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Firefox/Thunderbird Plugins: Is Less More?
comforteagle writes "I've published the first of a two part look at the new dynamic duo of Mozilla's Firefox and Thunderbird. While most folks thus far agree with the 'less is more' mantra when it comes to the base applications, the plugins seem to be a different story. Hey, there's little wiggle room to debate that the firefox base application (the subject of the first article) isn't the shizzle, but how about the add-ons and plugins? For that matter, do you agree that less is more. or is too little included?"
mouse gestures, flash... that's about all i need
..but did you mean to use the word "shizzle"?
I'm shaking my head in utter disbelief.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
The plugins are the releases I get most excited about.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
After that haven't added much to Firefox.
"Would you, could you, with a goat?" Dr Seuss
i use both of these, however i chose to stay with Firebird (0.7) instead of going to Firefox, because firefox .8 had some bugs with the download manager that I didn't like.
A great plugin for Thunderbird, which allows you to use GPG to sign/encrypt your email messages. Very cool!
Investing forum
Having a program that is simple (and small!) is nice, especially when you can add on the features you want.
However, for it to be successful in the mainstream the customization has to be super easy and painless.
I have had difficulties in the past with customizing Mozilla/Netscape, particularly with trying to switch to small buttons/icons, and that's frustrating.
This plugizzle for firefoxizzle and thunderbirdizzle is the shiznit!
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
If you can't design your webpage to be accessible without plug-ins, I don't need it. I don't need to see what I'm missing. Especially crappy ads.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
by far the most useful plugin (next to mousegestures guess)
- Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
I really like the idea of being able to customize my browser to work just the way I want it to. And being able to pick and choose my plugins with Firefox gives me exactly that. I don't want ALL that junk thrown in! Just a few things, like Adblock, Session Saver, TinyURL Creator, User Agent Switcher and Firesomething (for fun).
Posted from Mozilla Spacemonkey
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Dillo is a fast, small footprint, neat little web browser.
I still use Moz mail for my mail though, but that's mainly because I have megabytes of old mail in hundreds of folders and I want to keep accessing them.
It's great to be able to pick and choose stuff, without everything under the sun installed and enabled. I hate mouse gestures, but can't live without click-to-view Flash and the User Agent Switcher.
...
By the time I download all the plug-ins and extensions I need for work; I've got something just north of Mozilla and just south of Netscape 7.x. Not needing Firefox or Thunderbird.
I like plugins, but I want to be able to decide what is included to an extent. I say keep it lite and for the most part plugin-less. Let the users decide/install what they want.
As in : "The database will be down temporarily while I shizzle the records.."?
Or "That kitty cat screensaver you installed shizzled your computer..."
I can see it now,
Windows Advanced Server 2008 : "Who do you want to Shizzle today?"
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
It all depends at the crowds you're trying to woo.
Myself I prefer absolutely nothing tacked on to my default installation other than the advertised purpose. If I want to add functionality, I'll go looking then.
If you're catering to the masses (ooh look shiny!) then you'll probably have to strike a balance and include the popular functions while leaving the cosmetic or trivial ones to be added in later.
There is no clear cut answer.
Firefox is almost too much browser. My personal favorite browser right now is Epiphany... clean and simple. Sure there's the occasional pet feature I'd like to see implemented, but that's where plugins come in. Keeping the core lean and trim is a good philosophy, IMHO.
How appropriate. You fight like a cow.
The browser setups I use at work and at home are vastly different. I like to keep the most efficient and streamlined tool set at work, and I'll load up all the toys at home. Thus the ability to add and remove the plugins appeals to me.
I am me...I think
What does the Google toolbar do that Firefox popup-blocking+integrated search can't? Pagerank? Who cares about that?
...
I know they want to avoid bloat, but programs like Opera prove that you can have tons of features without using tons of memory. I don't like having to fish around for dozens of plugins to get the base functionality of a competing application. Is there a branch, like Firefox, that specializes in including everything rather than trimming it down?
Is't that what plugin's are all about? extending the functionality of a basic application with the things you really need, leaving out all the crap you don't use anyway. Righto,it works for me....
- Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
I switched to Firefox about 2 months ago. I've been converting others along the way. Generally, I make sure that I install the java plugin for IE converts. I think the ability to configure and strip plugins out (or not install the features int he first place) is a big strength of the platform. I do wish it was easier to completely remove the plugins once installed, rather than just disabling them. I had one misbehave and had to go through some hoops to remove it. In short, I would rather have a barebones browser and add to it myself.
Often in Error, Never in Doubt.
From a usability standpoint less is definitely more when dealing with typical end users. Most of the people I have installed FireFox for on their Windows machines didn't care about anything but me setting it to block popups and that it automatically imported their IE bookmarks. Beyond that it just worked, they were happy.
When dealing with Slashdot style users plugins become huge, I like to customize my browser to fit my browsing style and want to see all the options, not what would be best for the typical end user.
Anyway, I personally would rather not have my browser and mail program in one binary. Often I want to kill my browser so it forgets about security permissions (or heck every now and then it blows up all by itself). Having to restart my mail program too is annoying. Now all I have to do is figure out how to make firefox speak Java....
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
If your looking for the extras stick with M$ they will stick 'em to ya (wheather you want 'em or not.)
You are unique, just like everybody else.
I use FireFox as my main browser, and I'm hopefully that the current strategy continues, I like having the basics in the main distribution. certainly you can add additional pluggins as the need arises, but I'd rather not get a bunch of crap I don't need right out of the box.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
You are aware Firefox has a search entry box that can use google, right?
site gone from the planet, article text:
There are two wildly successful open source projects right now that are sweeping across Windows, Mac & Linux desktops. Firefox and Thunderbird. Both applications have two distinct characteristics. They are stripped down versions of their predecessor - the Mozilla bundle, and both are based on a plugin structure allowing users to include only features they want or need permitting them to remain simple to use.
In this first of two installments we take a look at Mozilla's Firefox web browser.
Mozilla Firefox is the next generation open source Internet browser from the Mozilla Foundation, and is set to succeed Mozilla Navigator as the default browser for the Mozilla suite of applications at some point in the near future. Firefox and its sister project Mozilla Thunderbird (the new Mozilla mail and news client) are standalone projects which can be run in isolation from one another, making it possible to replace your tired standard browser with a fresh copy of Firefox without getting all the extra bloat you won't use. It's exactly this approach and thinking which lies at the heart of the project and is behind its phenomenal success. The Firefox project was started in 2003 with the aim of becoming the best browser for Microsoft Windows as a result of the disillusionment of a group of developers with the current Navigator program. The group wanted to create a browser to illustrate what a browser could be if it was based on the Gecko layout engine and XPFE with no commercial constraints and no feature creep. At the same time they aimed to strip down the user interface and redesign it until it achieved the goal of being an efficient easy to use way to access the web. Simplicity was and is the projects goal with the embracing of the "less is more" adage, something which I believe they have achieved.
".. if only all open source programs were like this."
At the time of writing Firefox is currently version 0.8 and fully workable as it approaches its milestone 1.0 release. Its release schedule is focused not on deadlines but rather when the browser is ready after the bugs have been squashed and the appropriate features have been implemented. The positive affect of this is that its not a project which is pressurised to fulfil commercial deadlines and therefore focuses more on the quality of the product. This approach can often be found to be lacking in open source programs as they increasing comply with commercial demands.
The method of installation of the program depends on what operating system you are using. If you're using Windows or Mac OS X then there's an easy to use installer which will quickly and without fuss install the program for you. Linux users on the other hand are slightly disadvantaged as there is no installer for the precompiled version although one is planned for 0.9 and above. And of course as with any other open source application the source code is also available for you to compile from scratch if you feel so inclined.
"Firefox really excels in its simplicity, which is a real credit to the developers. They've managed to keep a tight control on the features included in the browser by saying "no" to a lot of submissions. There is no clutter in the browser and the whole experience is one which is focused solely on how a normal user accesses the internet."
Once you've got Firefox installed and loaded you're instantly struck by the simplicity of the program and the feeling that it "just works", this is mainly a result of the less is more attitude which the developers have applied throughout. The user interface throughout the program is well thought out and intuitive, everything is exactly where you'd expect to find it so there's no hunting for this or that as with so many other programs out there. The simplicity of the user interface also has something to do with the fewer features which Firefox has, which makes it harder to clutter up the menus. Overall the menus and dialogues have been well thought ou
You mean this one?
I don't understand. One exists. Did you not know that, or not like the way it is implemented?
isn't the shizzle
You must be very, very new here.
SAILING MISHAP
As for the plugin/built-in model, this is a silly debate. Any plugins deemed "essential" over time will likely be wrapped into the release. This is good - moderate code bloat basedon features people already demonstrate a demand for.
unless your talking sex where more is defintely better. Then again what am I thinking? This is /. after all. Less is More is the lie that must become the Geek Truth to help the 90% of the crowd that's not getting any :P
I might be able to handle the "less is more" philosophy, as long as in the end all the old functionality is available.
But where's the composer? The WYSIWYG HTML editor that's a part of Mozilla? It's really not bad. I'd hate for it to disappear.
"Modularity! Modularity!"
KFG
You know you can change this to be whatever search engine you want right?
I use it myself, and the Enigmail plugin works great once its configured. Unfortunately, making the Win32 port of GPG work with your keys is a bit of an ordeal, but it's mostly just the learning curve of GPG itself.
link for the lazy (and slashdotting).
I love the RSS Reader Panel plugin for Firefox. Simple, powerful, and only one keystroke away...
No, now that you mention it, i didn't know about the new google bar for And i dont really care for the way the favorites and history work. Just an aesthetic issue, really.
Sure, there are a lot of extensions available. But what is the point of this slashdot topic? That there are too many choices? Please.
Firefox comes with the features that most people need. It's lean and mean, with little bloat. If you want some functionality that isn't included (and perhaps 5% of the users might find useful), go ahead and install the appropriate extension. It's a win-win situation.
Modular design just makes much more sense. This goes for firefox's plugins as well. Why would I use the Mozilla suite if I only need the browser? This way, I can use firefox for browsing, evolution for mail, bluefish for html, and x-chat for IRC. If there is one thing that a suite provides it is integration. Because all those programs are internal, they can more easily communicate. This is a bit more difficult with the modular approach. For example, 2 firefox plugins could conflict with eachother, or drag and drop could not work in some instances. This is where standards come in. Modular design that complies with standards is by far the best approach. This way, you only install what you need, and you can add and remove modules as you please. If standards are followed by these programs, then intra-program communication should work. A good example of this is the ROX filer and XMMS. If I drag a music file onto the XMMS playlist, it will add it. If I double click on a music file, it will play the file.
I use Firefox exclusively (except when Outlook occasionally insists on openeing IE). It is so good I want to install it on every friends PC I have to rid of spyware and viruses, but then think of having to support them when they visit a Flash (or whatever) site. If it wasn't for this I doubt most of them would even notice the difference, but still reap the benefits. I think the common plugins should be included with the installation, with a custom installation mode for those who know what they are doing.
While I agree that plugins are all very well and good, and that less may indeed be more, it would, IMHO, be far more useful if some of them were included with the original download.
I'm currently using mozilla and while I understand there may be legal issues stopping them, I would have preferred them to include flash/java/shockwave/etc with the package as standard.
sig not found. please replace sig.
The obvious advantage is eliminating "features" one doesn't need / want. I suggested Firefox to my wife and she loves it. But the extensions I use are not the same that she uses for her install. To each their own.
When she suggested it to her friend, we ended up with a small laundry list of extensions we like and would suggest. And then I realized - the Firefox that I've come to like is not the Firefox everyone else likes.
Just like any desktop environment I've ever used. If I spend a reasonable amount of time on any system, there are key applications that I must have. Applications that not everyone wants / needs. My desktop environment always looks and behaves very differently than others (how do people work with default environments anyway?).
Maybe this is a reflection of the whole "XUL is a platform" thing. In any case, it is boon and bane. It shows versitility. But it can be a bit daunting to the hapless friend who gets "try Firefox! Oh... and the Widget extension! Oh. And you've got to load up the FooBar too!..."
While the Google Toolbar is what makes IE useable, I don't think its better than having a builtin search bar like in Firefox. IE has a terribly inefficient interface, wasting entire vertical sections for a few buttons and for the address bar. Most people leave the Google bar below it all and make it even worse, so the interface is even more cluttered. While its neat to check out the pagerank of certain pages, its not something I want to do for every page I'm on. Also, I don't think Google Toolbar can make up for not having tabbed browsing, that is a major setback to me using IE.
You're killing me.
Yep, there's a google toolbar for firefox. Yep, there is a different implementation of the Favorites/History that probably fits your need. Yep, it will even brush your teeth.
Take some time to look through the available plugins.
If by "slightly" you mean "more secure, faster, and more standards complient." Sure.
The most common problem in Internet Explorer these days is when a user gets pushed a "Toolbar" that they didn't want, and then it starts messing with things.
Let's hope FireFox doesn't go down that path.
Hate to break the news to you, big boy, but Adult ADD is a figment of the imagination. No such diagnosis exists. Check DSM-4 if you don't believe me. It's an excuse for stupidity as far as I can tell.
That's the only bit I would like to see go back into the firefox core, as the control you have over the tabs is just not good enough (for example, I absolutely have to have close boxes in all tabs). Apart from that, I use a number of plugins, of which radial context menus is the most important one. It's da shiznit, dawg. And firesomething always makes me smile...
Then there's Adblock, Zoom Image for those who need it (wink wink), but seriously, this is very helpful for working on a 1920x1200 screen.
I am recommending firefox to everybody I know and have so far successfully converted my whole family and at least two thirds of my colleagues.
I asked for a refund - and got my monkey back.
The tabbed browsing i can see why would be a deal breaker, though i personally dont like it. (I prefer being able to access all my windows from the taskbar. As for the vertical space, i don't see the big deal, i have one line for buttons+address bar, and one line for the google bar, though i could fit it all in to the first one, it feels too cramped for my personal taste.
I run gentoo. I once removed mozilla [1.6] and replaced it with the latest and greatest of Firefox and Thunderbird. To my horror both are basically full copies of Mozilla with minor changes [one has the web client disabled the other the mail client]. Essentially both are 30MB tar.bz2's that waste a huge amount of ram when they are both loaded.
Really for the average user who might use both clients it's just better to run mozilla instead.
As for "how many features to include" honestly I think firefox is too big as it is. If it's *just* a web browser it ought to be smaller and take less ram. But it doesn't.
Though I think people miss the point of firefox. It's not meant to be smaller. It's meant to show off the leading edge. Though honestly most new features aren't that keen to be worth it.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Ok, so how about this for a ludicrously mad idea. When (if?) the installer comes into play, there could be two versions. "Minimal" and another version with a couple of useful plugins etc.
Alternatively, as long as the plugin mechanism is relatively simply (which it is), and as seemless as possible (getting close), then i dont think there should be a problem for most users to upgrade.
Compare with Internet Explorer, which comes with no plugins, Firefox users are no worse off. Granted, in comparison to maybe Opera, we dont get mouse gestures and other funky things as default.
I guess its a hard thing to decide simplicity/speed vs user base/catchment area. Thus why the minimal/standard installations could be a good idea.
I care about being able to see Pagerank, but not enough to use Internet Explorer as my primary browser.
The shareholder is always right.
confused. And just thought I'd share. What they hell does "shizzle" mean?
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
I think there's at least three good things about them:
1. They leave out reasons for bugs and security holes from the main application since it becomes less complex. Core application developers can focus on just that -- developing the core application.
2. They let users get exactly what features they want so they can customize the application better for their needs. It will become easier to use for this reason (no need to navigate through big menu hierarchies and can spend less time learning how to use the applcation, etc).
3. The plugins, on the other hand, will be developed by highly motivated individuals or groups, which often results in a work of higher quality and better specialized for the job than if it would've been part of the main application and given only the necessary time so the main developers wouldn't delay main application releases. Take the adblock plugin for Mozilla as an example with advanced pattern matching and Flash blocking with content being intercepted before it's downloaded (as opposed to with adblocking proxies that analyze and filters already downloaded data). Or the SmoothWheel plugin that contains a dozen settings to let the user control exactly how the smooth algorithm should work (who can of course stick with defaults and never give it more thought too).
The major downsides are probably:
1. Users need to spend time downloading and finding out if plugins exist for their needs.
2. Users need to keep up to date with more than the main application if the plugins contain bugs he/she wish to see fixed.
3. Inexperienced users who aren't used to plugins, users with a lack of patience, or users who don't want to spend time to tinker with their application to get the features they need might be put off by the lack of features in the main application and switch to another one that's advertised having a larger feature set.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
For example, in Thunderbird there still is no way to just receive plain text email without markup of some sort. (Unless you like clicking on View->Message Source for every message.) *text* renders as *text*, text it detects as sigs is grayed out (even in multiple part digest form messages, rendering half a message as gray!, the > quotation is replaced by a graphical |... and there are probably other changes I have forgotten. Even altering my user.js conf file hasn't completely rid me of the above markup.
It's a good mail application, but any mail program's first priority should be display the email as received. After that, start adding markup.
I love Firefox's plugins, and all the great features it has even without plugins. But it's getting pretty annoying to have to nuke my profile and reinstall all my themes/plugins of choice every time I install a new release or nightly build of FF... yeah, sometimes it doesn't break anything, but usually even 1 day's difference manages to break an extension or two, or completely mangle my profile.
6 2) that I'm able to reproduce on every machine I use Firefox on - and it's a serious pain. However, the first nightly that fixes that bug introduces two severe rendering bugs (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24285 6, http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=242691 ), plus a bug that breaks forms on sites like PayPal (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24270 9).
I guess I shouldn't be complaining, since Firefox is still beta software, but it would be nice if they could at least make old extensions and themes not completely crash/freeze the browser. On my system, having an old theme or extension installed is usually good enough to make Firefox crash or freeze at startup.
If the milestone releases were stable enough for everyday use, that'd probably make it easier. But every firefox/firebird/etc milestone I've used has had showstopper bugs that drove me to the nightly builds. 0.8 for example has a cache corruption bug (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1236
I think it would be really good if the Firefox devs could backport bug fixes to the milestone releases, so that it would be possible to get a very stable version of Firefox, even if it's missing some of the shiny new features. Right now I'm stuck using a nightly that doesn't support almost any of the extensions I use, and still has a bunch of bugs that weren't in 0.8, just so I can browse the web without feeling like I'm using a crippled version of IE.
Another solution would be to just settle on a standardized plugin API and stick with it, so that extensions and plugins don't break in bizarre ways every time a new nightly comes out. I'm not sure how realistic that idea is, though, based on how complex the Mozilla/Gecko/XPCOM framework is.
Basically, I love Firefox, and I loved plain Mozilla before Firefox came out, but they're both way too unpredictable. It would be nice if something could be done to 'settle them down' a little bit. Even now Firefox randomly crashes while I'm loading various pages, and exhibits lots of funky little behaviors I'm just getting used to, and I can reproduce all this on other machines. Nuking my profile and installing the latest Firefox nightly is becoming a daily affair for me. All this maintenance is nearly enough to send me back to IE.
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
Ust-jay ick-stay ith-way de ig-Latin-tay.
O-Tay?
(for all you SNL fans)
Wow, stupidity huh. That's why I work as a successful consultant solving customer problems every day. Not to mention the fact that I'm pulling a 4.0 part way through my second bachelors. Btw CAT and PET scans clearly show a different physical and electrical structure to the brains of people with ADD. Go away little troll.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Oh man. You must not do very much serious web research. The tabbed browser is incredibly more useful than having dozens of windows cluttering up your desktop. When you have a large screen or multiple monitors, the taskbar can be a long ways away from where your mouse is. I guess if you don't like tabbed browsing then that's up to you, but for the life of me I cannot think of one reason why being forced to have multiple windows is better.
...
I use the google toolbar to search within a page all the time. You can have multiple words and there is no annoying popup window like the regular page searching function. You can also highlight all instances of the words.
I use this every day and it is why I don't make Firefox my main browser.
i love the tab extentions plugin. allows you to configure many things for tab. such as open new tab in homepage, and open javascript popup windows in tabs. etc...
really the most important (and for me, the only) plugin for firefox
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
Sure, there probably is, but why should i spend all that time looking through the plug-ins just to reproduce what IE already gives me? Honestly, i dont see that big of a difference in my page load times to make the switch. AND i'll probably run into compatibility issues later on that i'll have to spend time looking for solutions to anyways.
And the aesthetics of it are still there, frankly mozilla/firefox just looks kind of ugly to me.
It reminds me of the arguement my brother gives me to switch to Linux, because i can use Wine to play (most) of my games and i can probably get it to resemble windows in looks.
I don't see a reason to abandon what i already have.
Is it good or is it whack?
Everyone, the Google Bar for Mozilla is NOT the same as the Google Bar for IE. The Google Bar for IE is FROM Google. IE agrees to give Google browsing habits from those IE users in exchange for Page Rank. Now, before the Google Bar for Mozilla, Google had a javascript popup you could drag into your boorkmark toolbar. You click it, get a popup, enter a search term and get a Google page. Now we have the Google Toolbar which has everything EXCEPT Page Rank and YES, It's important. Extremely important for E-commerce. Well now someone has done the same for page rank. Drag this javascript to your bookmark toolbar, click it and a popup gives you page rank. (takes a bit though) Get it from http://seo(dot)nickstallman(dot)net/
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
Does anyone else get annoyed that the little popup shows up after a download saying it's completed but you can't click on it to bring the file up? heh.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
You're right, i dont do alot of web research at the moment. Maybe i'll have to eventually, and maybe then i will switch to Firefox, but at the moment there's not really a good enough reason to switch. I remember reading a slashdot arguement about the whole tabbed browsing/research thing, and i tried firefox again, but it still didnt go much above baseline for me.
I just hope they resolve that bug where sites can pester people into installing XPIs :(
At least one place was offering some kind of spyware XPI that I remember hearing about, and the last thing I want to see is for us Mozilla users to start having some of the same spyware problems as IE has long had...
Firefox does have a google tool bar
Well, yes. Firefox in it's default form is ugly. Just like IE. But why don't you look at the themes?
In the end, one of the reasons I switched was because I could make it look better. Phoenity Modern is my theme of choice, it fits into the default stylings of both Windows XP and my chosen Fluxbox theme, and it really does look better than the default IE interface, IMHO.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
It can be loaded standalone as an application or it can be a mozilla/firefox plugin.
Sunbird
It's almost usable. I wish it was geared a bit towards multi-user being an outlook replacement. I have it setup right now for two users to get in and make changes, but there's no way to tell which user made the changes, etc. I'm sure it will improve over time.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Anybody running these in Camino? I installed the beta yesterday and it has already replaced Firefox on my Powerbook.
This guy is way out there
Wouldn't it be more aesthetic not to have bar at all? Quick search is a way to go! :)
How do you know that the poster is white?
In Firebird/Firefox, just press "/" to do an incremental search through the document (Ctrl-g and Ctrl-G to move forward and backward). You can do an incremental search on the links by just typing. This functionality is far better than Google Toolbar's. There is no annoying clicking on buttons to search through the page. That is why I don't use IE with Google Toolbar as my main browser.
Most people that don't like tabbed browsing really haven't used it or they only view one or two pages at a time. Although even when its a page or two I still prefer tabs but that's me.
I use both in conjunction. Adblock blocks nominated Flash entirely (which is good for ads), whereas Flashblock makes a space in the page for Flash content, but prevents it from playing until you click on it. Sometimes (almost never, but sometimes) Flash is worth seeing.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Well, everyone who uses Firefox knows that you can simply start typing letters to find links with those words in them, them F3 to find the next link. Also, if you type / and then the words you're looking for, it automatically finds them in the plaintext. That, to me, is much handier than any in-page search toolbar.
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My 'MUST HAVE' list on any Firefox installation is AdBlock, GoogleBar, DownloadStatusbar and perhaps a custom theme, but all the else is un-needed fluff for my needs. Keeping the overall application trim and allowing the user to choose how much bloat to add is what makes Firefox a superior product.
Addons/plugins also allow for easier feature specific specialization. Rather than a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none, each addon is a master of its own, doing its job. ex: using a Broswer for FTP vs. a dedicated FTP client or plugin.
What is a shizzle?
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
Trivial is the firefox plugin that I install most often. It allows me to increase and decrease the font size with just a click (like konqueror, but better)
Autoscroll, is now included by default, but This was one that i installed on every firefox machine I found. It is so essential for people moving from a windows world without carpel tunnel syndrom, to the linux world.. who would like to keep their wrist tendons intact.
Radial Context buttons, are super neat, they are pretty non standard... but they are better than mouse gestures... which are also available as a plugin
menu compactor (I forget the name of this) I just plain don't use the bookmarks toolbar entry, the Tools, the Help, the Edit... occasionally.. and very rarely the file menu..
So I get back some screen space by compacting it into a single entry!
SVG... this feels like the future... flash without flash..
----
now for the browser plugins for which so many peopel were confused about...
mplayerplug-in isn't working with the nightly builds of firefox right now, but it is so sweet, i can't wait for the next version.
flash -- gotta have it
java -- gotta have it too
for the plugins, I symlink... er copy recently, the systems plugin foulders to
then expand the nighly tarball
tar -xvvzf firefox-
I'm using it with GTK2 and xft. (anti aliased fonts baby!) They do provide a nighly build for this!!
at the time of this posting:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8a) Gecko/20040513 Firefox/0.8.0+
is the last semi-stable firefox for linux. (it crashes occasionally, but it's a nightly build!)
Oh, the Firefox 0.9 will have BEAutifull new icons. They are crisper than 0.8's
If You're not using firefox.. I'll look at you funny
Please use [ informative / summarizing ] SUBJECT LINES
Flame me here
I use two extensions: AdBlock and PrefButtons.
qed
I'm all for shipping lean applications--not so much because of storage--plugins are usually small--but because it confuses new users less.
The problem I have is that installing plugins over the web for Firefox or Thunderbird is non-trivial, at least on Linux. I haven't been able to get Java to work at all on recent versions. And in order to get any of the "automatic installs" to work, I have to run the browser as root; installing stuff in the user's home directory doesn't work. I haven't figured out at all how to get Thunderbird plugins to work.
Part of the problem seems to be related to the browsers themselves, part of the problem seems to be with the plugins and extensions themselves.
One extension also wiped out my complete bookmark file, even though it wasn't even bookmark related.
Downloading extensions over the web also raises lots of security issues and versioning problems.
If these browsers are going to ship lean-and-mean, then their web-based install features must work correctly, for regular users, on all platforms, and securely.
Since Firefox and Thunderbird still seem to be far from that state, it would probably be better to include most reasonably stable and moderately sized plug-ins with each release for now, but to disable them. That way, novice users don't get confused, but experienced users don't have the hassles and worries of web-based installs.
"AND i'll probably run into compatibility issues later on that i'll have to spend time looking for solutions to anyways."
Well if MS really have stopped IE development, then you may well run into compatibility issues anyway if more developers start to use the agreed standards (whatever they are) rather than the MS "standard" for web design.....
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
Maybe then you would like to switch to the HURD kernel.
I like the mozilla Google toolbar. But I have to admit it's not as clean as the Google one (for obvious reasons). There are just minor little annoyances I find with it. They don't keep me from using IE as rarely as possible, but I do notice a difference.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
I don't need Google/Amazon search bars. I need a frickin' browser than can render HTML, XHTML, XML, Flash, and the rest. I run Firebird in both Windows and Linux and couldn't be happier with it. It's not a bulky program like Mozilla, and it functions nearly the same. I love the lightness.
It's really a shift from bookmark-based browsed to tab-based browsing. The mentality is to make a bookmark of the page you're on if you might want to go back to it. Then you have to spend time later to clean out bookmarks you'll never use again. With tabs, you simply open the link in another tab, and only bookmark things you know you will want to revisit in the future.
...
1. Users need to spend time downloading and finding out if plugins exist for their needs. ...users suckered to download plug-ins they believe they need. Instead of Ad-Block, welcome to Ad-Thief, your friendly plug-in that'll rewrite all banners to come from a different server.
Or flash-click, that'll not only play the one you clicked on, but insert a little ad before and after. And so on. ActiveX = plug-ins is the single biggest source of problems on IE. And most of the time, because the users are "willingly" installing it.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
So if I was looking for the word "functionality," I'd have to type 14 keys, instead of clicking a button. WHERE DO I SIGN UP?
I'd love to know how I got redundant since this is the second post.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
The tabs are not without their problems but they are great. I've noticed when I open a large pdf in a tab that the whole browser locks up while it downloads. That's not really acceptable to me, so I open it in a new window so that I can continue with my current window.
The author of this article has no one to blame but himself
in bed.
Having dealt with extension conflicts in MacOS < 10 for a large part of my life, I am a minimalist when it comes to extending base functionality. The more extensions you add, the more likely two or more will fight over the same resource.
I have already seen this with mozilla's adblock extension. Try going to a site that uses google adsense using firefox 0.8 on MacOS X 10.3.x and firefox is likely to crash. In fact, you can pretty much depend on that happening on some sites. I blame this combination because I switched to a newly formatted box last week and the only difference between firefox now and then is adblock.
Long story short, the more complex you make something, the more likely it is to break.
That being said, I can't live without the web developer extension. That extension alone is the reason I use firefox over other browsers.
I think it all comes down to what your priorities are. I make my living with >= 5 web browsers open on >= 2 platforms at all times and I don't have the time to futz around with crashy browsers, so I lean towards stability. However, a taxonomist/researcher's or blogger's needs might vary from mine. It's all a matter of trade offs and stability is just one vector to weigh.
So though I agree on the premise that "Less is more" I wouldn't go as far as to say that's true for everybody. If anything, having all these extensions lets us make that choice ourselves. In the end, isn't that why we own our own machines; being able to compute in our own way?
I have some tabbed browsing extension or other installed, and it colors groups of tabs the same color, which is great except when it decides to use neon green. I mean, wtf!? I'd really love a way to set the allowable colors...
"I've pizzublished thizzle fizzirst of a twizzle pizzart lizzook at thizzle nizzew dizzynamic dizzuo of Mizzozizzilla's Fizzirefizzox and Thizzunderbizzle. Whizzile most fizzolks thus fizzar agrizzlee wizzith the 'lizzess is mizzore' mizzantrizzle whizzen it cizzomes tizzle the bizzase izzapplications, the plizzugins seem to bizzle a dizzifferent sizzory. Yo, there's lizzittle wizzizzle rizzoom to debizzle that the Fizzirefizzox base applicizzle (the sizzubject of the fizzirst artizzle) isn't the shizznizzle, but what up with the add-izzles and plizzugins? For that mizzatter, do you agrizzle that lizzess is mizzore. or is too little bling included? Wack."
I like how you can click on any of the search terms on the right and it will automatically advance you to the next instance of that word on the page. It's really usful for long pages where only a small part may be relevant to you. You can also have each search term highlighted a different color making it easy to pick them out on a page.
I'm all for having as many available extensions as possible, but that's just the problem..there's too many!
A new user will go to the extensions pages looking for ways to enhance the browser and they are bombarded with a single HUGE listing every extension and little infromation. It's overwhelming.
Have fun navigating that extensions page with the scrollbar!
8 months ago that extensions page was great because there was only 20 or so extensions at the time, now there are hundreds and it's time for a page redesign.
The mozdev.org extension mirror is better layed out but still fails imo.
http://extensionroom.mozdev.o rg
Is Less More? No. Needless to say, less is a program similar to more, but which allows backward movement in the file as well as forward movement and much more. So less is actually more than more, more or less. Unless you prefer more rather than less. See: more(1) and less(1).
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I remember posting a long time ago to the forums, and apparently it was the umpteenth time it had been requested, but for some of the stuff in the Tabbrowser Extensions module to be incorporated into the core of phoenix/firebird/firefox. Aza said no, and that was kind of it. I still believe to this day that tabbed functionality is left out of firefox, and I wouldnt believe its that expensive to put in.
Some things in plugins nowadays should be incorporated into core browser functionality.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
With Google Toolbar, you still have to type out "functionality" to get the button there in the first place unless you happened to get to the page by searching Google for "functionality." Thus, with IE, you would not only have to type 13 letters, but you would also have to move your hand to the mouse and move it over the correct button. That's much slower and more annoying. Don't you feel stupid now?
With respect to mozdev, at least, the "community" effect of open source doesn't seem to be taking hold. Projects are dropped, nobody maintains them, nobody can be contacted about them.
Example: CookieBar was this neat little plugin that added a pane to the mozilla sidebar. You could see your existing cookies there, and delete them. (For anything more, like per-site management, you went to the normal cookie manager.) But it's broken for mozilla 1.6, and there's no indication of it ever being maintained past its early days. Lots of comments saying, hey, is there a new version, but nobody who knows xpi or css or xul or whatever the hell plugins are written in has stepped up to fix the packaging issues or whatever seems to be wrong with it.
Shoot, even the little leave-a-comment text boxes are turned off, now that they're used for nothing but spam.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I see plugins as somewhat similar to programming languages with late bindings, which tends to allow more flexibility. Everything you build into th core a priori ends up making the final output less flexible.
Give people bricks and let them build their own house exactly how they want it.
And since this is about plugins for Firefox, here is one for Simpy (social bookmark manager and personal search engine tool):
<plugin>
Simpy search plugin
</plugin>
Simpy
I've been completely dedicated to Firewhatever & Thunderbird since I first became aware of them; the first thing I do on a new machine is delete every little blue "e" shortcut I can find (or replace the standard mozilla in the case of linux). There are probably 3 reasons I use firewhatever, in order of importance:
1. Adblock & Flash "click-to-play" extensions (the only ones I use, actually) 2. Popup-blocking and a sensible refusal to remap keys to stupid things (e.g., I can still right click to view source or download images even if a web site designer has included an annoying-yet-useless bit of javascript) 3. Bookmark shortcuts in the location bar (e.g. "dict inane" or "google al qaeda training manual") 4. Tabbed browsing
The wonder of adblock and flash click to play has almost redefined the web from my vantage point; banners and annoying animations are virtually non-existant on sites I frequent.
;i don't know about you, but the first thing i do after i intstall firefox is install adblock (sorry osdn).
;like many slashdotters, i use more than one computer too, so i really like Torisugari's bookmarksync as it allows me to up/download my bookmarks via FTP.
;and as i'm not a fan of pop-up windows, i dig download manager tweak--though it may not qualify as the "schiznit," it is useful.
;as for the snoop, is anyone out there working on a xul version of the shizzolator?
;treehead
"If any part Linux was stolen, then Windows was the biggest heist in history."
hey moderator, it was satire...
can't beleive that satire in the thread of an article that contains the shizzle gets mod'd down, troll.
I am living proof of the Peter Principle
From the Good Book of ENIAC, Chapter 1, Verse 1:
...)
"In the beginning, man created ENIAC and upon seeing it, he called it good. When God saw ENIAC and realized what man had done, He looked down and said, 'Because you have eaten of the fruit of computing technology, I am placing a curse upon your developers, that they shall never know when to stop.' To balance out the curse, God created the Project Manager and placed him before the gates of the development interface with a flaming project plan, commanding him, 'Stay true to your project plan and guide the developer so that he may know your plan.' But the Project Manager multiplied and became lazy, and thus the developers, knowing not when to stop, continued adding feature upon feature for time immemorial, and introduced bugs upon bugs, and the End User cursed them all unto the ends of the earth."
(And that, BTW, is why we have Microsoft Office today, among hundreds of other programs that overload the end-user with 'features'
Simplicity and customizability are reasons why I like Trillian so much. (It's the only software program I've ever dedicated money to, BTW.) Trillian does what it is supposed to, and no more. All the fancy 'features' are things I get to pick from. One reason why I hated ICQ (which I last used sometime in 1999) was the fact that it was bloatware. I didn't use half of it. But I have used almost all of Trillian at one point or another.
When it comes right down to it, I like the fact that I get to pick and choose what Firefox and Thunderbird contain. Give me the most simple of applications and let me customize it. Let me decide what power I have over the application. I uninstalled Internet Explorer from all my machines only days after discovering Firefox (or what what was, at the time, Firebird). I primarily use my webmail server when I'm at work behind a firewall, but my laptop has a copy of Thunderbird which I use when I am at home. I know good software when I see it, and both Firefox and Thunderbird are exactly that.
Seth Anderson BTW, I'm not 23 anymore -- I am TexasCowboy26 now. =)
Less is better.
- not a
If the targeted user is a computer savy person, or at least someone who likes to tinker, then less is better. Someone like this can add what they want. Actually I think most people can add what they want for that matter, but will they?
If the targeted user is someone who does only a little tinkering then it is to little.
The real problem is, if you already have a browser on your computer ( windows / IE or mac safari ) are you going to download another browser? Some people ( like me ) will, but the majority will use what is installed already. So the first hurdle is getting people to download the browser. Then if you bundle to much that download becomes to big, and problematic. On the other hand if you bundle to little then why bother to download it in the first place?
I actually think it is really a catch 22.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Agreed, I can't see why people want separate search boxes for Google. On both Opera and Firefox, I just type g "search term" in the address bar and away I go.
Actually, 0.8 is pretty stale, these days. There's lots of functionality that is missing, and lots of things are still broken.
Many, MANY advances have been made in Firewhatsit 0.9. While it is still not ready for release, many of the issues in 0.8 have been fixed. Since 0.8 is more than three months and still flawed in many ways, there's lots of reasons to live on the bleeding edge.
I didn't know that. I love it. any other tips?
I just switched to Dillo. First impressions: its ugly but much faster then firefox.
I appreciate the pointer. System resources are scarce around here.
As long as you are free to leave it as it is, being less is more and none of these plugins are forced upon you in any way... all is ok with me.
Choice is a good thing!
If you click on a link using your mouse wheel, the link will automaticaly open in a new tab!
Yes, you mouse wheel *will* click - try it now!
Do you want to accept?
(Reject) (Accept)
?tpecca ot tnaw uoy oD
(Accept) (Reject)
i like the real google toolbar, and when i started using mozilla one of the first things i looked for was a replacement. the mozilla google toolbar has a real xwindows kind of look and feel to it which i don't like. now i just use the standard search box set to google, and make do without the extra bells and whistles.
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction." - Albert Einstein
Users don't want plugins! No, I don't want a video "right in my web page". Just launch the media player and let me resize it and interact with its full menu to set things like video options. Got a cool flash/Java app? Let me save an swf or jar and click on it whenever I feel like running your stuff. Why do you think I am connected to Internet all the time anyways? Want to sell me stuff? Not gonna work if I am pissed off at your ad format. Use text or in-page images with tasteful colors. Or better yet, give me an intelligent search engine to find stuff at best prices when I am actually looking for it.
I use Safari and Opera for 99.9% of pages and they are pretty good at blocking the worst offenders, by design and because they tend to write IE-specific Javascript anyway. Firefox sounds like the right thing to install on PCs of friends who don't want to buy Opera.
With Firefox, not only do i not use plugins, i remove some of the functions it comes with.
There's this whole assortment of buttons i never use that i remove.
All those silly foreward, back, stop buttons, does anyone really use them?
Foreward i can't remember using at all, back i used to do with backspace, but now that i have my new mouse i don't even do that.
My browser is basically the address bar, the link bar and the non-removable one.
Because IE doesn't give you all the stuff you can add into Firefox. If you're not a developer and you don't mind dealing with IE's poor CSS support, stick with IE.
;o)
If you care at all about web standards and want some of the cool features Firefox provides, bit the bullet and go through the list of plugins so you know what is possible. In the mean time, shut your mouth and quit bashing a browser you're not using.
I'll just let time give you the reasons you can't see for switching platforms
Fo' drizzle, my nizzle!
Plugins wont work if you symlink your plugins directory. For example, I tried to keep a common directory for all the plugins, then have each browser's plugin directory (mozilla's and firefox's) pointed to this common dir (ln -s). A lot of the plugins fail to work if you do this, most notably flash.
The mplayer browser plugin seems to work for a wider range of movies, unlike the one included with gxine - but then mplayer isn't completely "free". Neither plugins work for virtual-360 quicktime stuff though.
One other 'bug' i noticed with firefox is when you middle click on your bookmark bar to open the link, the new tab isnt opened in the background, but 'focused' despite having the options set already in the preferences.
Favorite icons dont appear where they should often in the bookmark bar. It just shows the wrong icon for that link...
I should really file these in bug reports, but I just found it a little troublesome to go thru the bugzilla registration...
my blog
_The_ problem with firefox/thunderbird extensions is that they are a security and usability nightmare (and then I'm talking about the good ones, not the spyware .xpis). There is _no_ QA whatsoever, the code is often extremely bloated, different extensions conflict with each other, place access points to themselves in half a dozen different places, and the authors often don't keep up to date on changes in files related to their extensions.
Some well known extensions like "TBE" replicate every single tabbrowser related security hole which has been fixed in mozilla proper for the past year.
Added to this is that a lot of these extensions are basically javascript reimplementations of c++ functionality that was ripped out since the firefox developers thought useless. Adding more than a handful of extensions has a very noticable impact on the vaunted speed of these programs.
Well known mozilla developers refuse to use extensions unless they've personally reviewed its code (which naturally enough they don't have time for).
Me, I'm following their lead. I have a lot more trust in them than in some anonymous extension writers (if they were good, they'd be working on the main products rather than writing extensions).
Seriously : A webbrowser is to .. browse the web :
Things that come in handy, as a download accelerator/resumer, popup blocker, or a decent security, all comes included with Firefox. If i want more, i go indeed download some plugins : And thus the more choice i have in them, the more satisfied i will be in the end.
When the hell is Mozilla or any of the associated browsers going to support STANDARD URI's like telnet:// or ssh://? Less is NOT more when the behavior works fine in Windows and NOTHING ELSE.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
less is more. simplicity is elegance. plugins are good - they let the uses add features if they like, but don't bloat up the host program with unnecessary whiz-bang-nice-to-haves.
Firefox with AdBlocker and Thunderbird ROCK.
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
It adds to the confusion that the text that is in there, is the blue-hyperlink sort of text : argh : It keeps fooling me , taunting me "press me, press me !" only to leave me with an empty feeling ;)
Ive gotten used to plain old firefox, since it seems like the only thing extensions did was make my browser slow and screwy. Anyone else have this problem?
Normally, you want a minimum of functionality, then allow people to choose if they want to add-on some more (either via the installer, or post install). However, Firefox just seems brain-dead in what it doesn't have...
For instance, it is improssible to install themes in the browser. You are forced to install them from a webpage. Completely pointless IMHO.
It's difficult to configure many common options in Firefox (that is what we call it this week, right?) that most people will want to set. With that said, clutter is a bad thing too, so you also need to be careful what you do show.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
you DO realize that 'nizzle' means nigger right? just wanted to throw that out there. thus, its really an obfuscated racial slur. -nrs
I want to browse static text/web pages and never run any scripted things in neither my mail reader or my web browser.
I may look at the occasional picture, but only as long as that picture helps illustrate something I am reading.
In fact, I still buy and read a lot of books. You know, those things made from paper that just sit there and don't jump around or dance and sing.
There is nothing more annoying than going to a website and being informed that I cannot go any further because I am not viewing thier web site with proprietary flash crap. Screw them. I'll go to a different website. Call me up when you learn how to edit a feakin' WEB page on a WEB site. Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeze!
CALENDAR!!!
Mozilla Calendar is severely lacking in basic features. Thunderbird needs a triumphant calendaring app.
Outlook has "notes" - people tie themselves to notes.
Outlook has "calendar" - even more people rely on that.
I can NOT get people off of Outlook here because of those 2 things. Calendar is weak, and nothing to replace the "Notes."
Calendaring is by far the most important thing, tho. Netscape used to have the bad ass cross platform calendar app with Netscape Calendar Server running it all. What happened to that? Have we just rolled over and let Exchange take it over? Blah.
what the fuck does that mean in english? you should understand that having a day job precludes me from 'keeping it real' and as such, I lack a certain familiarity with the language of the 'streets' as it were.
(stolen from IRC)
Is this...
script language="JavaScript"
function foo(){
bar();
shizzle();
}
function bar(){
document.write("Bling\n");
}
function shizzle(){
document.write("Bling\n");
}
The function foo() will cause FireFox to only write "Bling" instead of "Bling Bling". The function also causes the page to 'hang'.
This script will work in IE. Let's not give people an excuse to stick with IE because websites X,Y and Z do not work with FireFox.
A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it. -- Einstein
And sure enough, he's a massive tool.
Why not make it easy to have the default behavior (the one I use the most and like the best) to open the link in a new tab be the right mouse button?
I'd actually rather like to have the right mouse button do the "open in new tab" thing and the middle mouse button (if one is present - not always the case) be the usual "replace content in this tab" option.
How am i bashing it? I thought i was engaging in a discussion of the merits of a web browser?
Oh wait, i'm pro-"microsoft product X" so it must be bashing and/or flamebait. Like my original post.
And i have tried firefox and mozilla several times.
That window haunts my dreams. I keep clicking it though. I'm hoping that after perhaps a zillion clicks it'll open up an easter egg which fills my bookmarks with free pr0n.
-- I have fans? Wow.
unless you happened to get to the page by searching Google for "functionality."
Which is about half the time I use it.
The highlighting feature also makes it easy to skim a page for multiple keywords, each highlighted in a different color.
using a little bit of google and the filter in about:config
to get external apps to open new tabs, follow these directions:
Click Here
(granted it should be an on/off option but we're still pre-1.0)
to get links to open in a new tab even if they should open in a new window:
set: browser.tabs.opentabfor.linkclick = 'true'
A good flash plugin would be nice. A generic java plugin that will handle 90% of the silly java applets out there would be nice too. Java doesn't seem to be as prominent as flash; I simply visit academic sites like MIT that use java applets for various things.
Sometimes, they break CVS versions, in such a way that my profile is corrupted. Subsequently, any version using that profile hangs at application start.
Oh, well. There isn't an extension (yet) that I absolutely can't live without. No, not even Mouse Gestures...
....when I'm at home. Just haven't installed it here...
WYSIWIG, but what you see might not be what you need
It would be really nice to have a native RSS aggregator. Not necessarily the RSS Reader Panel, but something equally useful.
It would be nice if there were a list of the available plug-ins when you installed and you could click and choose which you wanted then instead of having to install them. Let the install program download said plug-ins and work them into the install as opposed to having to do it later.
Just would be nice is all.
Chicken fried butter sticks? Do
...that followed the Firefox philosophy. :/
:) Not that I use MS Office anymore anyway, but OpenOffice could adopt a similar approach.
I've been ranting for years that what we need are applications that come with a base set of features that you can extend via plugin type dealies at will. It could even work in a non-opensource setting. Imagine Microsoft selling WordLite with just the features that the common man uses (about 1% of what's included now). If, at some point in the future you wished to add feature X, you pull up the Office web site, choose the feature, pay a nominal fee to download it and install it. Voila! You're able to pay for ONLY the features you want while people with different needs can pay for ONLY the features they need. And I don't get stuck installing half a gig worth of crap I'll never use.
Plain and simple FireFox saves me time.
Extensions or no extensions, I have a two year old laptop that I use for heavy development, running lots of MS bloatware for my job. Rendering typical pages in IE is 10X slower than FireFox.
I was elated...
Just the other day I found out about the extensions when researching RSS feeds and readers. RSS Reader, Download Mgr Tweak, BlogThis, and of course Firesomething. BlogThis has changed how I track and capture the ideas that come to me that I cannot deal with right away. Use RSS to read my own blog.
Keep hearing folks saying how fast Firefox/Mozilla is. Well, I'm sorry but in my experience Firefox sucks! It is Slow. I mean ssllooowwww. Painfully slow...... I have Opera, Netscape 7, Mozilla 1.6, Firefox and of course Konqueror installed on my box. And I use all of them at some point (sometimes a site won't render correctly in Opera, so I try some of the others). Of them all, Firefox is the slowest. A page that akes about 10 seconds to load in Opera takes up to 2 minutes (that's 12 times as long) to display in Firefox. Mozilla is marginally faster, as it Netscape. And this is on the same machine (Celeron 366 with 384 MB RAM). Unless and until the Mozilla team can improve their rendering times, I cannot recommend any of their products. I'm sticking to Opera (which has all the features of Firefox that I need, and unlike Mozilla has a Java plugin that works).
I've been waiting for this feature since before Mozilla 1.0 . Hopefully Firefox will also be able to start in a safe mode if an extension causes an error that keps it from starting.
find Sunbird
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
I've had the same problem, but don't use Tabbrowser Extensions.
I think this is a known problem - I recall it mentioned somewhere in Ben Goodgers weblog, or on the mozillazine forums somewhere - but can't find a report in bugzilla for it.
AC
(because I have way too many damned accounts, spread all over the net. Enough already!)
"Bodies bein' filed on Greenleaf with thier heads cut off, Motherfucker, I'm Dre."
There's a thread on the MozillaZine forums that lists some smaller extensions you can use to get most of the TBE functionality without TBE (since some consider it bloated, and with bloat comes complexity, with complexity comes bugs).
If not for the computer and the internet, it would seem like only yesterday. But because the computer and the internet are such integral parts of so many of our lives these days, we are all vaguely reminiscent (or not) of a time long ago when the browser war was between one evil and another, and countless users sought to install only one or the other. Or, at least we had a favorite.
Now there are several other options, still including MSIE and (sort of) Netscape, but more importantly also including Mozilla (Netscape's hipper cousin) and Opera. Then you consider other platforms, and there are viable alternatives like Safari and Konqueror, plus others that I'm sure I'm leaving out.
My guess is that more than 95% of the people who read this have at least two web browsers installed, and everyone probably has a preference between the two or among the several. I actually use several, because not only do I use MSIE, Mozilla (Firefox!), and Opera in Windows XP, but I also use Konqueror in Linux and Safari and IE5 on the Macs at the office (mostly for web development testing purposes).
This is a very small, badly dithered picture of the web browser timeline. It is not meant to be detailed or even all that accurate. Instead, it is only meant to serve as a reminder of a less chaotic but equally fun time, and as a bridge between our simpler past and brighter present. Well, at least with regard to web browsers.
...over the last week or so, to replace a similar one we were using for our in-house QA system with Outlook (thus facilitating a migration :-) ).
If they'll give me some time when I've finished, I'd like to do a webpage covering all the places where I got bogged down going round in circles for half a day, as the documentation at present isn't great.
Would would be really nice is some sort of cookbook, so that you can look up the best way of doing a common task, instead of wading through the mozilla core javascript and the IDL files, and ending up with something closely resembling a bad kludge!
This text does not exist in the page you linked:
browser.tabs.opentabfor.linkclick = 'true'
Could you provide a link or more explanation?
If only Camino had click-hesitation for control-click menu! Otherwise Camino does me right. I prefer iCab's spartan interface, and the new Opera is awesome. Firefox is a dog compared to these, IMHO. Mozi and Net are Fibber McGee closets full of junk. The apps that make it all work sort-of-together are URL Manager Pro and Web Confidential. I pay my shareware fees, eventually.
Geeks want small, lean, light and easily expandable via plugins to have a customisable experience.
Users want all the nifty features in there ready to go. They don't want to faff around with plugins, often they don't even know about them (or care). They want something that works well.
Therefore if you want to appease both (and personally, I can cope with some extra download to have the plugins rather than waste time hunting for them) then the installer should give you the option to install some of the more common ones. It should be labelled as "recommended" and be the default option. Geeks can select "minimal".
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
the problem seems to me to be that there's just no quality guarantee, and nobody's *really* watching to see that the cream rises to the top. extension organization on mozilla.org leaves alot to be desired, and some sort of formal review system would be nice. the extensions are going to continue flying in, but just wading through the list is ridiculous; actually finding what you want is even harder; knowing that it will actually do what it says it will do is harder still. i'm a huge fan of the stripped down packages they've provided. mozilla is a beast and this needed to happen. but most of the extensions are cheap, weak, and pointless. gotta pull in the reins.
i don't believe IE is still number one! new poll ... well nevermind, sincce
... (?)
...
and a new browser war
it's free and not tided to netscape anymore it's
not about money or profil.
all over: i'm most happy that there is still fire
in the spirit of the original WEB (hyperlink).
the new internet user who bought a 24 k modem and
a first ISP account account must have thought the
internet is just the WEB. nobody ever really tried
to tie a IRC client to the OS"core" or a email
client or a web-browser (exclude MS).
the moz.dev got the priority right, methinks.
MS thinks the internet is a rail-line and they
have to build a steam engine, while moz-dev thinks
it's just a normal road where anything with
wheels can have a go
my favourit plug-in" is Chatzilla!
i got a few "irc://..." links on my (my-apache ) startpage.
*WISH*: limit "/list" command output, like (min 50 user in channel)
Yes, that is, more or less, what I was talking about--there are less features incorporated into more than into less, so in other words, less has more features incorporated than more, i.e. all of more features and then some more. Therefore, less is not more. Less is more than more. Much more. That is correct.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
There's various possibilities with the Java. Variously adding the registry keys (plugins,FAQs), installing Java from within Firefox, and as it's Windows - just reboot lots after each procedure. The sequence of things seems to work fine in one particular way, but I can never remember what that is. So just randomly throwing those things at the system till it works is my policy for now.
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
Because there is *no way* to disable it. I don't want a freaking download manager.. I want a different window for each download so I can minimize them and watch their progress at a glance in the taskbar without having to pop up a goddamned window all the time.
The required use of the download manager is by far the single worst thing in Firefox.
I used to like the plugin system, but since I have "discovered" bookmarklets. I am not so sure anymore:
Almost all things plugins can accomplish, bookmarklets can do as well. And, bookmarklets do not need to be installed in every browser, just put them in your bookmarks. Most of them work in any browser (Mozilla, IE, Opera). The plugins often only work even with specific versions only.
The Default look of firefix is so bland! Moreover when i minimize it, it has a windows icon to it!
Can u guys suggest some good looking plugins? .
what are the other plugins u like!?
Why does yahoo do this
TASTES GREAT...
k.. Where is the mud and the babes?
This is awesome! I think this could be the greatest creation to come from the minds at Slashdot...or not... Why can't we get google to add it as a language set? (Google already has the language HACKER, so why can't have this?)
x86, oh yes, I'm pro.
Zombo.com. Someone else posted a link to this yesterday; it's always good to be reminded of its genius.
Seriously, though, Flash can have good applications, beyond entertainment. One of the key benefits is that it is truly cross-platform and works reliably and in the same way across browsers and OSes far more than any other mainstream technology. It can be a very good presentation or data capture layer for when HTML is insufficient.
What I'd like to know is why nobody seems to be working on an alternative (open-source) Flash plugin for Mozilla and Firebird at the moment.
Let's face it, Macromedia's binary-only plugin sucks, both performance-wise, stability-wise and compatibility-wise, and it's also still a major version behind.
I know, there should be a closed beta program for a Flash 7 plugin for Linux going on around this time, but given the fact that Macromedia made the specs available, why hasn't anyone been working on an open-source alternative?
An open-source plugin would have many advantages: it could be distributed with browsers and distros by default, it could make use of new X features, such as XV, XRandr, Damage, Cairo, XFT, and what not to maximise performance and compatibility, it could be made to work with newer and better sound API's (ALSA, JACK, OpenAL) and (with enough developers) it could be kept up-to-date more quickly.
So tell me: why hasn't anyone tried to improve the old open-source flash implementation, which currently is still stuck at the equivalency of Flash 4?
And if people are counting on SVG/SMIL to become an open alternative: why the hell is SVG compatibility still disabled in Mozilla by default, then? It will never become a vialble alternative if it doesn't work out of the box!
In case any hard working developers are offended by the above rant: I meant no offense and do respect the hard and excellent work you've all been doing, but it's the stupid decisions in some projects that frustrate me.
"Oooh, does that mean we get to kick some puffy white mad zionist butt?"
I'm using Firefox .8, and Mozilla 1.5 and 1.6 on different computers, and I don't see an about:config on any menu or in any .JS file.
I really would like Mozilla to make an FTP client like Firefox and Thunderbird. I'm still using WS-FTP because it's the best one I've been able to find so far. I guess most people just use their browser and don't care, but it's nice to be able to have the settings to download more than one file from more than one folder. One feature I would like to see in more ftp clients is the ability to time when the downloads start. My WS-FTP doesn't even do that. As much as I love using Firefox and Thunderbird, I could definitely use an ftp client in the same mold.
Ops, I shuld have usd the prevuwe but in.
I personally love the low overhead of firefox, and the plugins available were 90% of the features I needed, I have been an avid IE user for years and have now made firefox my primary browser on 4 computers. -My 2 cents.
If you enter a wrong name, how do you delete it? Where is the information stored?
The term "nigger" refers to all darkies, not just the American imports.
good RSS reader ext.
Let's just take one short step back:
the app itself, and what's included in it, is "mandatory" to the function of the software, even if a plugin could somehow overrule the core app, the core app will still be behind the scenes, taking up resources.
The plugins are optional, not included in the default install, and very few people are ever saddled with them without their knowledge.
Why is that distinction important?
Well let's see, by having a minimal, lean, high speed core, whatever plugins you choose will run fast, be nimble, and by virtue of the overall system(core+plugin) being simple, probably easily debugged, and debugged faster.
Having a heavy core means developers have to work harder, end-users can see more bugs they don't want to see, and third-party plugin developers have heavier apis to learn, to support, and more chance of harmful interactions with either the core, or some second plugin that's also included.
Having a lean core benefits everyone in terms of speed and freedom, provided the API/SDK is defined precisely, and is complete enough to satisfy all plugin developers. It's better because:
users only see the bugs for the pieces of code they actually run
developers only need to debug interactions for the smaller core, and any problematic third party that walks in on their turf
Documentation is easier to write for the core, and the third party modules are each responsible for their own stuff.
Anyone see why a lean core benefits everyone yet?
Don't worry, its the laungage of white surbian kids who bring the defination of 'wigger' to new hights. These are the same people who will start an arugement in the subway and not actually challange the other group to a fight until its their stop and the doors have opened. /see it all the time and laugh
Not one that is 10 years old. Man even Macs have been over 1Ghz for years. Th epoint is with that shitty of a computer you don't deserve to use the internet.
I want to see Pagerank for two reasons:
* It helps me decide which sites to trust. If a site "should be" PR7 (given the industry and my guess as to how many people use the site) but is only PR4, I will suspect that it's fraudulent.
* I want to see the Pagerank of my own pages (for SEO purposes), competitors' pages, and friends' pages.
The shareholder is always right.
Ask and it shall be given unto you...
Disable blinking elements
Isn't Firefox great? ;)
Mods: the proper catagory for this is "funny".
Wikileaks, no DNS