Slashdot Mirror

I regularily go through my cookies. Anything that looks like it is coming from an ad site I delete and block

This extension will fix that little issue . . .

AdBlock!!

Woohoo! Ad banner armageddon!!

Sorry, I really REALLY love Adblock. :D

There is an extension called TagZilla that should do the trick. There is no version for Thunderbird 0.7 yet, but at least you know that it exists.

This is late, but it's worth pointing out that the new Extension Manager has a whitelist of sites to install from: mozilla.org, mozdev.org, and texturizer.net (via xpinstall documentation).

So this isn't a problem anymore unless the clueless users go add new preferences in about:config or save the spyware extensions to disk (which most of them can't do if they just pop up on page load).

They can't stop me from using direct links from Slashdot to Bugzilla. You see, I use the power of the PrefBar. All I do is uncheck the handy Send Referrer box before clicking on the link. Now the Mozilla team is powerless as I've turned their creation against them! BWHAHAHA!!

Doesn't EnigMail handle GPG encryption/decryption and signing?

Or have I been using vaporware for the last year?

It's fast, it's stable, and I don't have any problems viewing any pages out there.
The only time I use IE is when MSN Messenger insists on opening IE to check Hotmail.
IE crashes 50% of the time I do this. While browsing Hotmail.
Also, what has several years of ActiveX and other MS "component" technology brought for the general web surfing public ? Nothing but useless toolbars, browser hijackers and similar malware.
Does MS run a site like the follwing ?
Extensions.
Or this Themes
Or this.Mycroft.
Dont even want to talk about the other IE "wrappers" like Avant, CrazyBrowser and MyIE... can they even hold a candle against Mozilla/Firefox.

1. Two on the same row is definitely possible on ff.

2. "pop-outs" are not, though.

3. Mind pointing out something in the original Googlebar doesn't do?

4 & 5. Taskbar is a function of Explorer the file/desktop manager, not just IE, it's going to be enabled and usable no matter what _browser_ you use. If you mainly use bookmarks from taskbar, you can even use the ie ones, Windows opens them in default browser whatever that might be, and you can file new ones by dragging the favicon/handle from urlbar to whatever toolbar(s) you have in taskbar.

All these stop just short of integrating well with the web and the client platform. Why? Why has nobody managed (or tried) to take the last step?

Mozilla has.

I think you're bang on the money regarding Microsoft and open standards.

My prophecy is that Microsoft have their eye on the next web battle over standards - XAML vs. XUL vs. Flex.

I can think of few other reasons to justify my spending time to reinstall my browser.

Well, how's about Blocking Flash and fewer security worries?

There's tons of other reasons, of course, but those are what hooked me. Yeah, I still use IE on occasion -- mostly Windows Update and for the exceptionally few pages that simply don't render properly (less than 1% of where I surf... YMMV), but at least there's an extension to help with that as well.

As for "reinstalling your browser" -- that makes no sense. Yes, you have to download Firefox. It's down to 4.6MB though and that's pretty trivial to anyone except dialup users. And it's a Windows installer, so it takes 1 minute to actually install. The time saved afterwards, in my experience, is immeasurable.

I can think of few other reasons to justify my spending time to reinstall my browser.

Well, how's about Blocking Flash and fewer security worries?

There's tons of other reasons, of course, but those are what hooked me. Yeah, I still use IE on occasion -- mostly Windows Update and for the exceptionally few pages that simply don't render properly (less than 1% of where I surf... YMMV), but at least there's an extension to help with that as well.

As for "reinstalling your browser" -- that makes no sense. Yes, you have to download Firefox. It's down to 4.6MB though and that's pretty trivial to anyone except dialup users. And it's a Windows installer, so it takes 1 minute to actually install. The time saved afterwards, in my experience, is immeasurable.

You can place icons on Firefox's menu bar. My setup has everything on the top, including icons, throbber, and address bar. After you scrunch everything up there, click View > Toolbars and turn off the Navigation and Bookmarks Toolbar. Add in Compact Menu to turn off menu items, and Firefox easily beats IE in terms of screen space.

I use to be annoyed at the IE only sites too until I found this extension

Now I browse with Firfox all the time unless I get to the site which it can't handle... then I just Right-Click and IE loads with the current URL.

css blocking is ok if you don't worry about false positives or flexibility. The nice thing about AdBlock is that you can keep your extension list fairly short (and comprehensible) with some use of regular expressions. Interesting (although probably not the best example for 'comprehensible' ^_^ ) filter example from their forum:

/[\W\d](onlineads?|ad(banner|click|-?flow|frame|im a?g(es?)?|_id|js|log|serv(er|e)?|stream|_string|s| trix|type|vertisements?|v|vert|xchange)?)[\W\d]/

http://tongwen.mozdev.org

Get it!

Here

http://tongwen.mozdev.org

Get it!

http://tongwen.mozdev.org

Get it!

All-In-One Mouse Gestures features tab scrolling. Hold down the right mouse button and then use your wheel to quickly page between tabs. Now you don't even have to move the mouse to the tab bar.

The only people not using mouse gestures are people who haven't tried it for a week.

For those of you using Adblock with Firefox under Windows and find it missing after the upgrade, here's what I did to fix it.

Check the new Extensions manager under Tools and see if it's there. If it is, uninstall it from that window.

Close Firefox and use Explorer or whatever to browse to "\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Mozilla\FireFox\profile.3hd\Extensions" on your system drive.

Now you have to figure out which of these obscurely named subdirectories is Adblock. You can use Notepad or some other text editer to open "Extensions.rdf" and see. This string may be the same on all systems, if so, I'm sure someone can post it. Once you know which directory Adblock is still hiding in, delete it. Now go and install the AdBlock nightly from here: http://adblock.mozdev.org/dev.html

That took care of it on my systems. YMMV, as always.

Well, I must say I thought it would be easier. The quick, but un-user-friendly way is to go to about:config and set network.http.sendRefererHeader to 0. There's also the refspoof extension which should work. And if you use the TabBrowser extension, there's a menu (the context menu, or Tab...Tab Features) to block referer.

Heh...actually, there's a firefox extension for bugmenot. Not exactly what you want, but its getting there.

Bugmenot

the ability to hide images by host.

Instead of built-in image blocking, I prefer AdBlock, a superior ad/image/flash/java/anything blocker...

There's also a Firefox plugin that lets you choose "bugmenot" from the context menu.
Strange that this should be on slashdot when I only found out about bugmenot.com about a week ago :)

Easy - first, install Flash.

Then install the Flash Block extension. It replaces the Flash applet with a button you have to click to begin the applet.

Look here.

Actually, probably not. From the googlebar FAQ:

The Internet Explorer version has feature X (like pagerank). Why don't you?

The Googlebar project is an independent organization [...] and some features, such as pagerank, appear to be proprietary; [...] We currently have no plans to implement pagerank or the voting buttons due to their proprietary nature (ie, we'd get sued!!).

The Googlebar's been around for Mozilla for quite a while now; I think I first used it back in 2002. See its site for more info.

the firefox/mozilla plug-in googlebar will probably integrate this soon. it is already very equivalent to the IE toolbar provided by google, in terms of its google-related functionality. although i don't find the information useful, it is good to see this progress.

about:config

You can use any editor you wish using mozex.

Is it entirely vector graphics based?

# Can you change the look of basic widgets with only a few lines of code?
# Can you change the look of an entire application based on some sort of stylesheet?

Does it let you bind external code to it so a designer and coder can co-exist without stepping on eachother's toes?

Can XUL files be run directly over the internet?

Well, if you were using Mozilla you could grab mozex. You can make it open up a terminal window with vim when you edit a textbox. When you save it gets plopped back in the textbox. It's not exactly seamless, but it sure makes webmail and stuff a lot nicer to use.

Galeon also restores everything after a crash.

There's an extension for moz/ffox that does this as well.

Forgot to make it clicky clickyable

i have this as well, flashblock which i found at extensionroom.mozdev.org i must say, it's simple, effective and keeps even ad-riddled pages looking pretty clean. the only times i actually "click to play" is when the content i'm there for is the flash, such as on homestarrunner or when someone sends me a link to a flash game... i never see the other 90% of flash content, and i don't miss it one bit.

i have this as well, flashblock which i found at extensionroom.mozdev.org i must say, it's simple, effective and keeps even ad-riddled pages looking pretty clean. the only times i actually "click to play" is when the content i'm there for is the flash, such as on homestarrunner or when someone sends me a link to a flash game... i never see the other 90% of flash content, and i don't miss it one bit.

If someone could just create an enable/disable button for cookies, javascript, and plugins, and put it on a toolbar that I don't have to make a half dozen clicks to get to, bother-free browsing would be so much easier.

They do make such a thing. It's called PrefBar and it's a mozilla plugin.

Mozilla has that same feature when you add the Adblock mod from http://www.mozdev.org.

That being said, Firefox and a good Adblock ruleset eliminates nearly 100% of these annoying things.

Adblock

I fucking love Adblock. Even better, its filtering mechanism supports regexps, so with only eight filters I see less than one ad a week. The next version will include the Flash Click to View behavior, and won't download content that matches a filter so you save your bandwidth.

Firefox + adblock + hosts file + edexter = fast advert free browsing

Use adblock instead. just put in wildcard strings such as "ads.*" "*doubleclick*" "*fastclick*" "*burstnet*", and more, and you will block all of the ad shit (including flash) coming from their servers. What good is a javascript mouseover if the script can't download the ad in the first place?

Sounds like you need Mozilla's Click-to-Play Flash Extension.

I use it an it works very well :-)! It displays a box that says "Click to Play" and, only after you do, does the Flash animation load and play.

I have not had one popup since I fully switched to FireFox (around 6 months ago).

There is also a FireFox extension that blocks those annoying Flash popunder ads.

*ads*.com/*

AdBlock rocks.

Adblock, people, Adblock.

Adblock, people, Adblock.

What I find interesting is the Ad itself. I don't know much about the web ad biz - so perhaps someone can help me with the details. However, looking over Linux Today with Adblock, it appears they get their ads from Bluestreak and Real Media.

This is where ignorance gets dangerous. Save me from myself if I'm completely off-base here.

If these ad streams come from external sources without (much) editorial control by the sites that serve them, I would expect that the ads themselves are selected based on key elements of the site subject or text being viewed. That could suggest that Microsoft has decided that whenever Linux is mentioned in the online press, it feels compelled to throw out some anti-Linux marketing.

This suggests a few interesting points. First, Linux is appearing enough in trade press to warrant a strategy based entirely on its appearance. Secondly, Linux presents enough of a threat to warrant spending resources on addressing it rather than some other message that would benefit Microsoft.

This should come as no surprise to anyone. But its interesting to watch none-the-less.