Slashdot Mirror

The article (and the FAQ) don't seem to escape the "user controls computer via clicking with a pointing device" mentality. Icons don't need to be large, they don't even need to be present. I'm happily using Opera with just an address and status bar, using mouse gestures and keyboard controls to navigate the interface. Mozilla supports mouse gestures too.

He also ignores the simpler interfaces that are actually very functional. Take emacs, for example. Arguably, it is a bitch to learn how to use emacs effectively; hence I expect that it would rate low on the "usability" scales. Yet it gets to the very core of point 0 (after removing the menu, tool, and scroll bars), while being inconsistent with Fitt's Law etc. In fact, if you assume the user is capable of using the keyboard (she's intelligent, after all) and a scroll wheel, points 1 and 4 are almost entirely redundant.

As for the problem with the taskbar, using a decent PS1 doesn't solve the problem, but it would be a start.

Check out the Paranoia Button. It adds a button to your toolbar that you can click and it clears your history, browser cache, passwords, download history, cookies, etc. You can do the same thing in options, but if the black helicopters are right overhead, the Paranoia Button is nice and quick.

You may find this helpful:

http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/useragen tswitcher

From the site: This extension adds a menu to switch the user agent of the browser.

I use it myself and it works like a charm on about 95% of sites which demand a specific browser (the other 5% do something smarter than just checking the User-Agent string).

This defense definetly applies when you're using an app that requires IE, but if you're just locked down in the sense that you can't install Firefox, then I recommend that you use portable firefox .. It's meant for portable usb drives and such, but you can download it to your "personal folder" or what not, to use within the company's network.


I use it at my school, with great success. No installation required.

Sage for Mozilla Firefox seems better than RssReader to me.

Not sure how this would affect protection from malware, but as for "stealing"...

From AdBlock's FAQ:

Q: But I want to support my favorite site! Can I set Adblock to download, and then hide stuff?
A: Yes, see next question.

Q: What's the difference between "hide" and "remove"?
A: "Hide" preserves a page's layout -- content being downloaded, but not visibly rendered.

"Remove" collapses the layout -- no content is downloaded.

For the last friggin time, Adblock set to 'hide' downloads the content, so it's no more unethical than taking a pee during commercials.

I just installed Weather Fox (now called Forecast Fox because of the parent post, and I love it already. Having a weather forecast in my status bar is one of those things that makes the internet more than just webpages and email.

For those of you who want to know, the addblock and flashblock are extensions you need to install, they are not part of Firefox by default.

Flashblock
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/
Addblock
https://update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?application=firefox&id=10

*cough* SessionSaver and Undoclosetab provide those features you mention for Firefox.

However, I'd like to know if Opera provides features similar to Download Sort or FoxyTunes.

*cough* SessionSaver and Undoclosetab provide those features you mention for Firefox.

However, I'd like to know if Opera provides features similar to Download Sort or FoxyTunes.

instructions for the creating new plugins can be found here: mozdev

Or just use the Adblock extension for Firefox. It is by far the greatest way to block advertisers. With some use of a few wildcard you can browse nearly ad free. One of the more useful extensions, in my opinion.

If anyone is interested, Adblock can be downloaded from the Adblock homepage or from update.mozilla.org

The -IMHO- best filter to use:
Get it here. Scroll down the page to get the latest version. You can save the textfile and import it from the Adblock dialog (Menu: Tools / Adblock / Preferences ).

Way better than IE or Opera or a HOSTS file! Believe me!

might not be aexactly what you're looking for, but I use an image zoomer extension fairly often.

However the full review is a good 14 pages of ad cluttered pages.

Here's the single-page version. I'm running AdBlock, so I don't know if it has any ads.

I agree. And those Google text ads make a lot sense from business perspective, too.

They're using targeted ads which makes a lot of sense since people perceive them as less intrusive. Personally, I complete ignore them. I usually focus on the content of the email itself so the ads are mostly white noise to me. But a lot of people consider them a welcome addition. Sort of like a not-so-obnoxious, helpful Clippy.

Another major selling point is that they're harder to block and there's less incentive to do so. With tools like Firefox Adblock not just readily available but also easy to use and really effective (wanna block Flash, done; wanna block Quicktime, done) it really pays off to have unintrusive ads. There's a growing understanding that people own their desktop real estate. If something is flashy and annoying, people no longer have to ignore it. They can just block it, and two clicks later never ever have to see that banner ad again. And what's even worse for those ad companies that rely on banner ads is, that the user can not only choose to not display their ad. They can with the click of a button choose to not download it. And that cuts directly into their bottom line.

So overall, I think Google's text ads are not just the most user-friendly way to run an ad-based service. They're also the future.

It's meant for a browser's sidebar, and integrates tightly with IE, FireFox (via XPI), Opera, and of course Mozilla.

It also runs in it's own separate window, in the body of the browser, or even as an embedded section of any web page or blog app!

You can display your bookmarks with any of the included plug-ins, which include the standard multi-folder tree, an RSS feed, and a Google/Yahoo-like layout, which is more of what you may be looking for.

It's been designed from the ground, up with both small and large-scale needs in mind. It can handle multiple trees per user, with multiple groups/users per tree, and granular permissions (view/add/edit/delete/moderate) per link/folder. It's fully skinnable, and runs on any PHP/MySQL/Apache setup!

Go grab it or sign up!

mindslip
Creator, SiteBar.

What I want is an IE theme for firefox. (This one has not been updated.) That would be even more effective at fooling lusers, pointy haired bosses, etc.

Second you could install IEview on Firefox for them. Problem solved

The conditional being "common sense." ;) Before I discovered Firefox, I used IE for probably ... 6 years or so with no problems. And I agree that most /.'ers could as well.

But why even have to worry about such things? Not to mention that security is not IE's only weak point. Standsards compliance and user experience (i.e. ads, popups, etc...) are also something IE lacks. Firefox has all that out of the box, and more.

As much as people like to bash IE, I think (or would LIKE to think) that the anti-IE sentiment is a result of 1) they like Firefox more, so they support it as much as possible and 2) they understand that Joe User doesn't know to turn off scripting, be careful about ActiveX (if they even know what it is), and why they need a firewall ... which is why something as effective as Firefox is so necessary for the wider market.

Would it be possible to build an XUL Chat Room, requiring only that clients be using FireFox?

Yes. It's called ChatZilla. It works with FireFox and Mozilla.

This is, however, an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) client, meaning you have to have an IRC server somewhere that you can all sign on. There are lots of public IRC servers -- dalnet, freenode, etc -- and some of them allow you to create your own channel. If you want to use another chat protocol, you'll have to code that yourself. But yes, it's eminently do-able.

Just get Firefox and use the Adblock extension. Then you can use their service anyway, sans ads (not to mention other sites closer to home, sans subscriber fees. Pay once, get all the plums. Mwahahaha.)

Of course, Adblock would stop them by wildcarding images from popuptest.com.

Speaking of pop-ups - has anyone else noticed a fair number of pop-ups getting past firefox these days? I looked into a little bit and it seems that the way they are doing it is with a little flash wrapper. I guess I need to go back to using the click to play extension.

There is a Mozilla extension called Annozilla which adds the ability to browse and edit RDF annotations to web pages, using the Annotea protocol.

Like the MinimizeToTray extension?

Took me about 5 seconds to find with Google.

I am not sure whether you have tried it or not, but have you used the Context Highlight extension?

If you want to selectively run Flash content, then this is a good extension: FlashBlock

...is when is the Mozilla Suite (which is here now, reliable and stable) going to have the new features in Firefox like live bookmarks (RSS feeds as bookmarks) and improved tab controls (a pretty killer feature as you can set URLs opened by other programs to always open in a new tab instead of 'raping' your current one). Plus, when is the suite's mail client getting the juicy new features from Thunderbird such as RSS support, saved search folders (a real killer feature) and improved grouping?

That's why the Multizilla extension exists. I've used it for a while now with the Mozilla suite, and only switched off it because the default Mozilla package for Mandrake Cooker got too unstable for some reason (need to fix that, for now I just use Firefox).

From the Multizilla site:

What is MultiZilla? MultiZilla was the first browser extension to introduce the tabbed UI for Mozilla. Current Mozilla builds make use of this idea but it is only partly integrated by the Mozilla team, so MultiZilla still has lots of extra features that cannot be found in today's Mozilla builds (although Firefox adds even more MultiZilla features like middle-click on bookmarks and some of the tabgroup features). However, we constantly work on new improvements and bug fixes. We're also very keen on keeping our users satisfied and work closely together towards a next release.

Unfortunately they don't have an extension for Firefox, although that may change when the main mozilla trunk is switched.

Well, it's not hard to sort your bookmarks. Just click bookmarks, then manage bookmarks, and then right click on any link and select "sort by name". There's also a plugin called "sort bookmarks" that does this and more.

Regarding the importing of passwords, the mozilla site says:

"Firefox imports your existing settings from Internet Explorer. An import wizard will run when you first install Firefox (and is also available later through the File menu, File > Import), and it imports your Favorites, options, cookies, stored passwords, and a variety of other data. This saves you time customizing Firefox to fit your needs."

I haven't tried using this but if this didn't work as advertised for you then that is certainly a cause for concern.

If you don't like the spinning circle at the top you can simply install another theme that doesn't feature this. Right now the mozilla site is really slow so you probably won't be able to reach the themes site, so try later.

Personally I could not live without tabbed browsing so IE is no longer an option for me. Also there are plugins like Adblock (I use these filters) that make it indispensible for me.

May I suggest the flashblock extension instead. It replaces the flash animation with a box containing a play button. Click the play button if you think you want to watch the flash animation.

http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/chatzill a

FoxyTunes: http://www.iosart.com/foxytunes/firefox/

AdBlock: http://adblock.mozdev.org/

More: http://update.mozilla.org

Your extensions will be disabled unless they are configured as compatible with 1.0. Unfortunately right now trying to use the built in "search for updates" feature is very slow, from server load I presume. I found updates for several of my favorites by searching http://www.mozdev.org/.

Responding to your "First":

I have noticed the same thing in the last little while. I think that they are doing that to get past some of Mozilla's excellent annoyance blockers (think FlashBlock (a.k.a. "Flash Click to View")).

I think it's time to fork FlashBlock to create a "JavaBlock" extension.

Should be a simple hack (famous last words ;-). The only thing I would feel bad about, is further escalating the arms race (between web users and web advertisers).

T

flashblock.mozdev.org. Couple that with adblock, and you're sorted.

flashblock.mozdev.org. Couple that with adblock, and you're sorted.

That doesn't mean anything. As far as the HTML is concerned, you just have a bunch of meaningless containers all nested inside each other. It's only in the presence of a stylesheet that -- for visual browsers only -- the nesting is available.

This is like using DIV CLASS="heading" instead of H1 and giving that class the appearance of a heading. Sure, in a visual browser to a sighted person it might look like a heading, but it isn't any more a heading than the DIV CLASS="paragraph" that follows it.

The cleanest solution is to stop using our browsers as glorified dumb terminals and return to the model where the client is responsible for presenting the data provided by the server. Think of an IMAP client vs. Hotmail, for example. HTML-based interfaces are handy when you don't have the right client software available, but they should be the second-class option, not the only option available. ForumZilla was briefly the answer for semantic foruming, but despite some quick uptake from software such as slash and scoop it faded from view rather than the "protocol" being used for other client software. I once wrote a HTML-based wrapper around ForumZilla, which is in my opinion the correct order of things: spit out the data in a machine-readable way first, and worry about making the HTML interface afterwards using that data.

I hear ya. I was looking for one for a while. This one works great (on 0.8 anyhow)

http://moztraybiff.mozdev.org/

There is, of course, an extension that adds this functionality: http://minimizetotray.mozdev.org/ Happy extending.

It basically allows you to mark certain cookies as "protected". Now, if you don't want to keep track of what cookies you need (ie. you expect your browser to handle the cookie management instead of doing it yourself), you just set those few cookies that you need (in my case that's Gmail, Ebay, Slashdot, Amazon and a select few semi-trusted sites) as "protected". Then you enable cookies. At the end of the day, you pull up the Cookieculler dialog, select the "don't allow sites that set removed cookies to set future cookies" option, select all cookies and hit delete. Cookieculler automatically makes sure that you don't accidently delete any important cookie and won't ever be bothered by a website that requires cookies to access the site.

Of course, this doesn't really solve the problem which is the cookie system itself but it addresses the issue of end users just clicking "yes" because they don't want to be bothered. And since you checked the "don't allow sites that set removed cookies to set future cookies" option, you're basically compiling a blacklist without any hassle at all.

What about those damned websites that won't let you "Continue" until all the ads on the page have loaded (e.g. javascript)? I used the hosts file for a while; when this became an issue I switched to Firefox's Adblock Extension.

http://spellchecker.mozdev.org/

It has been around for a while and was recently accepted into the Mozilla trunk. Don't think it's just a cheap hack.

Alternatively, quick search turned this up for IE. With the right design, something as simple as a spell check should be quick and painless. Some IM clients even have a live spell check built in which can be of great use. Nothing can beat the live spell checker for helping you pick up on your own problem words. Or do what I recently did and parse through the last five years of IRC chat logs to find your most common mistakes. That was ugly, let me tell you! I can't make the rest of the world love my crappy spelling so fixing it is all I've got. But at least after doing that I felt a little better about myself.

But seriously, learn how to type ;)

I like feeds of http://del.icio.us/ where anyone can submit their bookmarks and the most popular bookmarks can be seen.
There is also an extension for our favourite broowser Firefox at http://delicious.mozdev.org/

I use the Sage plugin for Firefox and I like it quite a bit.

Note that I'm primarily urging XHTML as the file format used on the server. Secondarily, I'm urging that people use XHTML/HTML for editing. Note I tried to carefully distinguish HTML and XHTML in my post: The server should send HTML-compatible XHTML to the client's editor, and if it gets HTML it should "clean it up" to make XHTML.

In practice a server could use client detection to use Mozile when suitable, and something like rte otherwise.

Nice site, working links, but guy, you seriously need some categorization. I want to be excluded from old and fat chicks pissing each other, thank you.

And no, I don't read the link text, because 70% of the time it tells nothing about the face and the body of the depicted persons. Porn sites always seem to know their girls are cute, hot or well built or whatever. But open all the links tabbed at once, let them load and then kick all the ugly tabs.

Use Linky for these sites as well as AdBlock to cut down on shemale snuff that gets through while opening 100 tabs at a time.

Nice site, working links, but guy, you seriously need some categorization. I want to be excluded from old and fat chicks pissing each other, thank you.

And no, I don't read the link text, because 70% of the time it tells nothing about the face and the body of the depicted persons. Porn sites always seem to know their girls are cute, hot or well built or whatever. But open all the links tabbed at once, let them load and then kick all the ugly tabs.

Use Linky for these sites as well as AdBlock to cut down on shemale snuff that gets through while opening 100 tabs at a time.

The ability to make the browser popup ALT attributes for images?

Mozilla/Firefox is standards compliant and you won't ever see this happening without using an extension. IE's behavior which you have gotten used to is simply incorrect. Web designers should be instead using the TITLE attribute.