Your comment of "Saying "it's okay" to write software with security holes, because shucks, some kind soul will fix it for you." Is rather misguided. I doubt anyone on those projects is deliberately writing bad code, they will be trying as hard as they can. On something large and complex it is inevitable there will be bugs, some of those will turn out to be security related. People are not perfect, there will always be something that a single individual will miss: I'm sure, if you wrote a large piece of software then I or other ./ers could find some faults (just as you may be able to with software I wrote). No matter how good you may think you are at programming you *will* make a mistake (I'm assuming a degree of arrogance given the "since maybe 95% of the coders out there can't code properly." comment). Shame I have never had the chance to interview you, would be amusing you see you sit some of the programming tests I have had to devise and administer over the years. As for "Working for someone else without getting paid." In terms of reporting a bug. I assume from other comments you work involves OSS systems in some way, so OSS existence in effect helps to pay you. Lets assume you work for a company, say you do not report a bug you find... say that letter a nasty exploit comes out, using that bug, and causes lots of damage (not to your system obv. but to others worldwide). Reputation of that particular bit of OSS plummets. Your company CEO, despite the fact you ensured his system was fine, decides to bring in a different product, for arguments sake not OSS..., your job goes. So end result is lost job, overall reputation of OSS software damaged to some extent, great result for a bit of arrogance. A key thing is the attitude of people once you report a problem; OSS development people will (generally) be glad of your help in spotting a problem, after all it is about community involvement, just because someone is not involved in day to day coding does not stop them contributing by code audit, testing the code, documenting the software etc. A bug report is not a criticism, its an aid to improving the software. The response for "commercial" / "closed" software is likely (not guaranteed) to be slightly different - more bureaucracy, coders might not even be told of the bug or not be allowed to investigate it Maybe you should read your comment and see how arrogant it came over. It exuded the sort of "I'm all right Jack" approach. By your reasoning its an "oh shucks" thing that lots of people died in New Orleans because they were too poor to own their own transport and so could not evacuate. Remember life is not just about you, its about people working together, things might seem to be OK for a while with a selfish tack, but sooner or later generosity to your fellow man is needed. Regard placing a OSS bug report as just one minor little selfless act you can do. Its not a big life saving thing, but its all part of doing the right thing.
--
Dave
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey
--
Cheers Dave
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey

I played a map in CS:Source yesterday called "007_temple" that was, obviously, a remake of the GoldenEye "Temple" map. It was way different from those screenshots in TFA, but I wonder if there's a connection.
---
"Man, when the day comes, count me in with the robot smashers." - Anonymous Coward
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey

Since anyone can edit a Wikipedia article, it could just be someone playing a practical joke :) It's not hard to make stuff like that up.
---
The only thing I hate more than a hypocrite is a person who hates hypocrites.
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey

Try the keyconfig extension.

If you don't have the right privileges to install another browser, use Portable Firefox (like I did at work without privileges). No install needed, unzip and run. You can ofcourse run it from a memorystick too.

Change a few words, and his post is as appropriate here in the gaming section as it is in the pr0n section! http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=161288&c id=13492184 What the fuck is this garbage? I've been with the same woman for nearly five years and just married her this weekend. If anything, porn/videogames has STRENGTHENED our relationship through mutual viewing. Are they trying to say that porno searching online/gaming online is a "gateway" to become some sort of "sexual/gaming deviant"? Give me a fucking break. Just because people's conservative sexual/gaming knowledge and behavior is the prevailing behavior (and IMHO negative) it doesn't mean that "graduating" to a different behavior is heinous. Mod -1 Flamebait/Troll I'm sorry, but 100 people aren't going to tell the tale of ALL those that enjoy porn/gaming either in solitary viewing or in group situations. I'd like to read this pile of shit and actually give a true account of the book/non-existant study rather than an obviously biased and conservative viewpoint on it.
---
You can use any kind of HTML formatting that Slashdot accepts.
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey

Mother, may I be the first to point out DUPE? Thank you!!
---
You can also create new lines here if you want
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey

http://prefbar.mozdev.org/

Problem is, it's not about thousands of threads - if it was that would not be too badits about a small number of threads. Read the article... Basic multithreading, in so much as a handful of concurrent threads work OK without huge performance hit, is still important on "desktops".
--
Cheers Dave
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey

Maybe he was running Portable Firefox and is distraught at the loss of all his cookies.

Sorry for the "wrights" error. There's just no forgiving that.
--
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything. --Friedrich Nietzsche
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey

Given that openoffice is essentially zipped xml.... I doubt unzip utilities will vanish in 5 years. Once unzipped, the XML is human readable and its trivial to use a bit of XSL(T) to export it to teh format you like (again I doubt XSL(T) transformation technology will vanish in 5 years). That would be my preference over PDF which is far more effort to port to a human readable state using "standard" tools.
--
Regards Dave
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey

Good Lord may have contributed ( yeah, Intelligent Design! Go JesusLand (tm) ! ), but the following individuals are Directly Creditable for Flashblock. So let their names be listed!
(quote from: http://flashblock.mozdev.org/credits.html)

"Flashblock Contributors:

        * Ted Drake
        * Ted Mielczarek luser_mozdev@perilith.com
        * Przemyslaw Bialik
        * Lorenzo Colitti
        * Philip Chee philip.chee@gmail.com

Additional contributions:

        * ... and special thanks to Neil Rashbrook (Whitelist wizardry)
        * Mark Bokil http://markbokil.org/ (toolbar button code)"

THANK YOU PEOPLE! KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!

Or if you'd prefer, simply add the script referenced here to your Greasemonkey setup and, poof, instant coral and mirrordot links.

Rain-X is quite destructve on the plastic visor ... and it is not made for anti-fogging. Says so right there on the bottle.
---
Add your signatures here!
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey

"Macromedia: Get over yourself. You're good, but not that good."

I'm hoping Adobe changes Macromedia's backward personality, too. Of course, Macromedia must be really bad if Bruce Chizen can fix the company. (Mr. Chizen looks more than a little crazy in that official photo, as though he were a fox assuring chickens of their safety.)

Mr. Chizen is the CEO who bought Adobe millions of dollars in bad publicity with the handling of the Skylarov situation. For example:

"Bruce Chizen -- President, Director, CEO Adobe
John Warnock -- Co-Chairman Adobe
Charles Geschke -- Co-Chairman Adobe

"... These are the individuals that could have had Dmitry home last July. Instead they thought it would be fun to play with Dmitry, Adobe's reputation, and the money of Adobe's stockholders. ... If there were justice in America, these such persons would be spending Christmas in a cardboard box under the freeway overpass."

Mr. Chizen also headed another effort to get bad publicity for Adobe: Dealing with the originator of Killustrator in a socially inept way.

Mr. Chizen followed that with a socially backward way of dealing with Chinese piracy. Adobe may ditch China sales. This time, someone else at Adobe tried to mend the damage by saying Mr. Chizen was wrong.

Thanks to a miracle of modern science called the Flashblock extension, Flash embedded in a web page appears as a sylized F in Firefox. A welcome relief since almost everything done in Flash is a childish demand for undeserved attention.

--
Trying to make one book explain all of life makes some people crazy enough to kill.

http://flashblock.mozdev.org/

If the advertisers are stupid enough to push flash garbage at you make them pay. Enough of the flashing 7 color disco styled ads.

I use flashblock
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/

and have found that 99 times out of 100 I don't need to click to enable the plugin. Flash is used almost exclusively for ads now-a-days. They're so obnoxious too...

i'm one of the first people to say you should never install flash on a computer if at all possible.

If the computer is not intended for websurfing, by all means, don't! But it's rather essential in opposite case...

flash is a horrible horrible proprietary piece of junk.
Actually, the specs are open, it's just that all free flashes suck even worse.

it's main uses are to bypass the adblocking and cookie-deleting people.
It can be adblocked just the same. The flash cookies counterpart can be deleted all the same.

Design a better mousetrap and the Nature will design a better mouse.
it by default sets up your microphone and webcam to spy on you.
Plain wrong.

it sucks resources like there's no tomorrow
Less than Java applets. Animation in Flash is less of CPU hog than same thing in Javascript. It offers better compression than GIF anim (though there's the constant player overhead, so use only in case of big animations).

and without a 3rd party plugin, you cannot refuse to allow certain instances to run.
You can't allow ANY instance to run without a 3rd party plugin (THE flash player). If you install one extension or two, what's the difference?

believe me, there's virtually no reason for an end user to install it.
I won't. There are sites where ALL the navigation is done in Flash. Sure, they suck, but they often contain essential info you need, so you're forced to use Flash against your will. I've seen sites where the "enter" button is made in Flash. Sites with non-skippable flash intro. Sure, they suck. But you can't just shun all the info they contain because of method of presentation. You DO need flash. Off by default.

if you want to view animations, just download them and view with an external standalone player (search for one).
Except the ones that require to be run from a webpage because they are too big and load in parts, except the ones protected against copying, except the ones that provide website navigation, except the ones that just break in standalone player etc, etc. And the standalone player comes bundled with web plugin.

and websites that require flash, i never visit. no matter how urgently i need to view something, i go without.
So, you got that new laptop, and you need the video adapter drivers. So you will remain in 640x480x8bpp@60Hz, because the drivers are accessible only through a flash page? uh... That's rather fanatical.

i would like the svg standard to replace flash sometime soon... what's the current progress, anyone know?
As for scriptable SVG, no development kit like one for Flash on the horizon. And Inkscape is far from really usable yet.

i'm one of the first people to say you should never install flash on a computer if at all possible.

If the computer is not intended for websurfing, by all means, don't! But it's rather essential in opposite case...

flash is a horrible horrible proprietary piece of junk.
Actually, the specs are open, it's just that all free flashes suck even worse.

it's main uses are to bypass the adblocking and cookie-deleting people.
It can be adblocked just the same. The flash cookies counterpart can be deleted all the same.

Design a better mousetrap and the Nature will design a better mouse.
it by default sets up your microphone and webcam to spy on you.
Plain wrong.

it sucks resources like there's no tomorrow
Less than Java applets. Animation in Flash is less of CPU hog than same thing in Javascript. It offers better compression than GIF anim (though there's the constant player overhead, so use only in case of big animations).

and without a 3rd party plugin, you cannot refuse to allow certain instances to run.
You can't allow ANY instance to run without a 3rd party plugin (THE flash player). If you install one extension or two, what's the difference?

believe me, there's virtually no reason for an end user to install it.
I won't. There are sites where ALL the navigation is done in Flash. Sure, they suck, but they often contain essential info you need, so you're forced to use Flash against your will. I've seen sites where the "enter" button is made in Flash. Sites with non-skippable flash intro. Sure, they suck. But you can't just shun all the info they contain because of method of presentation. You DO need flash. Off by default.

if you want to view animations, just download them and view with an external standalone player (search for one).
Except the ones that require to be run from a webpage because they are too big and load in parts, except the ones protected against copying, except the ones that provide website navigation, except the ones that just break in standalone player etc, etc. And the standalone player comes bundled with web plugin.

and websites that require flash, i never visit. no matter how urgently i need to view something, i go without.
So, you got that new laptop, and you need the video adapter drivers. So you will remain in 640x480x8bpp@60Hz, because the drivers are accessible only through a flash page? uh... That's rather fanatical.

i would like the svg standard to replace flash sometime soon... what's the current progress, anyone know?
As for scriptable SVG, no development kit like one for Flash on the horizon. And Inkscape is far from really usable yet.

Good advice. I have always found flash to be especially irritating. Now, with FlashBlock, I get the best of both worlds. I have it installed, in case I need it for whatever reason, but it is blocked from my sight by default, which is the way I like it.

I still had to agree to the license agreement, but wtf. I don't have a laptop anymore, so I think I'm safe :)

http://adblock.mozdev.org/

What ads?

That's exactly why I love last.fm (formerly Audioscrobbler & Last.fm). It automatically tracks what you listen to and then allows that information to be used to give you neighbors in the music world based on what interests you have in common. You can add friends, join groups, and even tag your music. All of this is extremely useful in finding new stuff. They've got plugins for all the major media players (and even some minor ones).

Add on top of that the ability to play a custom-built radio station, set it to play only new music or listen only to music from a particular user profile.

Linux and BSD supported! Open source plugins and radio station player! Could it get better? ;)

---
but make sure that the last line
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey

I liked this comment. I think it hit a lot of it on the head.

Do this, go to mycroft and install some other search engines. Teoma is good, ask jeeves is good, msn search is good, yahoo is good. Try them out, just for a few days. See how the net works for you. for me it's almost a revelation at times, you find different stuff. Google is nice but there are other good searches too and some of them might be better than google. Google is like a security blanket, it's always there, fast, it has street cred (they run GNU/Linux, it's ad lite, etc..) my fingers effortlessly type it on the URL prompt.

They need to not be too cocky, they need to do other things. Between yahoo and ms, I'd be worried if I was google. Not so worried I didn't take chances but definitely worried about letting my guard down or getting into some market I didn't know inside-out. The tides can turn fast. What on earth would make them a competitor to MS? Other than MSN Search and Hotmail? MS makes and sells software, operating systems, dev tools and applications, lot's of it. Google doesn't even have control over a browsing platform. The biz community wants another MS, badly, but google isn't it, not any time soon.

I use a nice configurable non IE browser, amongst the near endless tweaks is the ability to set to background download (or not) links from a site, so if I choose to go to taht link its "instant" as already downloaded. Say I had this feature set on a site where I knew I would be browing a lot of the pages, forgot to turn it off and went to another site that happened to have a link to a torrent.... By the MPAA logic I am guilty, whereas all I have done is forgot to turn off a bandwidth sucking feature of my browser, and have downloaded a torrent "tracker" file but never used it in any way.
--
Regards Dave
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey

You can combine the best of both worlds, bookmarks and search.

I find bookmarks slow to navigate, and it's hard for me to remember my own hierarchy when I've got enough bookmarks to organize. The problems with search have been expanded on by others in this thread.

So here's the solution: http://del.icio.us/.

You can create, edit, tag, describe, and search your own personal bookmarks. When you've done that, the world can see your links too. Subscribing to an RSS feed of some tags you're interested in ("python" for me) gives you a constant stream of interesting links other people who are into Python found useful.

If you're using Firefox, you'll probably want del.icio.us in your search box. Find that here . I find myself frequently using this when I'd normally use Google, when I know (or just suspect) that I've been somewhere before.

What I've been doing for about a year now is keeping my actual in-browser bookmarks an unsorted flat list with just about 20 sites I visit on a regular basis. Webcomics, blogs that don't have RSS feeds already, and the like. Everything else goes into del.icio.us. All my other bookmarks were of one of these categories: links I visit only occasionally for reference, sites I intended to visit just once later when I have free time, or sites that I don't even know if I'll find useful until I go back and reread them. Now I don't have to clutter my browser with those; I throw them in del.icio.us. As a bonus, del.icio.us tells you how many other people have bookmarked the page. Number of times a link is being submitted is a good first-blush indication of whether the information there is really interesting or useful.

Why not try delicious? It allows you to keep your bookmarks online so that they're accessible from multiple locations, while also allowing you to search your bookmarks and those belonging to other people.

If you use Firefox, there are extensions that allow you to view your bookmarks in a sidebar and sync your online bookmarks with your browser bookmarks.

who in turn will see the ads (or pay for the privilege of not having to)

Firefox with Adblock works superbly for me.

Oh wait, did you mean the stories?