Building a Better Mozilla With Plugins

Ant writes "Wired has a story on how to improve Mozilla and Firefox web browsers with various plugins/extensions (XPI installations). It lists some of the extensions that have been rated highly by Mozilla users like BugMeNot. One of them not listed and my favorite is PrefBar."

Comments

Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

We're back on track with a good Mozilla article. Now I can get some decent Slashdotting done. Well, that and switching my PC over to Gentoo.

I mean, all these articles about TV and movies this morning? Bring on the Mozilla, Linux, and Mac articles. Let's get some good Microsoft bashing going! Daddy needs his fix!

Re:Finally!

[DMUTPeregrine]

Damnit, I can't use that joke anymore (honestly.) I already switched my PC over to Gentoo.

At least

[arieswind]

It may be slightly inconvenient, but at least the Mozilla extension system isn't a blank check to hackers like IE's ActiveX system.

Re:At least

[Jugalator]

It may be slightly inconvenient, but at least the Mozilla extension system isn't a blank check to hackers like IE's ActiveX system.

How about a ... plugin to fix that? :-)

Re:At least

[PeterPumpkin]

The latest version is pretty good. If you click on a malformed link like http://www@.cnet.com it warns you. I thought that was pretty cool.

Re:At least

[PeterPumpkin]

Oops! You have to type it in manually to see the warning message for some reason. http://www.@google.com

I guess its not completely implemented yet.

Re:At least

[tomknight]

Yup, and even the MS owned Slate carries an article (http://slate.msn.com/id/2103152/) saying how Firefox is a more secure alternative to IE.

Tom.

Re:At least

[Jugalator]

IE6 use is starting to decline [w3schools.com]!!

Meanwhile, IE5 usage is increasing quite rapidly.

Weird.

It's not declining because Mozilla or Opera usage is dramatically increasing anyway.

Re:At least

[PeterPumpkin]

Hah I figured it out - Slashdot strips out link garbage automatically. Go Slashdot! :D

Re:At least

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you could explain why it isn't a "blank check" -- seems to be the same thing as ActiveX.

Re:At least

[legoburner]

check out http://www.thecounter.com/stats/

for some other good browser stats. See the decline of netscape as these stats go back to the year 2000. They represent a more generic class of user (home users who visit websites with crappy counters) than most stats too so I find using these stats useful when evaluating target audiences for generic sites.

Re:At least

[PeterPumpkin]

IE5 is increasing? Wha? From the link in my sig:

IE5 usage:
April 2004: 10.1%
May 2004: 9.2%
June 2004: 8.3%
July 2004: 8.1%

Were you reading the chart backwards? ;)

Re:At least

[tekunokurato]

Doesn't mozilla support activex apps? My anecdotal experience was on a mac (on which I'm generally clueless), but I know I was using a friend's computer to access gmail and the complaint with every other browser I tried (including mac IE) was that activex was not activated; mozilla, despite no official gmail support, had no problem.

Re:At least

[henrygb]

IE5 usage is increasing quite rapidly. I think you may be reading the table upside down - it has more recent data at the top.

Re:At least

[PeterPumpkin]

Have you seen sites that have TheCounter on them?

See this

and this

and this

and this

and this

and this.

"Tracked by TheCounter.com" is the landmark of completely uninteresting content coupled with 10 year old web design techniques! (aka best suited for newbie Internet Explorer users ;)

Re:At least

[Dreadlord]

Mozilla 1.7 and current nightly builds of Firefox don't accept extensions from websites other than Mozilla's.

Anything else?

Re:At least

[arieswind]

Gmail is not activex, thats why you had no problems

Re:At least

[leomekenkamp]

Have you seen this? Why is there no name on entry 3? If it is unknown, then what is the difference to entry 10? And why do jan through march 2004 contain no info on browser types at all? I would not exactly call these 'good browser stats'.

Re:At least

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article:

"...You've probably been told to dump Internet Explorer for a Mozilla browser before, by the same propeller-head geek who wants you to delete Windows from your hard drive and install Linux. You've ignored him, and good for you...."

No, not good for you. I just can't comprehend why anyone would ACCEPT the terms of Microsoft's recent EULA. It is full of terms I'm sure most people would object to if they bothered to read it.

Re:At least

[Anonymous Coward]

And you think HTML How-Tos are interesting content (for most people)? For a "W3C" webdesign site, 12% Mozilla usage is teh suck.

Re:At least

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose that will work, as long as Mozilla is unpopular and there's only 2-3 sites that have extentions. But what happens if Mozilla gets a larger developer community?

Re:At least

[PeterPumpkin]

Gmail probably has some activex extras. Thats why setting your browser to spoof IE constantly does more harm than good.

Re:At least

[legoburner]

exactly, mostly crappy sites that gives you another representation of stats for a different type of user. Their mozilla support is very crappy though but I find it suitable for 100-(sum of IE) = rough alternate browser% share.

google is generally the definitive browser reference anyway but it all depends upon your target audience

Re:At least

[afd8856]

I don't know anything about Gmail, but my guess would be somthing like this: Gmail tries to give yo a visual widget to compose your emails. It does that with the regular IE widget (which is activeX) or they use Midas (visual composing widget), from Mozilla.

BTW, check Epoz or Kutu, those are some crossbrowser visual widgets (they even work in konqueror) :)

Re:At least

[rendler]

mozilla, despite no official gmail support, had no problem.

Gmail does support Mozilla, even Firefox:

.......
* Mozilla 1.4 and newer (download: Windows Macintosh Linux )
* Mozilla Firefox 0.8 and newer (download: Windows Macintosh Linux )
.......

Re:At least

[glenrm]

Mis-read a chart get modderated Insightful, gotta love /.

Re:At least

[Anonymous Coward]

Were you reading the chart backwards? ;)

Heck, I thought you were reading it backwards, too. Then I realized that you were talking about a measly .6% decline. That's so insignificant that it's basically noise.

Re:At least

[Dreadlord]

Mozilla already has a large developer community, almost all of the extensions at Mozilla Update are developed by the community.

An extension developer can submit their extension to Mozilla Update and directly link to the XPI from their homepage.

Or they can provide a downloadable XPI file, the user has to open it (from File > Open), and it'll be installed.

So there is no automatic installation, and the avarage user can't be tricked to click yes for an installation dialog.

Re:At least

[Anonymous Coward]

His point was that different types of websites attract different types of people, and that thecounter.com statistics are culled from traffic that is highly biased, meaning you can't generalise this to the web in general.

The same applies to W3Schools, but please note that they have nothing to do with the W3C. "W3" is simply an abbreviation of WWW.

Re:At least

[Anonymous Coward]

ActiveX add-ins are not usually found on the greater WWW (except evil ones), but instead on intranet and private sites. So many of the potential users of this technology would not be submitting controls to mozilla.org. But as long as there's an easy work-around, that should be fine.

Re:At least

[JimDabell]

So there is no automatic installation, and the avarage user can't be tricked to click yes for an installation dialog.

Are you sure about that? That security hole won't be fixed until Firefox 1.0.

Re:At least

[Anonymous Coward]

GMail works for me and I'm using Firefox 0.9.

Re:At least

[gnu-generation-one]

"Gmail does support Mozilla, even Firefox"

And if that's not cool enough, it also supports the KMail [and Pine] keyboard-shortcuts

Re:At least

[NanoGator]

"It may be slightly inconvenient, but at least the Mozilla extension system isn't a blank check to hackers like IE's ActiveX system."

What's it doing different that makes it not a 'blank check'?

Re:At least

[critter_hunter]

Gmail works (mostly) by using Javascript; XHTTPREQUEST or something similar, a non-standard extension that allows to open HTTP connections using Javascript, which allows GMail to modify the page you are currently on without going to a new location or creating a page refresh - the new changes are all done through Javascript. That extension is supported in Mozilla, which is why you can use it to access GMail. GMail also uses some ActiveX in Internet Explorer, IIRC, but it does not require it to function properly (in fact, I don't think ActiveX adds any functionality in this particular case - I believe they use it as part of their authentification scheme, though I might be wrong.

Re:At least

[emtilt]

I use Firefox 0.9.1, yet when I go to the page that gives the browser requirements for gmail, it says:

We're sorry, but we don't seem to be compatible.

Our software suggests that you're using a browser incompatible with Gmail. Gmail currently supports the following:

* Microsoft IE 5.5 and newer (download: Windows)
* Netscape 7.1 and newer (download: Windows Macintosh Linux )
* Mozilla 1.4 and newer (download: Windows Macintosh Linux )
* Mozilla Firefox 0.8 and newer (download: Windows Macintosh Linux )
* Safari 1.2.1 and newer (download: Macintosh )

While we're still testing Gmail, you can also click here to use your unsupported browser, though you likely will encounter some areas that don't work as expected. You need to have Javascript and cookies enabled, regardless of the browser you use.

How strange.

Re:At least

[Dreadlord]

Both the whitelist and the install button delay solve this.

If it's a malicious extension, the installation dialog won't show up any way. And the install button delay will give the user enough time to stop clicking or typing.

The whitelist is in Mozilla 1.7, and the install button delay is in Firefox 0.9.1.

Re:At least

[rendler]

I think the whole page itself is static. Those with incompatible browsers (such as lynx) are shown an error message and a link of the page in question when trying to access the main page.

I too am using 0.9.1 and logged in to check my mail just a little while ago without any problems.

Re:At least

[JimDabell]

Both the whitelist and the install button delay solve this.

Together they do. The whitelist shouldn't be seen as a silver bullet. It shouldn't be possible for somebody who has control over one of the whitelist websites to automatically install something on your computer without your permission.

the install button delay is in Firefox 0.9.1.

My mistake. I took "I landed this patch on the Aviary 1.0 branch" to mean that it would be applied to Firefox 1.0. I can't keep track of the different branches. So Aviary 1.0 stuff goes into Firefox 0.9.1? I'm confused!

I also think that a three second delay is both arbitrary and unsafe. There are plenty of hunt-and-peck typists that would look at the keyboard for three seconds trying to find the 'l' and 'y' keys.

I don't have a better suggestion, except perhaps bringing the confirmation up in a popup that doesn't steal the focus. I don't think a website can trick somebody into switching windows and hitting 'y'.

Re:At least

[Dreadlord]

Anyway, I think that the whole thing is some form of social engineering, and not a bug in Mozilla's code.

Re:At least

[Red Alastor]

I wonder how we must understand this sentence in the article. Is it : "We know IE is pretty bad but don't switch to Linux, use Firefox and everything will be ok." ? I strongly recommand reading this PDF file about this topic, it is A Comparison of the GPL and the Microsoft EULA that could as well be named "EULA and GPL explained to non-lawyers". I think that windows users should know what they really agreed to.

Re:At least

[tekunokurato]

Um, sure. That's why it demands that you have activex enabled to play it, eh? No really, try it--disable activex and see what it says. It uses it somehow, though obviously not for the primary architecture.

Re:At least

[tekunokurato]

Thanks, much more helpful than the other dudes. Not that I'll be on a friend's mac anymore anyway.

Re:At least

[jesser]

I also think that a three second delay is both arbitrary and unsafe. There are plenty of hunt-and-peck typists that would look at the keyboard for three seconds trying to find the 'l' and 'y' keys.

I hadn't thought of hunt-and-peck typists when I suggested the delay. You're absolutely right.

I don't have a better suggestion, except perhaps bringing the confirmation up in a popup that doesn't steal the focus. I don't think a website can trick somebody into switching windows and hitting 'y'.

That would be annoying, since you'd have to focus the window manually, and wouldn't solve the double-clicking version of the attack.

I'm liking a suggestion by Microsoft more and more. The suggestion is to show a new toolbar instead of the security dialog when a site tries to install software. Clicking the toolbar brings up a normal security dialog with a complete warning and Install/Cancel buttons. Since installing software would then involve going through browser chrome, it would be more difficult for sites to make you accept the software installation dialog without your consent.

Using a toolbar instead of a dialog would also protect against sites that try to force you into accepting ActiveX by repeating the dialog until you accept.

Not only would a toolbar be more secure, it would also be less annoying. Users don't like to wait. I suspect users don't like to wait for the same reason that users prefer keyboard interfaces even when they are slightly slower than mouse interfaces, and for the same reason that I spend an hour writing a program to do something for me that I could do myself in ten minutes.

Re:At least

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, I'm using Firefox 0.8 and the double-click script would not work. Firefox pops up a warning and doesn't let the script execute.

So... You're wrong, dumbass.

Re:At least

[gordgekko]

I have to thank that article. Because of it I finally moved to Firefox and Thunderbird. I don't miss IE6 at all though there are some things in Outlook that I do miss...

At any rate, I am happy though. If the media keeps reporting on alternatives I think a lot of other people could be converted.

Re:At least

[berzerke]

Are you sure about that? [regarding tricking a user to click yes] That security hole won't be fixed until Firefox 1.0.

I haven't tested it in Firefox, but with Mozilla 1.7 both demos bring up a box saying they are denied universal xpc connect privleges. Interesting attack ideas though.

Re:At least

[PeterPumpkin]

definiative? Um, lets see...no percentages, no chart markings, obscured data lines. That chart could mean anything for all we know.

Re:At least

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither worked on firefox 0.9 either same warning message came up.

Re:At least

[Deviate_X]

Oh dear...

I typed http://www.@google.com into Firefox.

It prompted me, i clicked No.

It continued to goto google.com anyway.

Re:At least

[LiquidCoooled]

From a little quick test, google appears to be hard written in as allowable.

Using any other domain on the right hand side appears to stop the connection as expected.

(firefox 0.91)

Re:At least

[Deviate_X]

Well i typed in http://www.@microsoft.com

It prompted me.

I said NO.

It continued to navigate to microsoft.com

Re:At least

[aled]

Parent should be modded Informative. It points to a real plugin.

Why prefbar is not listed

[Enry]

From the prefbar web site:

It does not work with Mozilla Firefox

Re:Why prefbar is not listed

[xOleanderx]

It looks like a good extension... But unfortunately it doesnt work with firefox.

Re:Why prefbar is not listed

[the unbeliever]

er.

I'm running PrefBar in FireFox .9.1...

PrefBar 2.3 RC2 - works with Firefox, and has many new features

Granted, it's a "release candidate" but it works just fine..

Re:Why prefbar is not listed

[Stibbons]

PrefBar 2.3 works with Firefox: installer link

Re:Why prefbar is not listed

[krisp]

I'd like a plugin that allows cookie modification on the fly. Now that'd be useful!

Re:Why prefbar is not listed

[His name cannot be s]

From the prefbar site: (LOOK FURTHUR DOWN!)

PrefBar 2.3 RC2 - works with Firefox, and has many new features

Re:Why prefbar is not listed

[Enry]

Oops. Guess it does work. Thanks for the correct link (the one on prefbar's site didn't install at first).

Re:Why prefbar is not listed

[JohnFluxx]

I did this using konqueror, and using dcop to manipulate the kcookiejar.

Re:Why prefbar is not listed

[ccweigle]

I'd like a plugin that allows cookie modification on the fly. Now that'd be useful!

Permit Cookies is almost this.

It doesn't let you fix up just any cookie on the fly (so cookies coming through from ads can't be adjusted "on the fly"), but you can bring up "allow, block, remove" with a key press. You can change the cookie it's going to adjust (say if you know the ad server), but there's no list of cookies accessed for this page, just the current server in an edit box.

I should say I'm using 0.2, so it's possible that it does more already, or that there are plans to do more.

Re:Why prefbar is not listed

[Berzelius]

I wonder why prefbar isn't added to the Mozilla Suite, since it's really usefull.

IE

[Anonymous Coward]

Hasn't IE taught us that a browser should just be a browser?

Re:IE

[Vilim]

Unless (as in the case with Firefox) you explicitly tell it to do slightly more

With IE its the opposite, it is more than a browser unless you explicitly castrate its overzealous (and insecure) functionality

Re:IE

[KingJoshi]

Then Konqueror should have taught us otherwise. I like using "fish://username@domain" to view files in an "explorer" setting over sftp. Embeding of IE into the system as a concept is not flawed, the implementation is what's the problem. Hacking in a neat feature without security in mind and going back to try to fix what problems you didn't design to take care of is much worse than spending more time and designing more properly. Granted, the KDE group does have the mistakes of Microsoft to learn from.

Re:IE

[ckaminski]

Plus it's OSS, so *WE* the community can fix problems faster than MS. Still doesn't get around the patching problem, though.

Re:IE

[einhverfr]

I hate to break it to you but Mozilla does WAY more than IE. This is actually a good thing in many ways--- i.e. I am getting ready to start on a software project which will create a simple Outlook-like program for Mozilla.

The problem is that IE is a simple universal document shell. It will happily launch any program associated with the software (such as, say MS Access with a .mdb file, and of course, this program can execute any macros which execute on load.... which is bad....). Mozilla actually includes the whole platform.

Why, in lines of code, it is nearly as big as Gnome. The advantage, though, is that everything is or is supposed to be sandboxed to a large extent. This is not true of IE.

My two cents

[sanosuke001]

Well, one thing I do like about IE is that is DOESN'T have a download manager. I hate that damn thing. I want to be able to see each window for a download so I know exactly when each finishes. Maybe put a way to have both? That would be cool...

Re:My two cents

[Dios]

You know.. its easy really

Go to
Edit - Preferences - Navigator - Downloads.

Select the option to open a progress dialog.

Then works just about like IE.

Re:My two cents

[mopslik]

I want to be able to see each window for a download so I know exactly when each finishes.

Perhaps you'd like this then?

Re:My two cents

[Hakubi_Washu]

I haven't used Mozilla for downloading in a long time, so I don't know about it's manager, but:
Have you thought about Opera? It uses a download manager as well, but you can watch all progress bars in a neat side-bar (the hotlist, which also displays Bookmarks, History, Links in the current page, Information about the current page, notes and every page you choose as "panel" on request...) I consider that good enough, except when you want to see all your downloads in the taskbar...

Re:My two cents

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox doesn't seem to have Edit -> Preferences, and the only option in Tools -> Options -> Downloads is whether or not to display the Download Manager. Kind of a wrinkle...

Another post points to a Firefox extension that acts as a toolbar. Maybe that will work.

Re:My two cents

[VitaminB52]

I want to be able to see each window for a download so I know exactly when each finishes.

What about Edit --> Preferences ... --> Navigator --> Downloads. Here you can choose between the download manager and a progress-dialog-per-download.

Re:My two cents

[sanosuke001]

Thanks.... now I feel like a moron.. I guess that "you learn something new everyday" is done for me! Now I can rest assured that if I sleep the rest of the day, I've still learned something.... I guess

Re:My two cents

[stratjakt]

My beef with the download manager is it puts everythign in the same spot. I'd like to filter by extension, mime type, etc.. Put all the .zips and .exes here, all the .jpgs there, all the .avis hither and yonder.

I hate sorting through a pile of crap to find the pdf howto I downloaded a month ago. And I hate software that makes me act like it's filing clerk.

It's a simple modification, mozilla boys.. Hop to it!

Re:My two cents

[Biogenesis]

Doesn't Firefox just have both? Look in (with version 0.8, I'm a lazy bum I know) Tools menu-> Options-> Downloads (icon on left) -> Download Manager

There are 2 tick boxes, one to make it open in the first place and another to make it close when all downloads are complete.

Re:My two cents

[N3Z]

Then works just about like IE.

unless you long for the security holes...

Re:My two cents

[Anonymous Coward]

What I like about FireFox is that when I click to download a file, I often get a blank window which I have to close myself. That's handy. IE doesn't do that. Bloody Microsoft amateurs!

Re:My two cents

[SpinyManiac]

Already done.

Isn't that what the article is about?

Re:My two cents

[amliebsch]

This extenstion should do what you are looking for.

Re:My two cents

[the unbeliever]

Download Sort is what you're looking for.

Hope that helps.

Re:My two cents

[tmbg37]

Note that this only works in regular old Mozilla. As far as I know, there's no way to disable the download manager in Firefox. But please, correct me if I'm wrong.

Re:My two cents

[lucas teh geek]

edit -> preferences is where the options are on linux. tools -> options on windows. NFI why they chose to have inconsistant menu layout between operating systems

Re:My two cents

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why anyone would think to put Preferences under Edit, since Edit is supposed to be concerned with editing operations. It's an old Netscape-ism.

Re:My two cents

[Anonymous Coward]

I REALLY REALLY like the Download Statusbar for Mozilla/firefox.

It stops download manager from poping up everytime something is saving, and has a nice little bar graph and download speed, stats near the bottom of the current browser. So, it eliminates clutter like a pro.

Very nice.

Re:My two cents

[Anonymous Coward]

You can disable the download manager but not enable invidual download windows.

Though I vastly prefer the download statusbar extension to either approach, try it.

Re:My two cents

[pbhj]

I call feature-troll on this one.

I'm sorry, but every time there's a discussion on OSS, someone mentions their favourite feature that is missing and it's nearly always in the very easily accessible options.

If this was only an about:config setting I'd understand ... sheesh!

To quote sanosuke001 "man you have to pay attention more" :0b>

Re:My two cents

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesnt have download resuming either (well, download resuming that works properly). Ive never managed to get it to work (this was shortly before switching to Opera about 2 years ago)

Opera (7.51+) pops up a little window (like MSN Messenger when someone logs in) to tell you when something has finished downloading.

Re:My two cents

[Shachaf]

As far as I know, Edit -> Preferences is for Mozilla, and Tools -> Options is for Mozilla Firefox.

Re:My two cents

[Anonymous Coward]

It's ok, even if you do sleep we'll still think that you are an idiot.

Re:My two cents

[sik0fewl]

Well, I was *finally* getting used to the download manager and then with Firefox 0.9 they changed the hotkey from Ctrl+E to Ctrl+Y. How the hell am I supposed to do that with my left (non-mouse) hand. I have a split keyboard so it's basically impossible.

I really wish they would change that back. Makes no sense to have it Ctrl+Y.

Re:My two cents

[scrytch]

Download sort seems to work kind of randomly for many people. Last I looked, it also didn't sort by the download site, the way GetRight does. Even then, needs to be able to queue downloads before I can start calling it a download manager. It's not a big deal for me now since I have nice high speed internet, but for dialup, downloading is sine qua non.

Re:My two cents

[the unbeliever]

It works for me pretty well, given a server that has acceptable MIME types setup.

I also refuse to use the internet on dialup, so there's also that.

Re:My two cents

[ckaminski]

Tools -> Downloads (CTRL+Y) brings up download manager in Firefox .9.

How is that any worse than 3 - 5 download windows cluttering your screen?

Re:My two cents

[Syberghost]

Well, one thing I do like about IE is that is DOESN'T have a download manager.

Yeah, I hate it when software gives me a CHOICE as to how I want it to behave.

Just do it all for me, and you better guess right as to which choice I'd make or YOU SUCK.

Re:My two cents

[lucas teh geek]

As far as I know...

well look then, im telling you firefox on linux has it edit -> prefernces, which is different to the windows one. this isnt an "As far as I know...", it an "I use both in my daily usage and know for a fact..."

RadialContext

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

my favorite extension is RadialContext, basically gives you mouse gestures for Mozilla and Firefox.

Re:RadialContext

[jadenyk]

Why not use StrokeIt! and have them everywhere?

Re:RadialContext

[Rydain]

I can't speak for the parent poster, but I prefer RadialContext to standard mouse gestures because the pie menu always indicates what you're doing, which makes it easier to learn the gestures and more difficult to accidentally execute the wrong one. Plus, I already learned RadialContext's gesture set, and I'm happy with its functionality, so I don't see the point in learning a different scheme. I should also mention that I run Linux at home, and StrokeIt! isn't exactly helpful in that context. ^_^

Re:RadialContext

[frankthechicken]

Add that to tabbrowser extensions, to get the tabs reacting the way I want(i.e everything in the same browser window, middle mouse click on the tabbar opens an accidently closed tab). And you almost have my perfect browser.

Now if only Sage would accept OPML properly, with the option of organizing all the RSS feeds within a given folder into a newspaper like format(Sort of like how feedDemon works) I would be in heaven.

Re:RadialContext

[Misch]

Umm... RadialContext != mouse gestures. Kinda, sorta, I think. I'm just thinking of Mozgest, the sister project to RadialContext. That's the one with the in-browser mouse gestures. RadialContext is more of a replacement for the context menus.

Re:RadialContext

[Misch]

Yeah, i meant Optimoz...

Re:RadialContext

[mrright]

I also like this very much. But it is not just mouse gestures. It is a radial menu that can be used somewhat like mouse gestures.

But since you get visual feedback it is much easier to memorize the gestures than with "invisible" gestures".

It is hard to describe, so just check it out.

Re:RadialContext

[Anonymous Coward]

Tabbrowser Extensions rocks! I've never used any plugins before until I heard about that one on Slashdot and it's made everything so much better. Undo Close Tab and Duplicate Tab rule!

Corporate Acceptance?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think all this add-ins are fine and dandy for the typical home user, but where are the plug-ins that will improve productivity for the Corporate user?

IE blends easily with M$'s large arsenal of server-side applications, which the execs just to love to see. Easy integration.

What can Mozilla offer that will aid its cause in the enterprise environment. They added Integrated Authentication in v1.6 which was brilliant, but what else?

How about some add-in for policies?

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[millahtime]

Large Corperations with loads of money just seem to go fo M$ software. Doesn't matter how good it is or if it gets the job done they just use it. That is the problem I run into.

There seems to be a lack of knowledge where I work in general about such things and that is the problem.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[spacefight]

Prefbar improves my productivity at work because I can browse certain intranet sites which require IE with the faked user agent set to IE by prefbar. I don't need to switch to IE for browsing that type of site, time is money, productivity improves. Oh shit, there's still slashdot...

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[Azrael Newtype]

The problem with integrated authentication is that it starts shooting out your login credentials to anyone who asks for any credentials, meaning you could potentially be giving people access to your account information. I don't think I need to explain why this can be bad. That said, I'm actually working on a intranet site that uses this exact technology, which is fine and dandy for something only accessible from inside the network that you had to supply credentials to, but still, that doesn't mean that people couldn't do requests and just log credentials invisibly to the user. If security isn't an issue, go right ahead with this insecure auto-verification. If it is...

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[PeterPumpkin]

What can Mozilla offer that will aid its cause in the enterprise environment.

Rapid Application Development with Mozilla ;) You can download the .pdf of the book there.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[Anonymous Coward]

What can Mozilla offer that will aid its cause in the enterprise environment.

A swift kick in the nuts to the C[E|I|T]O. OK, that wouldn't really be helping its cause, but it would make me feel better.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[Threni]

> I think all this add-ins are fine and dandy for the typical home user, but
> where are the plug-ins that will improve productivity for the Corporate user?

I'm a corporate user. I'm posting this on FireFox 0.9 at work, and I used AdBlock and AllInOne (for mouse gestures), as they increase productivity (as does having no down-time due to shoddy, insecure browsers).

> What can Mozilla offer that will aid its cause in the enterprise environment.

Safe Active-X support.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[br0ck]

IE defaults to 'automatic logon only in Intranet zone'. The other options are 'anonymous logon', 'automatic logon with current user name and password', and 'prompt for user name and password'. I can't think of any reason people would change this from the default.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[fermion]

For the sectors of server side applications that MS dominates, there is no room for Moz. If the execs want an MS only solution, then there is no reason to waste time or money trying to give something that isn't. There is little reason not to use IE in a controlled corporate Intranet.

The problem is giving the general public something they can use. Many servers on the Internet are not MS based. Most content on the Internet can be viewed using any reasonable browser. Most people use IE, which is a reasonable browser, becuase it comes with their machine and have been trained to think of it as synomous with the Internet. Therefore firms can code to IE and only risk losing a marginal number of customers.

The problem for Moz is the one site that will not work with Moz. Moz can be modified, but the MS will break it again on the next update. No matter how much we try, we cannot get the average user to run Moz in general and switch to IE for the one important site. That level of abstraction just does not exist for the average person.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[Issue9mm]

"but where are the plug-ins that will improve productivity for the Corporate user?"

Write them. In anticipation of our company's decision to stop using IE (currently in discussion because SP2 breaks the IE Trusted Sites), I wrote an XUL mozilla interface that acts as kind of a google search bar, but for our IT Knowledge Base.

This will prevent the help desk and LAN administrators from having to keep a window open with the knowledge base, as they'll be able to query, search and browse it from their mozilla window no matter what site they're at.

Granted, this might never come to fruition, and was mostly written as incentive to help them migrate from IE, but there's really no reason we all couldn't do the same and sell more companies on Mozilla.

The more corporate-friendly features available, the more corporations will realize it. And with at least a few big names teetering on the edge of continued IE support, now's a better time than ever to push.

-9mm-

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[rjstanford]

Large Corperations with loads of money just seem to go fo M$ software. Doesn't matter how good it is or if it gets the job done they just use it. That is the problem I run into.

The thing is that, for the most part, it does work. Its also extremely well tested and what weaknesses there are are well known and documented. This is one area where the OSS camp has yet to catch up - and I don't mean providing access to a Bugzilla database with 100,000+ known issues, mostly minor. In the business world, predictibility wins out over other areas nine times out of ten.

Heck, even if I know that everything works perfectly but that my server will only stay up for 10 days in a row before performance degrades, if I have a 15 minute reboot window every week then that's fine too. I'd much rather go with a known solution - with workarounds as needed - than an unproven one that may be better. In that situation, a machine that stayed up for the most part but would randomly stop servicing requests once a quarter - while far superior in uptime stats - would be a greatly inferior solution. Its a different mindset.

Of course, this comment is slanted towards enterprise customers.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[millahtime]

Ah, the problem I have seen is that it doesn't work. It drags my job out for hours longer that it needs to be, makes it really boring and I spend more time dealing with crap than actual work.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[bpowell423]

I agree with you for the most part, but to take it one step further... large corporations use MS software because nobody wants to stick their neck out and use anything else, even if it is better or cheaper. The logic seems to be that if you use MS software and it fails, you can bash MS and the management above you will blame MS, too. But, if you use something else like any free/open-source software, then when it fails, the ax falls on you. Management will blame you for the failure, since in their mind you were just cutting corners. I saw this on a project I was working on. I had used MySQL for a project at our facility for a couple of years and it had worked great. Due to the success of the project, corp headquarters decided to try to implement the project at other facilities, but they balked at MySQL and forced me to convert the project to MS SQL. Well... long story short, I now have to keep an eye on MS SQL to make sure it doesn't die, which it's already done several times in 6 months.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[Kraegar]

Is the NTLM Integrated Authentication available for Firefox, either as a plug-in or built in? I've done some searching, and it looks like it's only part of Mozilla...

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[AliasTheRoot]

buy oracle.

had a longer comment but slashdot said it was a bunch of seconds until you can reply and wiped out my post.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[br0ck]

I have no documentation, but for anecdotal evidence, I can log into my company's NTLM only intranet site just fine with Firefox 0.9.1.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[rjstanford]

Ah, the problem I have seen is that it doesn't work. It drags my job out for hours longer that it needs to be, makes it really boring and I spend more time dealing with crap than actual work.

Right, but if the company has a choice between pissing you off and having a solution that, while not perfect, will run an aspect of their business that would cost them hundreds of $k per hour if it went down, or keep a smaller staff of very happy techies and occasionally run into an issue that they hadn't foreseen, guess which one they'll pick? Even if the second option just has a greater risk of running into an unforseen issue. Its not about you, really. Or about Microsoft for that matter. Its about the business, and making a fiscally responsible choice, which invariably means reducing unknowns.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[rjstanford]

I had used MySQL for a project at our facility for a couple of years and it had worked great. Due to the success of the project, corp headquarters decided to try to implement the project at other facilities, but they balked at MySQL and forced me to convert the project to MS SQL

Of course, now look at it from their side, and compare the cost and availability of people who know MS SQL, its strengths and its weaknesses, with those who know MySQL. Both inside and outside of the company. It does seem like they made a poor choice by having you do the conversion if you're not an MS SQL expert (I've had properly configured Sql Server sites running just fine with vast amounts of access, you just need to know what you're doing, just like everything else). But the alternative could have been to have all of the MS guys in the same boat as you, but with improperly running MySQL instances instead. Not saying that they did everything right, or even that it was the right thing to do, but that's where they're coming from.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[buckminster]

Actually the weaknesses are not well known or documented. Particularly with security. There are new issues arising daily -- which would be why CERT recommended that users consider changing browsers.

That's the sort of uncertainty that might make enterprise customers nervous.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[Noksagt]

This is one area where the OSS camp has yet to catch up - and I don't mean providing access to a Bugzilla database with 100,000+ known issues, mostly minor.

Paul Vixie wrote an article in which he point4ed out that It's best to pick "friendly" users are likely to find a lot of defects and that many linux users are so friendly as to be able to suggest fixes.

Unfunded open-source software enjoys the best system-level testing in the industry, unless we include NASA's testing on space-bound robots in our comparison. The reason is simply that users tend to be much friendlier when they aren't being charged any money, and power users (often developers themselves) are much more helpful when they can read, and fix, the source code to something they're running.
The essence of field testing is its lack of rigor. What software engineering is looking for from its field testers is patterns of use which are inherently unpredictable at the time the system is being designed and built--in other words, real world experiences of real users. Unfunded open-source projects are simply unbeatable in this area.
An additional advantage enjoyed by open-source projects is the "peer review" of dozens or hundreds of other programmers looking for bugs by reading the source code rather than just by executing packaged executables. Some of the readers will be looking for security flaws and some of those found will not be reported (other than among other crackers), but this danger does not take away from the overall advantage of having uncounted strangers reading the source code. These strangers can really keep an Open Source developer on his or her toes in a way that no manager or mentor ever could.

He is entirely right & there is PLENTY of stable F/OSS that is also perfectly predictable. Just stay out of the development releases & take your FUD someplace else.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[o1d5ch001]

I have been on both sides of this fence. I have been a manager and the tech building, installing, operating etc. But I think most corporations have it backwards. The train is not:

Technology -> Tech Folks -> Managers

Its: Management -> Technology and Staff

Most managers don't know much about technology, that would be OK, but they don't listen to the people that do. But this is changing
Non-technical managers are being replaced by those who have a clue stick and will beat those managers who don't. In another five years, people who grew up (in the industry) with OpenSource will know how to manage the technology and the people.

Bye Bye non-tech managers!!

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[juhaz]

Built-in since 0.8, at least according to Bugzilla (direct links from slashdot don't work, copypaste and open manually)

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[Anonymous Coward]

> IE defaults to 'automatic logon only in Intranet zone'. The other options are 'anonymous logon', 'automatic logon with current user name and password', and 'prompt for user name and password'. I can't think of any reason people would change this from the default.

Serious question: From the perspective of a UNIX admin and occasional Windows user, what does "logon" possibly mean in this context? Is "automatic logon" some sort of IE/Exchange/BackOffice thing for people whose CIO drank the Billygates kool-aid?

Rant: Why change from the default? How about "Don't fucking broadcast whatever these 'credentials' are, anywhere, under any circumstances" because there are so many cross-domain exploits that even if I was in a shop that used an internal application that uses whatever the hell these 'credentials' are, odds are that I'm still going to regret it?

Sorry for the rant -- I just did an XP install on a new box for the first time in a long time. My rule of thumb for IE still has to be "If you can't figure out what the feature's used for, assume it's something bolted on to protect the monopoly, and that only all-Microsoft shops will ever have a use for it. Further assume that someday, someone will write an exploit for it, and you'll get own3d if you don't shut it off."

I don't mind seeing MS put things into the product to protect the monopoly / extend functionality in all-Microsoft environments. Just let me know what they are so I can know that I can turn them off and stop worrying about 'em. Other than worm authors, did anybody ever use RPC/DCOM?

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[slashjames]

In the 80s, the quote was "Nobody got fired for buying IBM." Currently, the quote is "Nobody got fired for buying Microsoft."

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[Kraegar]

Hmmm.
That makes me wonder where the settings to configure it are. When I go to our company's sharepoint page with Firefox I get prompted for a login. When I go with IE and have the Integrated Authentication enabled (tools->Internet options->advanced->Enable Integrated Windows Authentication) I do not get prompted for a login.

Or perhaps they're referring to something slightly different then what I'm trying to do.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, who can predict when the next worm/virus epidemic will hit the windows world and how bad it will actually be, and how much damage it will do, and how much it will cost to deal with the damage?

Predictibility, isn't this what they say ISO 9000 is all about?

Do you really have that predictibility in the windows world though?

A Nony Mouse

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[swillden]

Hang on here, you're doing a bait and switch on us.

You start out by saying that MS software is "well-tested and what weaknesses there are are well-known and documented" and say that this isn't true for OSS. Then you go on to give an example of an MS system that fails in a way that is deterministic and can be worked around, but in a way that would *not* be documented or known without experience and/or testing.

In other words, you're characterizing simple inertia (sticking with what you already know) as superior predictability. While it's certainly true that what you know is more predictable than what you don't, it's hardly an inherent disadvantage of F/LOSS; spend a few months using or testing the F/LOSS solution (just as you did the MS solution), and then it too will be predictable!

Now, I don't mean to denigrate sticking with what's known to work; nobody with half a brain changes what's working just for the sake of change. But there *are* problems with MS software, e.g. licensing costs and terms, reliability, poor support and security. At some point, the cost of staying with what you know may exceed the cost of building and testing a less-problematic replacement, and that's when it makes sense to fight inertia. It's hard to know when or if that point has been reached, but that's why you get the big bucks, right?

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[modme2]

it's easy for a manager to go to a microsoft conference and be seduced by the salespeople. to implement a linux solution they have to have some knowledge and do some deeper research. the local LUG just isn't the same as a glitzy corporate MS presentation.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[cyfer2000]

IE blends easily with M$'s large arsenal of server-side applications, which the execs just to love to see. Easy integration. Do you mean ActiveX? If Mozilla adopt ActiveX, I will give up it immediately.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just got out of my Public Speaking class in which I had to give a persuasive speech.

Topic? "Don't use IE, use Mozilla instead."

In less than 8 minutes I had the class (and instructor) terrified and clamoring for a free CD of Mozilla 1.7.

If I can do it in 8 minutes, with only a day's preparation, surely you can do it over time.

Explain the problem (identify the need), cite credible sources like CERT, have a plan of action (satisfaction), and call them to immediate action.

Cure the ignorance.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[plugger]

How very true. Any time an application crashes on Windows, I'll merrily press the 'Report this' button, just to give MS some more irrelevant crap. We are expected to give them free bug reports, and pay for the privilige.

I just put on my 'dummy mode' hat, and press the button like it says. All the better if the bug has nothing to do with them :-)

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Get the "Checky" plugin, it will allow you to verify your webpage against various standards (CSS, HTML, etc)

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[einhverfr]

The thing is that, for the most part, it does work. Its also extremely well tested and what weaknesses there are are well known and documented. This is one area where the OSS camp has yet to catch up - and I don't mean providing access to a Bugzilla database with 100,000+ known issues, mostly minor. In the business world, predictibility wins out over other areas nine times out of ten.

As an MCSE and a former Microsoftie, I wholehartedly disagree.

You never too the NT4 Server in the Enterprise Exam did you? The whole exam was, I think, the result of marketeers deciding that NT could be used for more than it was really designed for and then they listed clever hacks to make it work in just about any situation.

The fact of the matter is that Microsoft's approach here has been on where tedious workarounds which create systems with extremely complex failure scenarios are more important than saying "Our product isn't ready for this market. But we will have one soon." This is a serious problem which Windows Server 2000 and 2003 only begin to approach (to my knowledge Server 2003 still does not have a seemless way of joining two pre-existing domains with transitive trusts. You can do this with MIT Kerberos, of course). This, of course makes it hell for corporate mergers. But does MS say so? Nope. You have to get this information from places like the NSA....

And SFU is still shipping with a plain-text-based telnet. Where do they document that using this for remote administration is a bad idea? The least they could do would be to integrate it with Kerberos for both authentication and encryption or go to OpenSSH (they are packaging the GCC with SFU anyway).

Finally, I do agree with you on one point. Most businesses currently want to base their IT infrastructure on commercial products, such as those of Microsoft, Red Hat, etc. where they have a single vendor to contact if there is a problem and a single second set of eyes. BUT this does not preclude open source software being used in many environments. And Red Hat wouldn't be doing as well as they are if software could not be both commercial and open source at the same time.

Personally I think that things are going to change. Probably they will start to change in the small to midsize market first, and as these businesses grow, they will probably take these with them. Open source is a powerful set of technologies, but it requires a vast organizational shift for businesses to use it to its full potential. So people will not start running their businesses off the latest Freshmeat releases until they have the internal infrasturcture to do this.

Interestingly, the ISPs as a general market tend to be out in the forefront of using non-commercial open source software.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[einhverfr]

Nah--- Go to CommandPrompt.com and get Mammoth PostgreSQL. It is based on open source, but it is commercial and so you can please both sides of the debate.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[rjstanford]

In other words, you're characterizing simple inertia (sticking with what you already know) as superior predictability. While it's certainly true that what you know is more predictable than what you don't, it's hardly an inherent disadvantage of F/LOSS; spend a few months using or testing the F/LOSS solution (just as you did the MS solution), and then it too will be predictable!

Actually, my point was that the sheer volume of testing that occurs around some closed-source products - MSFT, ORCL, etc - does tend to come up with some very predictible recipies. Not that we aren't getting to the point on some OSS that we can say the same thing, but the original post was more along the lines of "Why wouldn't you move to something new?"

For example, there've been several times when I've been using something like MySQL where I run into an issue and find out through digging that a few other people have seen it to, even that there's a bug report out for it. With DB2/Oracle/IFX, I can pull down tons of "Best Practices" documentation where people have said, "If you do this, it works thusly." Not saying that it works better, but that there are well-trodden paths that are very well tested. In the enterprise, there's not much OSS that's had the same level of thoroughness added to it.

There are some - the kernel, apache, perl, etc - that are very well known and predictible. Others are less so. This is in part because this kind of predictibility hasn't been a real concern for many projects. Fixing a serious (but well known) bug and causing a random-seeming glitch elsewhere is considered to be a Good Thing for home-user type software, but a bad one for enterprise software. Its a completely different mindset.

I do agree with many of your points by the way - and I use and enjoy OSS where its appropriate. But its far from a silver bullet.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[einhverfr]

The problem for Moz is the one site that will not work with Moz. Moz can be modified, but the MS will break it again on the next update. No matter how much we try, we cannot get the average user to run Moz in general and switch to IE for the one important site. That level of abstraction just does not exist for the average person.

It is not MS that breaks the sites. It is the web developers who feel that they only need to code for IE and can safely block all other browsers.

I will give you a very rediculous example. I live in Washington State, and the government has a web page which allows you to apply for a business license online. The web page rejects all users not using Internet Explorer 4.0 or above, or Netscape 4.0 or above. Nope. Mozilla does not work here becuase it was arbitrarily excluded. So I have to maintain a copy of Netscape just to use this site!

Don't you just love the "Mozilla is not a supported browser... Use Netscape instead" comments?

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[grandbonheur]

Eh? I don't find Mozilla/Firefox to have a slower startup than any other browser I've tried (IE, Safari, Opera). Am I missing something?

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[Anonymous Coward]

had a longer comment but slashdot said it was a bunch of seconds until you can reply and wiped out my post.

In Firefox, clicking on back takes you (back) to the post comment form... with your text in the textarea.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[einhverfr]

Actually, my point was that the sheer volume of testing that occurs around some closed-source products - MSFT, ORCL, etc - does tend to come up with some very predictible recipies. Not that we aren't getting to the point on some OSS that we can say the same thing, but the original post was more along the lines of "Why wouldn't you move to something new?"

I still disagree. Case in point: Not too long ago, GDM was starting up really slowly on my laptop. The system would hang for 10 seconds or so when this would happen. Like a good former Windows user, I presumed the probmem was software. I did my diagnostics, determined that the mouse detection was causing the hang, and tried upgrading both the kernel and X to fix the problem. THis was over a dial-up.

Eventually the backlight also died, and the both problems were resolved by.... replacing the motherboard.

Second case in point: After upgrading to RedHat 8 on my parents' computer, the modem started running really slowly (14k on good days). I tried everything with the software and eventually gave up. Replacing the modem fixed the problem.

In general, I have found a basic linux operating environment to be so predictable that when something goes wrong, it is almost always the HARDWARE. Microsoft can not match this level of predictability in any way. You do have a point that this level of predictability does not extend to all the applications running on the environment, however.


For example, there've been several times when I've been using something like MySQL where I run into an issue and find out through digging that a few other people have seen it to, even that there's a bug report out for it.

I agree. I never use MySQL. Use Firebird (and the Interbase docs) or PostgreSQL instead. Much better enterprise-level docs and much better predictability. Well... MySQL is predictable, but not always in the best way (i.e. it will happily truncate numbers for you).

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[Corrado]

I get the same thing. I think this is the desired behaviour. Mozilla/Firefox treats NTLM just like any other authentication scheme and prompts you for UserID/Password. I don't think it was ever designed to be single sign on like IE, it just lets you authenticate to NTLM based sites.

SSO might be a pretty cool option though. :)

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[swillden]

For example, there've been several times when I've been using something like MySQL where I run into an issue and find out through digging that a few other people have seen it to, even that there's a bug report out for it. With DB2/Oracle/IFX, I can pull down tons of "Best Practices" documentation where people have said, "If you do this, it works thusly." Not saying that it works better, but that there are well-trodden paths that are very well tested. In the enterprise, there's not much OSS that's had the same level of thoroughness added to it.

OTOH, I can quote examples that are the reverse. Problems I've run into with Websphere that there is no information on, Googlable or otherwise, whereas with JBoss you can look up the bug database, or google the mailing lists and find plenty of information.

For another example, perhaps the canonical example, consider Apache vs IIS.

Again, I don't think this is a strength of commercial, closed software or a weakness of F/LOSS, or vice versa, frankly. It's just a matter of maturity and, to a large extent, how many other enterprises are using the product. Your example was a rather bad one, actually, because no one with a clue would consider MySQL to be in any way comparable to DB/2 or Oracle for large-scale use. Not yet and not for some time to come.

I may be reading you wrong, but my impression is that you were saying that commercial enterprise software is better-documented and better-understood in general *because* it's commercial and commercial organizations can provide a level of "thoroughness" that F/LOSS doesn't. I disagree. I think mature F/LOSS projects typically have far more information available, although it may not be packaged quite as neatly (mailing list archives vs. formal best practices documents). In addition, most major F/LOSS software packages have commercial organizations supporting them that also provide nice best practices documents, so you really get that as well, though you may have to pay for it.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[ckaminski]

Want to give us a transcript of that speech? :-D

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[ad0gg]

MS SQL. Well... long story short, I now have to keep an eye on MS SQL to make sure it doesn't die, which it's already done several times in 6 months.

I call FUD. I've seem MS SQL deployed in extreme conditions(Telecom routing database) and never die. Same goes with Oracle which powers our Sonus PSX(Another telcom routing DB). There's reason why people pay 100s of thousand dollars for licenses for MS SQL or Oracle. They don't crash. Plain and simple. 4 Years, 20+ SQL servers, not one crash. Our 2 Sonus PSXs(oracle) are only 6 months old but haven't crashed.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[Kraegar]

If you're prompted for a login / password, then it's not NTLM Integrated Authentication. NTLM Integration is Single Sign On - it passes your domain credentials to sites within your local zone that request authentication.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[ryancammer]

There are any of numerous reasons that headquarters may have "forced" you to convert the project to SQL Server:

• Dynamic backups can be performed without taking the product off-line;
• SQL Server supports referential integrity checks, which MySQL can't do without InnoDB;
  
• SQL Server has supported stored procedures, allowing for n-tier design, while MySQL just recently began supporting them;
• True atomic transactions;
• SQL Server has a long history of enterprise acceptance and use, ranging from NASDAQ to Match.com,

among others.

I don't know what the project requirements are for your particular project, and I'm not saying that MySQL is a bad product. However, it is NOT a good foundation for an enterprise-level project. There are other "manly" databases available, such as PostgreSQL, Oracle 8/9/10, or db2, among others.

If you're running an updated version of Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server 2003, and SQL Server is crashing, then I'd suggest that you check your hardware to determine whether or not there's a physical problem that's causing your crashes.

Finally, you should look at what you, the programmer, are doing to introduce instability into your code base. Whatever it is, I wish you luck in finding the problem.

Ryan Cammer

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[rjstanford]

I may be reading you wrong, but my impression is that you were saying that commercial enterprise software is better-documented and better-understood in general *because* it's commercial and commercial organizations can provide a level of "thoroughness" that F/LOSS doesn't. I disagree. I think mature F/LOSS projects typically have far more information available, although it may not be packaged quite as neatly (mailing list archives vs. formal best practices documents).

I'd say its about the same, although part of what I like are things like best practices documents (and while there are some good OSS examples, a lot of more recent docs - a la the ORA series - leave a lot to be desired... lots of help for people in months 2..6 of an adoption, but not much targeted at the enterprise or the true novice).

Its more about overall system maturity. JBoss is a good example of a mature, well-documented OSS product. Apache would be another one. I don't think that anyone would seriously suggest using something like Mono in an enterprise-level project at this point though, just because there'd be too much risk of being the first team to find things out about it if you know what I mean.

The MySQL example was in a side-response (don't remember if it was in the direct thread or just close) to someone talking about moving from MySQL which they understood, to Sql Server (which they didn't) and having problems. Sql Server has its share of issues, but they're very well known and worked around by those who use it on a regular basis - or by those willing to do a little research by reading easy-to-find documentation. Note: I'm not a Sql Server fan, just continuing the conversation.

As for the bugs/mailing-lists - I guess the point that I was trying to make is that I don't want to be getting into those situations in the first place. Its good to be able to do the research, but better to have followed a best-practices type guide and never needed it, because hundreds of people have used the product in the same way that you're using it. Which is often the case for the larger closed-source products (from vendors like ORCL, MSFT, etc). And the larger open-source ones too, but there aren't (yet) as many of those targeted at the same issues.

Someone else on the thread brought up the problem of integrating two disparate Windows 2003 Active Directory installations when two companies merge. I know nothing about this, but I would have to guess that there are people out there who've done it before, and can give you a recipie (or at least a decent consultant with good references). On similar issues with smaller market-share projects, even if you can talk to the developer, there's no guarantee that anyone has had the same issue that you're experiencing. Sure, with the larger products there's no guarantee either, but its a much stronger probability.

Again, I have no problem with OSS challenging the big closed guys, but my original point was that going with a large industry standard solution - regardless of the source license - brings with it a lot of additional benefits in the areas of predictibility vs. going with a quickly-evolving OSS-dev-style application.

It's just a matter of maturity and, to a large extent, how many other enterprises are using the product.

Absolutely agreed. And for better or for worse, when a lot of people are using MSFT products, that's a lot of eyeballs - at least on their behavior. They may not be reading the source code, but then again neither are the vast majority of OSS users these days. And from an end-user/admins point of view, I'm more concerned about known, repeatable behaviors than "perfect" behaviors.

At least for my day job. Hobbies are another matter entirely, for which I say bring on the lightly tested new releases! But that doesn't help to discuss why more businesses aren't jumping to emerging software for their enterprise apps.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[rjstanford]

BTW, thanks for the civilized discussion - its sufficiently rare enough on /. to have a such a thing that its worth pointing out, IMO.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[lewko]

Any idea why Bugzilla blocked direct links from Slashdot?

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[Threni]

> had a longer comment but slashdot said it was a bunch of seconds until you can
> reply and wiped out my post.

Couldn't you just have waited 2 mins then clicked `post` again? Firefox doesn't clear the textbox in those situations, although IE did last time I used it.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[Threni]

> forced me to convert the project to MS SQL.

Perhaps they wanted to use triggers or stored procedures?

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[AliasTheRoot]

wierd, i'm using firefox 0.9.1 or whatever is current on FreeBSD

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[juhaz]

AFAIK, Bugzilla was Slashdotted once before (looks like they tried again yesterday with shell: story), and since it's a very heavy database site, it was unusable for several days, at which point someone decided to feed those pesky slashdotters just a lightweight static page so folks that actually need it could get back to using it.

Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[Slime-dogg]

I think that the decision is based more on "What can I spend money on?" and "Who can I blame or call if this goes down?" Companies don't care what you think, nor do they have an increased understanding of what runs what better. Execs make the money decisions based on what the IT people present, but they have a hard time conceiving that anything that is free is good. They also have a hard time going with a solution that has a support base of newsgroups and IRC channels. They would much rather call a number and speak to a support person that has a heavy Indian accent. Not only that, but they see value in the support if they have to spend money on it.

The only way that companies will go away from this mindset is if humongo businesses decide to go with the "free" solution instead of the "pay for." Huge bodies like IBM are now pushing Linux, but have only been hot on that for a couple of years. It'll be a while more before everyone decides that free software is more valuable than pay-for software, and that it's a whole lot easier to read through archives of newsgroups and IRC logs for help than it is trying to decipher that thick Indian accent.

mozilla lacking features

[shackma2]

The Wired article calls Mozilla stripped dows and lacking features, but isn't that the point of Mozilla, to be faster by getting rid of the bells and whistles?

Re:mozilla lacking features

[paul.dunne]

Yes. What's your point?

Re:mozilla lacking features

[lambent]

No, that's the point of firefox.

Mozilla has a ton of features, especially when you install the entire suite of applications (chat, e-mail, etc).

Re:mozilla lacking features

[amliebsch]

That's the point of FireFox. Think of it this way: Mozilla gives you the whole package, whether you want/need it or not. Firefox gives you the bare-bones essentials, then lets you add only what you need/want, ala carte. Analogize with Linux distros. The only weak point is that many people don't realize that they need/want a certain feature until they use it by accident and fall in love with it.

Re:mozilla lacking features

[der_joachim]

Does IE have tabbed browsing? Does it have a good interface for blocking cookies? Does it have a transparent extension interface? No.

When the author says that either Mozilla or Firefox are slim and/or lacking features, he is clearly talking out of his arse.

der Joachim

Re:mozilla lacking features

[Anonymous Coward]

> Does IE have tabbed browsing?

Numerous addons have tabs for IE, including MS's own help viewer thing.

> Does it have a good interface for blocking cookies?

Yes, better than Mozilla's.

> Does it have a transparent extension interface?

Yes -- Maybe a little *too* transparent. A kajillion google toolbar users can't be wrong.

There's tons of reasons to flame IE, so at least try to get your facts right.

Re:mozilla lacking features

[jonadab]

> The Wired article calls Mozilla stripped dows and lacking features

Which is just wrong. Mozilla (the Seamonkey suite, I mean) has a *lot* more
features than IE or Firefox. (With Firefox, you can get many of those features
back, plus a few others, but you have to install a gob of extensions to do it.
This wouldn't bug me so much if I could go down a checklist and just turn on
the ones I want, hit one button, and have them be automatically installed next
time I restart the browser, and the next time I install an upgrade it would
remember that preference and install all the same ones automatically.)

The list of features that Mozilla has that IE doesn't have is lengthy in the
extreme, including some relatively major things like tabbed browsing, the DOM
inspector (which is *vital* for web developers), and alphachannel transparency.
The guy who called it "stripped down" is the same guy who said "now, finally"
when talking about the googlebar, which is several years old -- the article
was obviously written by a journalist who didn't really know the subject well.

Re:mozilla lacking features

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

Think of it this way: Mozilla gives you the whole package, whether you want/need it or not.

I know you're right and I see your point, but you're not terribly accurate.

Mozilla gives you the OPTION to install all that stuff. The Mozilla installer is a "Wizard" that you SELECT what you want installed. Personally:

emerge -pv mozilla
These are the packages that I would merge, in order:
Calculating dependencies ...done!
[ebuild R ] net-www/mozilla-1.6-r1 +crypt -debug -debug -gnome +gtk2 -ipv6 +java -ldap -mozaccess -mozcalendar +moznocompose +moznoirc -moznomail -moznoxft -mozxmlterm +ssl -xinerama 0 kB

Here in the source world, we have all thoes options too.

I know I'm being a bit picky about one or two choice words, but the oversights in your posting change the whole idea of what you were trying to say.

Re:mozilla lacking features

[Alexis de Torquemada]

>> Does it have a good interface for blocking cookies?

> Yes, better than Mozilla's.

What exactly do you think it's better at?

Re:mozilla lacking features

[XemonerdX]

> > Does it have a transparent extension interface?
> Yes -- Maybe a little *too* transparent. A kajillion google toolbar users can't be wrong.

So 1 Google bar for IE against 100+ extensions for Moz/FF means the extension interface of IE is more transparent than that of Moz/FF?

Re:mozilla lacking features

[Anonymous Coward]

Works on the domain level rather than the server level (eg example.com versus example.com AND www.example.com), doesn't prompt you for each individual cookie.

Re:mozilla lacking features

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be dense. There's thousands of IE addins out there.

Tabextension

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one cannot live without the tabextension plugin. It really enhances the Firefox interface.
Mainly because I don't like to have lots of new windows popping up all the time filling up my desktops.

Don't forget about tabbrowser extensions!

[Anonymous Coward]

Tabbrowser extensions is a wet dream for those of us who like tabs!

Oh, also, adblock and flashblock are great tools!

magpie

[Anonymous Coward]

Magpie also includes tools for adjusting a site's URL by incrementing or decrementing the numbers in it ... This is a good extension for those who do a lot of research online.

Yup. I find this priceless while "researching" the webs many sequentially numbered jpegs.

Especially as I can now do it one-handed.

Re:magpie

[tomknight]

Heh....

You also get this with Opera, just hit "Fast Forward", or the space bar, or use the right mouse gesture and you're away. Not that I'd know about this in your particular sceanario, of course ;-)

Tom.

Re:magpie

[Alranor]

Also useful for those onehanded browsing sessions are

Linky

Extension is a very simple addon to the context menu that provide you with the following:

* Opens all links in a selection in new tabs or windows
* Finds and opens link in plain text in a new tab or window
* Opens all links on page in new tabs or windows, etc.

and

JumpLink

The Jumplink extension allows you to skip through redirect links and jump directly to the target link

Why do I get the feeling the Slashdot community may find these of some assistance ;)

Re:magpie

[wfberg]

Magpie also includes tools for adjusting a site's URL by incrementing or decrementing the numbers in it ... This is a good extension for those who do a lot of research online.

Yup. I find this priceless while "researching" the webs many sequentially numbered jpegs.

If you're stuck browsing sequentially numbered jpegs at work using internet explorer (or you just don't use extensions), you can also use Jesse's bookmarklets.
Just drag them to your bookmark bar!

Re:magpie

[Hal-9001]

If you're stuck browsing sequentially numbered jpegs at work...

I'm pretty sure that the sequentially-number JPEGs that he's browsing one-handed are NOT work-safe!

Re:magpie

[Issue9mm]

Linky looks nice, but seems more complicated than spiderzilla (too lazy to find the link right now, but it's on the mozdev active projects page). SpiderZilla works exactly how I like it. Tools->Download this site, and it presents you with something very similar to a GUI interface to WGET, with (seemingly) all of the available options present.

-9mm-

Re:magpie

[CherryCokeMan]

Magpie also includes tools for adjusting a site's URL by incrementing or decrementing the numbers in it ... This is a good extension for those who do a lot of research online.

Yup. I find this priceless while "researching" the webs many sequentially numbered jpegs.

I originally downloaded magpie, because I was interested in an extention that could download images from a website in bulk automatically (rather than right-clicking-and-Save-As-ing everyone). For some reason, I never got this feature to work, hopefully it will be fixed in a later version (haven't tested it in a month or two).

Although I probably wasn't interested it for the same reasons you were :)....

Re:magpie

[Anonymous Coward]

The only problem is I absolutely cannot get it to work with Firefox on Linux (using Firefox from Debian testing). Very depressing. Same with spiderzilla.

I tried istalling it as root, but it would only work with root, and it somehow managed to fuck up all the user's mozilla sessions. Any Moz variant wouldn't start at all.

Re:magpie

[doj8]

1. Magpie also includes tools for adjusting a site's URL by incrementing or decrementing the numbers in it ... This is a good extension for those who do a lot of research online.

Yup. I find this priceless while "researching" the webs many sequentially numbered jpegs.

In all seriousness, there are a number of other types of sites which maintain inventory or articles in sequentially numbered designs. In those cases it can be nice to to walk through inventory or other pages sequentially. For example, (an antique weapons dealer site, Joe Salter) has sequentially numbered items, but no way to browse through them except by category and then clicking on each item, back and forth. There are other sites I've visited where Magpie would be handy too.

Disclaimer: Yes, my company did design the JoeSalter site. That's why it came to mind when I was thinking of an example. We have no financial involvement in the site.

Re:magpie

[jesser]

How do you decrement a URL in Opera? Shift+space? Rewind?

Re:magpie

[Hatta]

There are a bunch more useful extensions and bookmarklets at the Pornzilla page.

Re:magpie

[IpalindromeI]

Backspace or Rewind

What? No Adblock?

[FeetOfStinky]

I can't believe Adblock isn't listed. It even works with Firefox 0.9, despite rumblings I've heard to the contrary.

Re:What? No Adblock?

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

Why would a site that uses adverts, and is owned by a company that makes money off web adverts, tell you how to avoid them?

Re:What? No Adblock?

[jfengel]

I don't use Adblock because I'm perfectly content to let the ads be there, as long as they're not too intrusive. It's my minimal way of paying for sites (like Slashdot) that use advertising to support a service I really like.

Mind you, I don't have Flash loaded, and I have moving gifs set to repeat only once (a spiffy extension called Things They Left Out). So the ads aren't nearly as intrusive as they might be.

I'd even click through an ad, if it were well done (I don't want to reward obnoxious ads) and it were something I was looking for. Google ads sometimes fall into that category (especially since they're text-only).

I dunno if sites can detect users who aren't downloading the ads, but I suspect they can get a rough count by looking at their logs (and seeing how many page views don't match up with ad downloads). If that drives down the price of ads, which then drives the sites out of business, I'd be unhappy.

Re:What? No Adblock?

[fracex]

I agree, because of it I don't have to look at all those Microsoft ads on slashdot.

Run without compiling - blessing or curse?

[SpooForBrains]

Most people who switch to Mozilla or Mozilla's Firefox browser quickly notice that the browser is pretty bare

Hmm, yes? What about all the extra stuff needed to make Firefox run without compiling? Makes it a whole lot heftier than it needs to be.

missing adblock

[fireduck]

any article about firefox that doesn't mention adblock and the best filters to use is seriously lacking.

Re:missing adblock

[YaRness]

i think you'll find few sites that depend on ad revenue are going to recommend ways to block ads.

Re:missing adblock

[_Sprocket_]

i think you'll find few sites that depend on ad revenue are going to recommend ways to block ads.

Slashdot wouldn't be too bad off suggesting Adblock. It's user base is technically savvy and well aware of various methods to block ads. However, Adblock might end up being a better method.

Before using Adblock, I used privoxy. The default config wiped out all ads. The thing is, I don't mind ads per se. But I despise Flash banners, stupid java tricks, tracking cookies, etc. So instead of taking time to block only the offending ads, they all suffered.

Now I use adaware and only remove the small subset of ads that I find annoying. Most ad banners make it to my browser unmolested. And that includes the majority of Slashdot ads.

Re:missing adblock

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't use anybody else's filters, as I support people who try and make money through advertising on the web. But I still use Adblock.

The reason is that I feel some adverts are legitimate (textual or static ads) and some adverts are designed to get in the way of you and the content (flashing, moving, click-through or just plain "in the way").

When I come across adverts that get in the way, I use adblock to block them and anything that has a similar URL.

And yes, I have bought things from clicking through adverts. But I refuse to do so when they are being obnoxious.

I see this behaviour as rewarding sensible advertising practices and punishing obnoxious advertising practices. It's just, as far as I know, I can't rely on other peoples block lists to make similar distinctions.

Re:missing adblock

[AKnightCowboy]

Now I use adaware and only remove the small subset of ads that I find annoying. Most ad banners make it to my browser unmolested. And that includes the majority of Slashdot ads.

I agree. The trouble with most ads is that they are TOO annoying. Anything that flashes rapidly is instantly going to get the boot via adblock. WTF are they thinking using seizure-inducing banner ads on some of these pages? Idiots. If they had just put a simple static banner ad up I very likely would have looked at it as I'm browsing the page, but the minute you animate it, make it flash, turn it into a Flash ad, etc. then the game is up. I will go out of my way to download adblock on a new Mozilla/Firefox install and use it to block ads before I continue web browsing. I hope whoever invented animated GIFs spends eternity in a lake of fire.

Re:missing adblock

[funklord9]

I used those filters for a while, but I found them too far-reaching. For example, using those filters, some of the content from The Onion and LiveJournal get blocked.

Mouse Gestures

[southpolesammy]

By far, I find the mouse gestures extension to be the greatest addition to Mozilla. This borrowed feature of Opera will certainly and permanently change the way you browse websites.

Re:Mouse Gestures

[bheerssen]

Not me, nope. Personally, I can't stand mouse gestures. You see, I use the context menu for just about everything and mouse gestures have a way of interfering with that. Right click, move down and to the right and click on a menu item and the browser does something strange because it thinks I'm trying to gesture. Very frustrating.

On the other hand, it is pretty neat tech and I can definitely see why so many people like it.

Re:Mouse Gestures

[AnyNoMouse]

Admittedly, I use Opera on Windows and Redhat and not Firefox, but when I right-click to select a menu, I don't keep holding down on the right mouse button.

In other words:
Close gesture in opera = right-click-hold / move down and right / right-click-release
Menu selection = right-click and release / move down and right to menu item / left-click
I'd imagine that it would work the same in FireFox.

Re:Mouse Gestures

[Soul-Burn666]

That's because you set the gesture button RightClick instead of MiddleClick.

MiddleButton, on page is useful only for "open link in tab", I have the mouse gestures bound to middle button.

RightMenu = ContextMenu is naturally mapped to the RadialContext PieMenu.

Re:Mouse Gestures

[Anonymous Coward]

Mouse gestures rock..

However, on windows, there's a nice "general" solution: strokeit (that sounds bad, I know)

It allows you to easily send keystrokes, mouse clicks ... etc., to various windows, depending on what window had focus when you started the gesture. It works very well. It's also free, and supports a plugin architecture. It comes preconfigured with a bunch of gesture shortcuts, too.

Re:Mouse Gestures

[MrNemesis]

It's a bit "Me, too!", but I can't live without mouse gestures any more. I've been using Opera (paid for it for both Linux and Windows too) since version 5, and not being able to use gestures whilst browsing the web makes it almost unuseable. Although Opera is my browser of choice, I keep a copy of firefox on my USB key with all the plugins I use added, which makes browsing bearable on clients computers.

Incidentally, there is a little app called StrokeIt that will let you use mouse gestures on a win32 desktop. I stopped using it because it conflicts with my opera gestures (perhaps you can disable it working in certain apps? Never bothered to try, eeep!), but it might be fun for you to try out.

http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/

Re:Mouse Gestures

[chgros]

I used to think the same, until I tried RadialContext,
which is basically adding a menu to those gestures (so you can still do the more obscure ones). See previous thread.

My personal favourite...

[Masa]

...is Enigmail. A GPG/PGP plug-in for Mozilla. It integrates GnuPG commandline tools seamlessly into the browser. It's easiest to use encryption/signing tool I've seen so far.

Re:My personal favourite...

[rasjani]

Into the browser ? Dont you mean into the email application Thunderbird ...

Re:My personal favourite...

[Masa]

Dont you mean into the email application Thunderbird ...

Yes, but it IS a Mozilla plug-in (Mozilla e-mail client is not same as Thunderbird, difference being same as with Mozilla and Firefox). It's the only thing I install after installing Mozilla, because it's important for me. And that's why I thought it would be worth mentioning.

I don't get it

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

They make installing plugins easy but installing the program itself on linux requires compliation. The windows version has an installer exe, so where's the linux rpm? They won't get many *nix newbies with this attitude. I want off Konquerer!!

Re:I don't get it

[rokzy]

er, last 10 or 20 times I installed it on linux all I had to do was unzip and run.

Re:I don't get it

[Xerotope]

I don't know, installing it was pretty easy on my Debian box. I just typed "apt-get install mozilla-firefox". Piece of cake really.

Re:I don't get it

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I tried that as well, but yum is on the blink. I just found it unfortunate that mozilla only give linux users a source file, just assumming that everyone wants to compile their apps.

Sometimes I just want a nice dependancy free rpm please.

Re:I don't get it

[BrokenHalo]

I was going to moderate on this topic, but since a couple of people have mentioned the business of installers, I'll forego that and set the issue straight (or at least definitively crooked).

Firefox for linux (with gtk+ and xft) comes with an installer. Just extract the tarball and run firefox-installer in the extracted directory and it will behave essentially the same as any winbloze installer. If you want an rpm, I'm sure google will find one if you're that desperate.

Re:I don't get it

[blkwolf]

The default install is a self contained binary. All you have to do is untar/gzip and run firefox from the new firefox directory.

Personally I just untar into /opt/firefox and create a link in my window manager. When I want to upgrade or try a different version, wipe out the directory and untar a new one.

Also the reason Mozilla does it this way, is it makes it super easy for any of the distro's to create an install package for it. They dont even have to compile the app if they dont want. So if your really missing that rpm to install, complain to your distro for not releasing one yet.

Re:I don't get it

[Misch]

What you talkin' 'bout, Willis?

Have a linux version... with an installer.

Or a binary version... already pre-built.

Re:I don't get it

[Builder]

You know the fragmentation fear that most big companies have with regards to Linux ? You know how the community is always explaining that this just can't possibly happen? Well guess what...

Fragmentation is the reason that most teams don't put out RPM's for their projects. This non-existant, mythical condition that can't possibly exist :)

Basically, each distro will be ever so slightly different. You can't depend on functionality being supplied by specific RPM's, you can't depend on files being in specific locations, you can't depend on kernel versions being the same or compatible.

So it's just easier to put the source out there, and let the distro managers deal with it.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is wanting to be consistent with all the other software in distribution you're using "desperate"?

Nevertheless, I agree, Mozilla can't support all the zillion different package management types by themselves, should they have a .deb too? apt-repository? ebuild? autopackage? RPM for both SuSE and RH derivatives with different directory paths, etc etc. Packaging is best left to other folks.

Re:I don't get it

[Greg W.]

They make installing plugins easy but installing the program itself on linux requires compliation.

Uh... not on i386, it surely doesn't. Not even in those lesser distributions. (And of course, in Debian, you just type apt-get install mozilla-firefox and voila -- even on non-i386 architectures.)

so where's the linux rpm?

Oh. Did I say lesser distributions? Err, I meant, uh, more traditional distributions. Yeah, that's it....

All-in-One Gestures

[tmhsiao]

I loves me some All-in-One Gestures. There's a big list of configurable actions you can take with gestures, not the least of which is "Open selection in new window" for when people don't link URLs in web forums.

Re:All-in-One Gestures

[Anonymous Coward]

I like "hide flash", "reload from network" and "halve/double image size"... it also fixes my middle mouse scrolling issues, and you can configure it to scroll through tabs too.

Re:All-in-One Gestures

[Anonymous Commando]

Alternate "open selection in new window" that doesn't require waving your mouse around like a Harry Potter wannabe is Super Drag & Go - highlight an url, drag it anywhere on the page and drop it to open it in a new window. Also works with links, images, etc. Extremely handy.

The best of the bunch...

[Jugalator]

... is in my opinion Adblock. I really like the full regular expression support!

But of course she didn't mention that one, since it would be too efficient against Wired News' own ads. :-)

Disabling my Adblock showed ads on their page at least.

Re:The best of the bunch...

[KjetilK]

Indeed! I think many distros should ship AdBlock enabled by default, with a nice little list of ad servers to block. I think may people would find this a killer app!

Why no adblock?

[Anonymous Coward]

No mention of adblock conveniently since Wired lives or dies by ads. Also note that adblock has been removed from Mozilla Update also likely due to pressure from web devs concerned about loss of revenue.

Re:Why no adblock?

[seasleepy]

Er.... You mean this Adblock? The one that's currently the second highest rated extension for Firefox on Mozilla Update?

W0t?

[tanveer1979]

Slow news day, eh? The Article is low on substance. This page has much more details. Looks like the wired article has copy-pasted and not done any real work. The actual article should have had listed quirks, what do the extentions actually do, rather than pasting text from mozilla extention page.

Re:W0t?

[Bozdune]

Looks like the wired article has copy-pasted and not done any real work.

And... this is a surprise to you?

Adblock. Simply amazing.

[Tuxedo Jack]

Works with 0.9, blocks anything (hate to admit it, but I've used it on OSDN for Doubleclick crap), and allows for selectivity in blocking.

http://adblock.mozdev.org

Re:Adblock. Simply amazing.

[caluml]

I prefer to just block images by right clicking them, and kill off flash with flashblock.mozdev.org. That, coupled with no popups makes surfing fun.

Re:Adblock. Simply amazing.

[ErikRed1488]

Use of Adblock by the /. crowd brings up an interesting point. Obviously websites rely on advertising to make money and thus stay in business. Sites that cater to the tech crown are catering to the crowd most likely to block all ads. So, how does a tech site make money when a large percentage of its users don't see any of the ads they serve?

Re:Adblock. Simply amazing.

[gargan]

subscribers. and users that click on ads just to support the site.

Lean-n-mean

[GICodeWarrior]

The browser may be lean but that is the way I like it. Something as simple as a web browser shouldn't be eating my system resources.

fav ext

[Dreadlord]

My fav extension at the moment is GmailCompose, combined with Gmail's great interface, it feels like a real email app, and not just web mail.

Do these work in Camino (OS X) ?

[zerosignal]

(As subject.)

Re:Do these work in Camino (OS X) ?

[gamgee5273]

I highly doubt it. Unfortunately, I'm at a 2K machine in training right now... so I can't test on my Mac. But, Camino being Cocoa and not a direct port... my gut tells me "no way in hell."

What they really need...

[mpath]

Is something like Safari's or Google's AutoFill form feature. Yes, there are some plug-ins (WebDeveloper has an Enable Auto-Completion, but I can't get it to work) that do this, but not as suavely as the aforementioned products. Something that caches form field names and commonly used values and at a push of a button or keystroke, it fills out all of the form based on what the most popular values that are cached for the field names.

Re:What they really need...

[dostert]

For Mozilla: ctrl-E, n, enter Always seems to fill out forms pretty well to me. I don't like the browers filling in forms without me telling it. This way, I don't have to fill out all of the info, and I can fill out only the forms I WANT it to. Biggest problem I've found is the inability to erase the data it stores without erasing ALL of the form data. Every now and then I accidentally capture some wrong data, and I'd like to get rid of it so Mozilla doesn't fill in a form incorrectly.

Re:What they really need...

[thenightfly42]

There's a bookmarklet that does this. Go to the page http://www.efritz.net/AutoFill2b.html (page appears to be down right now, so check back later), fill in the data, and save the resulting link to your Personal Toolbar. Also, give it a Keyword like 'fill', and you can just type fill in the URLbar to have your form filled in.

Re:What they really need...

[cyfer2000]

I think I used the autofill function of Mozilla from , lemme think harder..., sorry I can not remember which release, maybe M14. It must be year 2000. And this function exist even before.

Re:What they really need...

[data64]

Is something like Safari's or Google's AutoFill form feature.

You mean like the AutoForm extension ?
I have it setup so it will save and load form values only when I tell it to, but you can set it to do so automatically.

Re:What they really need...

[mpath]

Yeah, that's the other one I was thinking about, but the negative part of this is that it eats up my precious real-estate with yet another toolbar (is that too picky? ;)). It looks like it has improved since I last played with it (last time, it just saved form data from one particular form so you can reload it -- this time, it looks like you can make the form fields context to nothing), so I'm gonna give it another shot.

Thanks, data64!

Re:What they really need...

[data64]

the negative part of this is that it eats up my precious real-estate with yet another toolbar

The way I handle this is to collapse the toolbar and open it up only when I need it. (Click on the little down arrow on the left of the toolbar to collapse it.) You could also do it from View/Show-Hide.

Note: This is in Mozilla, I have not completely moved to Firefox since Multizilla and Cookiebar extensions have not been ported to Firefox yet.

Re:frist psot

[FosterKanig]

If you hadn't spent so much time spell-checking your post, you might have gotten it.

My browsing habits are different

[spineboy]

My browsing habits are probably very different than most peoples, and that's why I like FIrefox. It kinda avoids the one-size fits all and can provide you with a more "tailored" application. I can also envision download "packs" specialized for individual companies that have a particular need for certain features. I've been showing people this stuff, who've never seen Mo?Fire before, and they're like "Wow!" Of course it's still a pain in the neck when I have to use Active X sites, and can't, but I think people are realising slowly that, this should be looked at (and avoided).

And this is why I still have to use Opera

[loomis]

I have done the Firefox dance since the beginning--installing many builds and major releases and plugins, using these for awhile, growing frustrated, and then uninstalling and reverting back to Opera.

Consistently I find myself bewildered at the lack of a single browser (tab mode) in Firefox. And to add insult to injury, there is always this running battle in progress about the Tab Prowser extension. In fact, with 0.9 of Firefox, the Tab Browser extension wasn't even available from the extensions page, even though it worked fine for me. It just seemed like Firefox developers tried to censor the plugin. Very strange.

Why the Firefox developers refuse to make a functional, option-laden one-window tab-based option available without a plugin is beyond me. For now, I'll keep on using Opera.

Loomis

Re:And this is why I still have to use Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Download the standard build of 0.9.1 and it has tab browsing out-the-box. Middle click to open a link in a new tab.

Re:And this is why I still have to use Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm, maybe you just don't know about it. Use your middle button (in my case, I push in my scroll wheel) and it opens any link in a new tab. At this point I almost never use the left mouse button to open a link. Another great extension is IE View for those websites that don't meet standards. It adds a "Open this page in IE" to the right click menu.

Re:And this is why I still have to use Opera

[danheretic]

Not quite. It has "tab browsing" out of the box, but not the "Tabbrowser Extensions" plugin. Tabbrowser Extensions is MUCH more powerful and feature-rich.. something like 40 different options to set rather than the 3 found in 0.9.

I was disappointed enough that I reverted back to 0.8 so I could have my tabs the way I like them.

Re:And this is why I still have to use Opera

[blkwolf]

This extension gives you single window mode: Single Window 1.0
Also if you read the docs they made a major change to how firefox manages extensions from 8.0 to 9.0, so it's simply a matter of the extension creators to update to the new requirements.

Re:And this is why I still have to use Opera

[The One KEA]

Just use Tabbrowser Preferences for now. This bug may be of interest for opening external links.

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1729 62

Re:And this is why I still have to use Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

TBE is now available for 0.9.1.

I'm using it on Moz 1.7 with no problems.

Find it at Extension Room or TBE home page.

Flash Click to View

[Spoons]

My favortie Mozilla plug-in is Flash Click to view. It blocks all those annoying flash ads and puts an icon in its place. If you want to view the Flash ad/game/movie whatever, you just click the icon and it loads. It makes browsing the web just a little more bearable.

Re:Flash Click to View

[afidel]

Also by the same author is the really cool nuke anything plugin. It allows you to remove any HTML element from the currently rendered page.

Re:Flash Click to View

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Every time I see someone mention that plug in, it is not called by its name: FlashBlock. Why?

Thankfully you linked to it, but it was hard to find it the first time I saw it mentioned.

Re:Flash Click to View

[Cybervoid]

Because FlashBlock is based on an extenstion that was called Flash Click to View. The old one used to display a white box that became grey when you moused over it that had the text: "[f] Click to View" displayed on it.

Re:Flash Click to View

[Greg W.]

I actually installed that extension last night, by sheer coincidence, on my Debian Firefox box at home. But it doesn't work unless you have Javascript turned on. That makes it less than useful to me at the moment... oh well, perhaps some future version of the extension will work in a sane environment.

(Yes, Virginia, I do have Flash installed and Javascript disabled. I consider Javascript to be significantly more evil than Flash at the moment, although Flash is gaining ground quickly.)

Re:Flash Click to View

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuke Anything is all right, but know what I'd like? The ability to make it permanent.

Re:Flash Click to View

[Anonymous Coward]

i LOVE that extension! :)

Launchy not mentioned

[gemal]

Launchy enables you to open links and mailto's with external applications like IE, Opera, Outlook, GetRight.
Works in: Mozilla and Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird Launchy Homepage

RC2 works in FireFox

[smoking2000]

Also from the Prefbar Website (near bottom of the page):

PrefBar 2.3 RC2 - works with Firefox, and has many new features

Re:RC2 works in FireFox

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the link! Works great!

Upgrade firefox == downgrade

[startxxx]

each time i upgrade firefox i actually downgrade it. the google bar entension works on windows every second release only. with the latest 0.9.1 on windows i.e. i can't get the google bar to appear although the extension is installed correctly. still, better the IE for sure.

Re:Upgrade firefox == downgrade

[masonjd]

Try removing the entire directory as well as the directories for any other previous versions of firefox or Mozilla. Then reinstall .9.1 and the extension again. I was dealing with this problem yesterday. My coworker had three versions of mozilla/firefox installed in different directories and so even though the extension was installed "perfectly" it wasn't showing up. After he removed the extra junk and installed again. Things worked great.

BugMeNot

[spellraiser]

After installation, BugMeNot supplies an appropriate name and password from a database that seems to include registration info for the vast majority of websites that request registration. The BugMeNot developers note that most people enter false information on registration forms to protect their privacy, so BugMeNot actually cuts down on database pollution. The only problem is that The New York Times may wonder what happened to all those 86-year-old Albanian grandmothers who head up huge technology firms that used to sign up to read the NYT website.

... well, the other problem is: Now that the slashdot crowd has become aware of BugMeNot, NYT will need to prepare for Attack of the Clones: Geek Edition! :P

Mozilla as primary web-development platform

[Zeroth_darkos]

The ieview extension could be used for getting your web developer friends to code the web-pages for mozilla first and then check if it works ok with IE. (You just right-click the URL and choose "Open link target in IE".)
The web developers I know sadly just use IE and then ignores the other browsers.

Re:Mozilla as primary web-development platform

[DA-MAN]

Anyone ever try this extension on Linux with IE running through Crossover?

Wait...

[KillaKen187]

noone has mentioned Aaron Spuler's Single window which puts all those annoying pages that spawn a new window into a tab instead... just a wonderful plug-in

Re:Wait...

[The One KEA]

No one has mentioned Tabbrowser Preferences, which is a lot more versatile than Single Window and adds a number of other useful features, such as per-tab locking, background/foreground control over several tab functions, and UI for configuring many of the hidden preferences already available in Firefox.

Read more on my website, http://www.pryan.org/mozilla/site/TheOneKEA/tabpre fs

Super DragAndGo

[Kupek]

I've just started using Firefox, and the best plugin I know of for it is Super DragAndGo. If you drag a link to empty space on the webpage, that link is opened in a new tab. It's so simple, but it's the best new web browsing feature I've seen in a long time.

Re:Super DragAndGo

[barcodez]

If you have a middle button (sometimes combined with the wheel) try clicking a link with that - it opens in a new tab!

Re:Super DragAndGo

[Zardoz44]

If your mouse has only two buttons, clicking both at the same time may work as well.

Re:Super DragAndGo

[nxg125]

Yes, but with SuperDragAndGo, you can select anything on the page, and throw it to empty space. Middle clickikg only works with links.

Re:Super DragAndGo

[Alexis de Torquemada]

Only if 3rd button emulation is enabled in X.

Re:Super DragAndGo

[Zardoz44]

Not so. I discovered this on a Windows 98 machine that only had a 2-button mouse (Firebird 0.5 I believe, with Mozgest if that matters). My first instinct was to try the double-button click from X and it worked.

flash click to play

[fermion]

The most useful xpi I have found is Flash Click to Play, formally and still listed as Flashblock. It lets me install Flash, which is becoming increasingly necessary in this image driven world, while letting me filter out the 99% of flash content that are gratuitous, ads, or simply bad animation.

BTW, Camino does not install this automatically, but is relatively simple to go into your chrome folder and hack it yourself.

Re:flash click to play

[tiptone]

Flashblock is my favorite extension as well, but unfortunately hasn't been updated for the 0.9 change yet...

Re:flash click to play

[Anonymous Coward]

ah, Lou Reed. your sig made my day.

Re:flash click to play

[Anonymous Coward]

It works just fine in 0.9 for me. Just go to the flashblock.mozdev.org page and install it from there.

Re:flash click to play

[Anonymous Coward]

It was awesome, but not available for firefox 9, and the author has issued an appeal for help on his page you link to. Perhaps a brilliant slashdot programmer could give him a hand. Combined with adblock it really makes the web a nicer place.

Re:flash click to play

[BathTub]

however it works fine.

actually

[not_a_product_id]

I use them for moving between pages of on-line cartoons... erm... as well as...you know...

Re: Single window only partially works

[guidryp]

I have tried but went backed to Tabbed Browsers Extension. As Single Window opens many windows in new browsers and TBE can actually force them all to tabs.

Mozilla Extensions & MacOS 1-9

[Schlemphfer]

I'm lacking a technical background and I grew up using Macs. With that in mind, the idea of adding tons of extensions to Mozilla doesn't thrill me. I can't help but be reminded of pre OS-X Macintoshes, where it got to the point that Macs shipped with a half-dozen extensions. And it was impossible to put the computer to any serious use without accumulating a dozen more.

Naturally, the more extensions you loaded, the more time it took your computer to boot and the more system crashes and incompatibilities occurred. It got to the point that I spent significant time enabling and disabling extensions to try to identify incompatibilities and the sources of my computer crashes. I don't know anything about Mozilla architecture, but might an extension-based Firefox be edging us down that same path?

I know I'd personally prefer it if the Firefox team evaluated the best extensions, and incorporated them into the main code for optimum compatibility.

So here's my question to people familiar with the Mozilla codebase: is my comparison between Pre-OSX Macs and Firefox valid?

Re:Mozilla Extensions & MacOS 1-9

[mlk]

No.
Mozilla (dont know about firefox, don't use) is fully functional, and lacking nothing (that a web browser should lack) by default.

Re:Mozilla Extensions & MacOS 1-9

[jalefkowit]

I'm not an expert on Mozilla's codebase, but based on their history, I would say that your worries are probably misplaced.

Firefox is purposely limited to the bare minimum of functionality that general users required. If any extensions ever rise to that level of ubiquity, they'll probably get adopted by moz.org and slipstreamed into the code base, which should remove the performance concern.

After all, that's how tabbed browsing made it into Mozilla -- first as a separate XPI extension (Multizilla), which got incorporated into the code base when the developers saw how popular it was.

Of course, it will require some serious popularity to rise to that level, and I doubt that many extensions will ever make it. But that's the beauty of the extension framework, my Firefox can be very different from yours...

Re:Mozilla Extensions & MacOS 1-9

[Anonymous Coward]

I notice a difference in load time between bare firefox and firefox loaded with extensions. Trouble is one becomes really accustomed to the added functionality. Occasionally in konqueror now I go to do extension related things before remembering that they're not ubiquitous browser things. So I'll put up with a little slower load time. firefox without extensions starts fast, so with a bunch of extensions it isn't slow, it just doesn't start fast. It seems about comparable to mozilla.

Re:Mozilla Extensions & MacOS 1-9

[arantius]

I'd say no. In this case, it's quite the opposite. Everyone can get exactly the set of features they want from their browser, and not load anything else.

Start with lightweight Firefox, add only the extensions you want. You choose balance of speed and features. If it loads too slow for you (though I've noticed no load time impact from over a dozen extensions) then uninstall some.

The thing I hate is installing all the various extensions I prefer to use again and again as new versions come out and I have to clear my profile to get things to work properly, etc. How come I can't doubleclick (in windows) or run a simple CLI app (in linux) to install a .XPI on my hard drive?

Bookmarklets

[Robotron2084]

Bookmarklets are an underrated way to extend the usability of Mozilla, Firefox and even IE.

http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/zap.html

I have 'zap plugins' and 'zap images' in my personal toolbar to stop strobing ads and flash on a page-by-page basis. Works great!

Re:Bookmarklets

[kavau]

One of my favorites is "plain text links", which allows one to open any URL that is not marked as such by selecting and right-clicking it.

Very useful for dealing with slashdot posters such as yourself! ;-)

Re:Bookmarklets

[Robotron2084]

Haha, yes, I'm a lazy slashdot poster. But nice link! Just installed it.

Re:Bookmarklets

[Jon_Aquino]

I prefer bookmarklets to plugins where possible because I can simply add them to my bookmarks page, which I load as a Firefox sidebar. Thus my work Firefox and my home Firefox are always in sync. Thus, the only Firefox plugin I need to install is Tabbrowser Extensions. I've already got bookmarklets for searching on the selected text, finding the definition of the selected text, text-to-speeching the selected text(!), blogging the current page, dragging a rectangle and seeing its extent (!)

Re:Bookmarklets

[jesser]

Did you make the text-to-speech bookmarklets? They are cool, but it would be nice if they used location= with GET or an iframe instead of a new window.

P.S. I used edit styles and typed
a:not([href^="javascript:"]) { display: none }
to see just the bookmarklets on your bookmarks page ;)

Re:Bookmarklets

[Jon_Aquino]

The text-to-speech form comes from AT&T (very very natural sounding, I might add) -- it's a post form, so I had to use the new-window trick in the bookmarklet.

I'm intrigued by your "a:not([href^="javascript:"]) { display: none }" comment -- what is this "edit styles" you mention?

Re:Bookmarklets

[jesser]

The text-to-speech form comes from AT&T (very very natural sounding, I might add) -- it's a post form, so I had to use the new-window trick in the bookmarklet.

Have you tried treating the POST form as a GET form? In some languages, the default is to accept both.

If the site only accepts POSTs, or if you might select a block of text too long for GET, you can create a hidden <iframe> instead of a new window and post from there.

I'm intrigued by your "a:not([href^="javascript:"]) { display: none }" comment -- what is this "edit styles" you mention?

It's edit stylesa bookmarklet I wrote.

Re:Bookmarklets

[Jon_Aquino]

Unfortunately the TTS service has a 30-word limit. Good enough for creating interesting voicemail messages though. Jesse -- I'm grateful for the bookmarlets you've provided on your site -- it makes Firefox an even more powerful browser.

FlashBlock

[Dalroth]

FlashBlock! That is the BEST plugin EVER created! Everybody who has Firefox installed should also have this plugin installed.

Bryan

Re:FlashBlock

[Hollins]

now that adblock handles flash and other embeds, it has become capable of filtering just about everything. I no longer need FlashBlock. Since adblock can handle regex filtering, I find myself becoming obsessed with trying to filter that last 0.1% of ads that get through while keeping a short filter list.

Also, the article calls Mozilla 'stripped down', which is absurd. It has tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking by default, putting it light years ahead of the market leader.

Re:FlashBlock

[KD5YPT]

stripped down means it has what browsers needed and nothing more... wait, that's just about every other browser too...

Huh?

[FullCircle]

There are tabs in Firefox, I use them all the time.

The new tab button isn't on the interface by default, so you have to add it with the view/customize menu option. (Sorry if that isn't exactly right, I'm on a Mozilla system ATM)

Even without it, you can still middle-click or right click for open link in new tab.

I'm sorry if I don't understand what is missing.

Re:Obv you're not an opera user. TBE is only close

[guidryp]

I have been using opera for a long time and trying to get FF to the same functionality is a pain.

With firefox you will still get situations where it pops up new browsers. Go to your tools, extensions "get new extensions" Chances are you now have two browsers... Why?

The best choice right now is TBE single window mode. Even with this I still get an occaisional extra browser opening on me.

I don't understand the difficulty of adding "force single window mode"...

Mouse Gestures = Godly

[SerpentBlade2100]

I agree to that one. I had somebody suggest mouse gestures to me, and despite the getting used to remembering you have mouse gestures as an option and learning to use a few main ones, I flawlessly gesture my way around the internet constantly. If you get a chance to try it out, learn it, and actually use it seamlessly, you'll never want to browse the internet in any other way. One thing i do suggest however is that you set gestures to operate when you press down the right mouse button, left was too much a pain for me and right works a whole lot better. If you try it out, you'll know what i mean.

Re:fp

[Anonymous Coward]

Your failure is now complete.

Toggle color/css on the fly

[hateyerstate]

I usually always use my own colors, because I don't like reading sites that have a white background. Sometimes I wish to use the default colors for a site, It takes *too* much work to go into Preferences and uncheck the colors/fonts boxes. Is there a plugin that lets me just toggle them on the fly? PrefBar doesn't seem to work for Firefox (I am using 0.9) at the moment.

Also, I noticed a problem, when I uncheck the 'use my own colors' box, the site stays with my chosen font/bg color unless it explictly has a bgcolor or font color tag set, so sometimes I see white text over a white BG if I disable the feature and do not restart FF.

Plugin to mimic IE download style?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about anybody else here, but the one thing that Firefox lacks (since 0.6 I've been told?) is the ability to open .exe files using the Open: option. All it does is result in an error. I think it'd be a great idea if they had it built in as an option, even if defaulted to off. Eh, guess it's only a slight inconvenience to download, open the file, then delete the file.

Magpie "research"

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Magpie also includes tools for adjusting a site's URL by incrementing or decrementing the numbers in it and for "sanitizing" links to real content by stripping off redirector script prefix/suffixes. This is a good extension for those who do a lot of research online.

Hmm, now what kind of site might have a lot of images^W err... content in a numerical sequence? I wish I could call porn hunting "research".

Re:Magpie "research"

[KD5YPT]

You got a point there... never thought of that...

Homer (horny version): "Mm... porn..."

SO EXCITED ...

[matt_martin]

to install some of the plugins that couldn't be found (like imagezoom) when they first went to the new extension manager !

Imagine my annoyance when I realized that my latest build 0.9.1 of Firefox somehow doesn't install extensions. You click on the link, it downloads the xpi, and nothing happens. Whoohooo !

Re:SO EXCITED ...

[Anonymous Coward]

That'll be because you've got "allow web sites to install software" un-checked (Edit-->Preferences-->Advanced-->Software Updates)
Which is probably a good thing to do in general, but does rather confuse the plugin-installer.

Re:SO EXCITED ...

[matt_martin]

Ok, thats fair - though I did try to load the extension directly from a local file & it still wouldn't work (semantics...).

So did it get changed in the latest upgrade ? (Also lost all of my extensions at that time)

Re:SO EXCITED ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the same problem. See if "Allow web sites to install software" is unchecked in the Advanced section of the preferences. If so, plugins won't install. Checking the box fixed the problem.

Thunderbird, too.

[Short Circuit]

I tried that with Thunderbird after running the release tarballs for a long time. The Debian Thunderbird setup didn't recognize my old data. Suggestions?

Reload Every

[Morel]

From the article:

Also check out the Reload Every
extension, which lets you right-click on a Web page to reload it
automatically every few seconds or minutes, as you choose. It's great
for those who are checking news, sports scores or stock prices.

Hmmm...I wonder what website that was created for.

My extensions.

[guidryp]

Flashblock: Absolute must have stops the all singing dancing net, but lets you use it if you must.
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/

Preferential: Lets you change every option, not just the subset that they think you need. Lets me kill gif anims for one thing.
http://preferential.mozdev.org/

Tab Browser extentsion: The only current way to get true single window mode.
http://white.sakura.ne.jp/~piro/xul/_tabext ensions .html.en

Adblock: Block annoying adds that get by above measures. I leave them alone if the don't blink/anim and flow in my text. One of those and they are gone. For some reason newegg flash adds were escaping flashblock so, I adblocked *newegg*.
http://adblock.mozdev.org/

Nuke anything: Sometimes a site will serve ads from the same place as usefull image so I don't want to filter. This lets me knock out anything from the page temporarily.
http://ted.mielczarek.org/code/mozil la/

No...

[SilentT]

Most people who switch to Mozilla or Mozilla's Firefox browser quickly notice that the browser is pretty bare. It contains exactly what you need to browse the Web -- no less and no more.

I don't know of anyone who's disappointed that Firefox is "pretty bare" the first time they use it. What they notice is that it can do everything IE does, but with tabbed browsing and without the pop-ups or security holes.

Re:No...

[KD5YPT]

Hm... never thought of that... IE IS bare... they even strip it down to no security feature and no tabbed browsing...

Re:No...

[Anonymous Coward]

> What they notice is that it can do everything IE does, but with tabbed browsing and without the pop-ups or security holes.

And without flash or java. I don't care if YOU don't personally like them. Other people do.

and more good ones...

[Anonymous Coward]

I second (or more) the notion of SingleWindow. I'd also like to toss in "UndoClosedTab" -- as a very handy feature for opening a webpagethat was just closed. Also, Tab browser Extentions, which may not be currently on the mozdev site (but is, if you google, updated and working for 0.9.1), gives you a ton of useful features for tabbed browsing configuration. One I like is "Tab Sessions" -- which lets you save an entire bank of open tabs to a 'tab session' to be later reopened (kinda like mass bookmarking).

Why the need to restart?

[Desipis]

People used to complain about having to restart windows everytime they installed something. So havent we learnt how to install things without needing a restart yet?

Re:Why the need to restart?

[Anonymous Coward]

welcome to c++. classloading issues are very nasty.

Need some download manager help (Firefox 0.9.1)

[88NoSoup4U88]

I have been using Firefox for some time now, and very satisfied with it ; much less crashing, and only once and awhile i have to switch back to use IE for an IE-only-site.

One 'problem' or more a nitpick, which i thought was going to be fixed in 0.9.0 is the in-ability to click on the blue hyperlink text of the download manager, once it finishes its download, and pops up at the bottom right of the screen.

I read before alot of people et 'fooled' into clicking this, and also IIRC, i saw a Bugzilla-fixlist, in which this bug was reported, and would be fixed.

Anyone still has this problem ? Ifnot, any clues why i still can't click it ?(well, i can, but to no effect ;) )

Thanks in advance.

Microsoft's relationship with Business is simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has enough problems that it keeps low-level technicians busy. The key is that
and idiot can run the IT department and idiots can do the grunt work. In fact, the accounting, marketing or building maintenance department often runs the IT infrastructure in a business. You don't want those pesky engineers playing with their Linux and setting up un-authorized web servers.

It depends on how you use it

[Rydain]

RadialContext can indeed function as a context menu replacement (i.e. you click to bring it up, move the mouse to get a different set of options if you need to, click on the option you want). However, if you hold the mouse button down, you can seamlessly and quickly switch menus and choose options in a way that is basically the same as executing a mouse gesture.

Tabwarning

[Xhad]

I haven't had my own computer for a few months so I don't know if this has been addressed by now, but at least the "Tabwarning" plugin should be installed by default. Until I discovered Tabwarning/Tabextension, I almost quit using Firefox because I'd close a window out of habit, forgetting that it would also close the eight other websites I was visiting at the time.

Re:Tabwarning

[Finuvir]

Yes, this is part of Firefox now. If you try to close a window with multiple tabs open it will prompt you to confirm or cancel, with the option to prevent it displaying the same message again.

Pref Bar is obsolete

[Washizu]

You won't need that pref bar extension once you've installed the Web Developer extension. It lets you turn off cookies, javascript, check cookie info, validate CSS/HTML, resize to various window sizes, turn off images, outline block elements, show image paths/sizes, etc.

It makes my life easier.

Re:Pref Bar is obsolete

[Erik Fish]

Web Developer seems to lack several Prefbar features including navigation buttons, proxy menu, user agent spoofing, pop-up toggle, clear history, pipelining toggle and clear location bar.

Mouse Gestures for Firefox!!!

[i-Chaos]

I love All-In-One Gestures for Firefox, as it is the most customizable Mouse-Gestures set for any browser out there. Mouse gestures, specifically being able to switch tabs with the mousewheel, combined with the middle-button for opening links in new background tabs, makes browsing much faster and much more convenient.

I fell in love with the new generation of browsers when I first touched Opera. I love to have multiple links opened and preloaded for later browsing, but I find it clunky to switch tabs with the keyboard in Netscape (CTRL-TAB was not what the keyboard was designed for, not to mention CTRL-SHIFT-TAB). When I learned that I could use the wheel to switch tabs in Opera, as well as being able to close windows WITHOUT having to aim your pointer in the middle of a button and click (takes time, finess, and focus to aim - DOWN-RIGHT mouse gestures is better), I was in love. I've always been fascinated with designing human-to-machine software interfaces (UI), and Opera definitely took the cake for me. Naturally, when I heard that firefox was open-sourced, and could be extended to mimic any browser's functionality, I was hooked (yes, and Opera's dictionary search, as well, and opening dictionaries in BACKGROUND tabs!!!). I love firefox, and I've already made one convert (I've only been using ff since the day 0.9 came out).

Tabbrowser extensions

[jeorgen]

Tabbrowser extensions is a fantastic add-on to mozilla and firefox. Here are my favorite functions it provides:

1) You can rearrange tabs by just drag and drop.
2) If you ctrl-click a link, it can open as new tab next to the tab of the page your looking at.
3) Tabs can be in different colors, and tabs opened with e.g ctrl-click inherit the color from the tab of the page the link is on. I.e. you can group tabs by color
3) If you get too many tabs in a window, it can make a new row of tabs, or open a new browser window and continue making tabs there.
4) You can undo close tab. In multiple steps.

Re:Tabbrowser extensions

[tessonec]

In both, mozilla and firefox, if you type
about:config
you can get the middle-button-click also open a new tab. Without a plugin.

(I know, someone will say it is obscure, but...)

Re:Tabbrowser extensions

[The One KEA]

Or, if you prefer a more minimalist approach, you can use either Tabbrowser Preferences or TBP Lite.
http://www.pryan.org/mozilla/site/TheOneKEA/tabpre fs/

Re: Single window only partially works

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but I donit see TBE listed in the extensions for firefox 9.1.

Does TBE work with firefox 9.1?

System-wide install?

[KjetilK]

Anybody knwo how to install the extensions system-wide on a Debian Sarge system?

Some extensions will prompt you if you want to install it system-wide, then some might prompt from a root password. With some extensions, this works, with some, it apparently doesn't.

I tried, for example, to download Adblock, dump it in

/usr/lib/mozilla-firebird/chrome/adblock.jar

and then run

update-mozilla-firefox-chrome

It did seemingly update something, the chrome.rdf file was modified, but it didn't do the trick.

Anybody have clues to share?

Re:System-wide install?

[The One KEA]

Do this: /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/mozilla-firefox -install-global-extension /path/to/adblock.xpi

The new Aviary branch extension manager no longer directly supports program directory installation, so you have to use this switch.

Re:System-wide install?

[KjetilK]

OK, thanks! But it didn't work for me. I'm still on 0.8, waiting for the fine folks to fix some bugs (such as that -remote apparently isn't reliable in 0.9.1), and for it to be uploaded to Debian unstable.

blah blah

[XO]

Well, I know this article is about Mozilla, and how Mozilla around here is everyone's favorite pet... but.. every single feature that I've ever seen implemented by and/or for Mozilla that was even remotely useful to anyone besides the author of that feature.. was already implemented in Opera first.

Ya'all really should check it out. Quicker, faster, works a lot better. No, it's not open source. But, it is possible that there can be software that's good that's not open source.

(now i'm going to get modded -255; Blasphemer!)

Re:blah blah

[KnightStalker]

DOM Inspector? Javascript debugger? Generic cross-platform application support? Does Opera even have XMLHTTPRequest support yet? Let alone an XMLRPC or SOAP client? HTTP live header tracking? Okay... so maybe none of these are exactly killer features for the general public, but they are all highly useful to me, for specific purposes. Gotta agree that Opera is faster than Moz though.

Re:blah blah

[KD5YPT]

Tried FireFox (stripped down version of Mozilla)? They are on par speed wise with Opera. But the point aside, who cares if it's Opera or Mozilla FireFox or Mozilla Suite? As long as it works and less security hole.

P.S. I doubt anyone will mod you down, you do have a good point.

Re:blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

I love Firefox cause I never have to see a banner ad again, thanks to Adblock...so switching to a browser with a built-in banner ad seems a little silly.

(Though before I had heard of Firefox and was still on Windows, I did use Opera and found it quite nice...except for that annoying ad...)

IE's rich set of plug-ins Re:Corporate Acceptance?

[otisg]

Yeah, that is why we love IE. Oh, and I'm a big nature and insect lover, so I also love IE for its bugs.

Re: Single window only partially works

[RaboKrabekian]

Does TBE work with firefox 9.1?

Works fine for me. I dont know if it's officially supported, but I can't stand having more than one browser window open. I think the Single-window mode of TBE should be default behavior for Firefox, but that's just me.

Anyway, TBE works fine in Firefox .9.1

suxorz

[Anonymous Coward]

>"It does not work with Mozilla Firefox"

not suprising, new mozilla plugins got totally phucked up. i believe that with firefox 0.9 one
even has to download every plugin, search it on disk, install ( exception are plugins hosted at mozilla's website )
crap

Re:suxorz

[KD5YPT]

I believe you're not using an XPI plugin then. The idea behind FireFox is not to be bloated. And will become bloated only when user choose to be. Hence, lots of plugin to add-on to a skimpy software (skimpy is good, runs fast).

Firefox people should consider default extensions.

[Dr. Spork]

Shipping the best extensions by default is something Firefox should seriously consider doing. Of course they would be optional, but the install wouldn't be that much harder if there were a screen that lets you select Adblock, Gestures, and some of the other super-extensions. The ones you select would download and install automatically with the browser install. Most people trying out Firefox aren't even aware of what extensions can do for them, and featuring them prominently (and with good descriptions) would really improve that. I find that most people don't refuse small program bonuses if they sound halfway useful. Also, once a few extensions are installed, I think that would encourage the typical user to seek out more, and then they're hooked!

useragent spoofing bad?

[spoonyfork]

Am I the only one that sees an inherent danger in useragent spoofing to ie/windows for mozilla/* users? I understand that it may unfortunately be necessary to access sites but isn't that feeding the beast which makes something like this a necessary feature?

If everyone is lying about who they are, how do you know who anyone is, or does it not matter from a market share perspective?

Re:useragent spoofing bad?

[dmaxwell]

When I do spoof, I find that I can usually chide the offending website in the agent string itself. The web servers don't seem to be looking for particular strings. They just want to see those magic words "IE" and "Windows". I'll have those in the correct places as well as something like www.w3c.org - hint hint. I figure it gets into some their logs at least. I don't blanket spoof. I only do it for retarded sites that won't otherwise let me in.

Now if we could just do something about javascript based browser checks.

Automatic password plugin?

[ghaushe]

The one thing that bugs me about Firefox is that our entire intranet at work requires a login. there are lots of sites, and each one uses NT authentication (username/domain/password). IE automatically goes to these pages using whatever I logged into the system with (no password popup). Firefox requires my password each time I go to a different intranet site. While it can remember my passwords, it stil always pops up the password box. The best solution is if it could know to just use my windows login, but alternatively, having the option to auto-login using the password I already saved would be great. Anyone know of a way to do this?

Re:Automatic password plugin?

[The One KEA]

This is a bug in the Firefox proxy authentication framework, and hopefully if enough people vote for the bug in Bugzilla, or better yet, find a patch for it, then it will be fixed.

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2301 90
http://tinyurl.com/2doea

Problems with the current extensions model

[A Masquerade]

I have found a couple of problems with the current (0.9 & 0.9.1) extensions setup:-

• You do not appear to be able to install an extension globally. Hence if (as on my home machine) there are 5 users, you have to install the extensions 5 times. This was not the case with Firefox 0.8
• Extensions get disabled on upgrades - this works really nicely with the previous point :-(
• Add a bunch of extensions and there is a good chance that Firefox gets itself wedged, puts up a "Finishing installing extension" message for ever, and doesn't work quite right until you delete the profile, install a new one and reinstall all the extensions again

The new stuff looks very nice, but its so damn fragile at the moment. This would really scare off those trying to roll out across an organisation...

Re:Problems with the current extensions model

[KD5YPT]

As with all software, expect bugs.

As with software upgrades with major improvement, expect major bugs.

Give it time, they'll get it fixed. I have faith.

P.S. I hope when they get it fixed it's in one BIG RELEASE (fix just about everything) kind of fix. Not the Windows kind where a fix comes once every week (%$#^*(@#%).

Re:Problems with the current extensions model

[The One KEA]

Most of the problems you describe have been fixed during the Aviary nightly cycle after 0.9.1, which was released to repair many of the most critical flaws in Firefox's new Extension Manager - things like Bug 246014.

As for installing extensions globally, use the -install-global-extension switch, like this: /path/to/firefox -install-global-extension /path/to/extension.xpi

Re:Need some download manager help (Firefox 0.9.1)

[The One KEA]

This is a bug, and has been fixed by Ben Goodger.

Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Mozilla pronounced Moh-zilla or Mah-zilla?

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

I pronounce it Moh-zilla.

More is not always better

[presidenteloco]

One of the lessons of software design is that
1 x 1 = 1 (x 1 = 1 ( x 1 = 1 (x 1 = 1...
whereas
2 x 2 = 4 (x 2 = 8 (x 2 = 16 (x 2 = 32...

In otherwords, complexity, and choices, that
interact with each other, cause a geometric
explosion in the complexity of the software,
and the complexity of understanding it as a
user or a developer.

For a web application developer, the only
thing you can assume a web browser is capable
of is the LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR of functions
and standards-adherence. Otherwise you're
just fragmenting the market for your app or
site.

So the best way to proceed in making progress in
browsers is to get good-quality, solid, core
standards (with FEW, NOT MANY choices in them)
well implemented by all browsers.

At best, an unruly proliferation of arbitrary
plugins can only be looked at as a darwinian
proving ground. The more useful extensions
MUST be incorporated into a standard
CORE profile for the browser software, or they
are useless (unusable) when viewed from the perspective of a web application user interface designer.

Heck, I've even had to stop using Javascript
in my web apps if I want to have a reasonable
chance of reaching everyone these days. Java
applets were a terrific idea way back too;
another great idea destroyed by the fact
that the surrounding standards (security, UI
libraries, java version support) were
multifarious (unusable) and not single
(thus usable).

Just one thing that eludes me

[Aggrazel]

There are two problems I have with using Firefox.

#1: Right now, a home grown app we use where I work gives us the following error:

Error: swhen.options is not a function

This is a java error, which is odd because the same app works in IE and netscape.

#2: Can't figure out how to default MSN messenger clicks to it. Associated all .htm and .lnk extensions to Firefox but it just didn't take.

If anyone knows how to fix that, it'd be lovely. ;)

Re:Just one thing that eludes me

[The One KEA]

1. It's a JavaScript error - you're trying to do swhen.options() somewhere and Firefox's JS parser is telling you that you can't do that ;-)

2. MSN Messenger is not likely to use anything but IE. Get a different MSN client.

Re:Just one thing that eludes me

[ip_vjl]

Right now, a home grown app we use where I work gives us the following error: ...

JavaScript error. Quite frankly, doing any type of JavaScript work in IE is quite painful compared to MozFF. The JavaScript console is quite a bit nicer than the IE JS error reports. I'm sure if you go through your code, you'll find what's wrong.

#2: Can't figure out how to default MSN messenger clicks to it. Associated all .htm and .lnk extensions to Firefox but it just didn't take.

Using WinXP and MSN Messenger 6.1.0211 and links inside messages here DO open in FF. Do you have FF configured within windows to be the default browser?

You can have FF check to see if it is the default.
Tools - Options - Default .... 'check now'

I've seen some computers that didn't seem to accept the change. In XP you go to the control panel - add remove programs - set program access and defaults - and set it there.

Mini-rant: Fuzzily-defined IE "features"

[Tackhead]

> IE defaults to 'automatic logon only in Intranet zone'. The other options are 'anonymous logon', 'automatic logon with current user name and password', and 'prompt for user name and password'. I can't think of any reason people would change this from the default.

Serious question: From the perspective of an occasional Windows user and frequent UNIX user, what does "logon" possibly mean in this context? ("Duh, I'm already logged on, how the hell else could I run this web browser?") Is "automatic logon" some sort of IE/Exchange/BackOffice thing for people whose CIO drank the Billygates kool-aid?

Rant: "Why change from the default? " I was thinking the opposite -- another checkbox saying "Don't 'log me in', don't fucking broadcast whatever these 'credentials' are, don't do me any favors anywhere, under any circumstances, just... don't" because there are so many cross-domain exploits that even if I was in a shop that used an internal application that uses whatever the hell these 'credentials' are, odds are that I'm still going to regret it because I'm not a PHB who wants to to trade security for user-obsequiousness convenience."

Sorry for the rant -- I just beat on a new XP box for the first time in a long time and am still annoyed. My rule of thumb for IE still has to be "If you can't figure out what the feature's used for, assume it's a kludge that got bolted on at the last minute to protect the monopoly or trade security for convenience, and therefore, the only people who have a use for it are the all-Microsoft shops and worm writers."

I don't mind seeing MS put things into the product to protect the monopoly / extend functionality in all-Microsoft environments. Just let me know what they are so I can know that I can turn them off and stop worrying about 'em. I mean, other than worm authors, did anybody ever use RPC/DCOM? If yes, who and why?

Pr0n helper

[felipeal]

Magpie also includes tools for adjusting a site's URL by incrementing or decrementing the numbers in it ... This is a good extension for those who do a lot of research online.

Research, hmm? I see...

Re: Nuke anything

[ip_vjl]

I've found this plugin to be very useful for printing some pages that don't supply either a 'print-friendly' CSS or page.

With it, I've been able to eliminate page elements that would cause my print to only occupy the center 2 inches of the page because of navigation panels, etc.

When you first install it, you will waste some time though, just going through pages and getting a kick out of watching elements disappear at your command.

All these extensions are cool, but...

[bubkus_jones]

one of the biggest reasons I use Firefox over anything else is because it doesn't have all that extra crap. I have adblock installed (bubye pesky, speed sucking flash ads), and thats about it.

New cross plattaform environment

[mu22le]

forget java5
forget inferno
write your program as a mozilla extension
you'll be able to run it anywhere...

(at least anywhere mozilla can run, and it's a lot of places already)

Allow me...

[Ayanami Rei]

Download Oracle. Integrate it. Bring it into production.

Then pay for a license. (in that order). Isn't it wonderful?

It's not bare, it's simple (and for good reason).

[kiddailey]

Firefox is not bare, it's just not bombarding you with a 100 useless icons and task-bars.

Of all the default button crap on my copy of IE, the only ones I use regularly are back, forward, stop and refresh.

Re:frist psot

[Anonymous Coward]

hmmm frits pots, i love the taste of them in the morning...

No, it is not a valid comparison.

[Ayanami Rei]

Extensions in the classic MacOS sense are like kernel modules or plugins. Extension in the Mozilla/Firefox sense are augmentations of the application (usually demand loaded) so they don't significantly impact stability or load time, as far as I can tell. An extension could be implemented in a lot of ways, whether simple or complex. Generally they can't overwrite anything, so they hook into the existing API, and Mozilla provides a pretty vast one.

Mozilla/Firefox don't come with any extensions at all. They are perfectly useful without them. Moz/Firefox may directly incorporate features of popular extensions in later versions, but they cease to be extensions at the point, and are considered part of the application proper.

webdeveloper extension for firefox is great!

[unclejeb]

Well I discovered something interesting using the webdeveloper extension for Firefox. Slashdot uses X-Fry and X-Bender directives in their http headers that contain quotes from Futurama from .... you guessed it.... Bender and Fry.

Response Headers - http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=113824&thresho ld=1&mode=thread&commentsort=0&op=Repl y Date: Thu, 08 Jul 2004 16:03:20 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.29 (Unix) mod_gzip/1.3.26.1a mod_perl/1.29
SLASH_LOG_DATA: 113824
X-Powered-By: Slash 2.003000
X-Bender: Whoever's directing this is a master of suspense!
Cache-Control: no-cache
Vary: Accept-Encoding, User-Agent
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Encoding: gzip
Age: 0
Proxy-Connection: close
Via: HTTP/1.1 schi0098pnc (Traffic-Server/3.5.7 [uSc sSf pSeN:tUc i p sS])

Perhaps PrefBar is not listed because....

[bobdobbs3]

...it's not supported in Firefox, which the article is about.

snip -- The current version of the PrefBar is 2.2.2, build 20030228. It should work with Mozilla 1.0 to 1.7 (not 1.8a). It does not work with Mozilla Firefox. -- snip

Re:Perhaps PrefBar is not listed because....

[bobdobbs3]

Oops. I mean they don't want people to break their install of Firefox

FireFox is enhanced Mozilla????

[drxenos]

I always thought FireFox was a stripped-down Mozilla--just the browser. I uninstalled it and went back to Mozilla because a lot of Mozilla's configuration options are missing from FirFox's preferences. There are some clunky plug-ins that add some of them back in, but why bother? I just install Mozilla itself, and install the browser only. Am I missing something here???

Re:FireFox is enhanced Mozilla????

[GhodMode]

I was confused by the distinction between the two of them as well. I think that Firefox is actually a completely separate development project. They sort of started from scratch and tried to re-invent themselves and their browser. Firefox is supposed to be faster, though I haven't tested this myself.

I understand the desire of the Firefox developers. I'm a newbie programmer and there have been many times when I have learned some new programming trick which I wanted to implement in all of my existing code. I would want to, but I couldn't go back and change something fundamental about how a program works if that program is already used in a production environment. So, I started from scratch.

--
-- GhodMode

Re:FireFox is enhanced Mozilla????

[foote]

A quick, if not beautiful, way to access all the preferences in either Mozilla or Firefox is to enter this in the location bar:

about:config

Double click an entry and you can change the settings.

Re:FireFox is enhanced Mozilla????

[drxenos]

Wow, that's cool! Is there a document somewheres that explains what all these items mean.

How to uninstall?

[sn0wflake]

I love Mozilla plug-ins, especially Adblock and Dictionary Search, but how do I remove a plug-in? Is there a plug-in that can do that?

thank you for the link!

[ChristTrekker]

Just downloaded this. Thanks! Web Developer rocks!

Google Toolbar for Firefox - I miss the highlight

[mentatchris]

I've tried finding a google toolbar alternative for Firefox... it's the only feature of IE that I actually miss. The default searchbar is cool, but I use the highlight button to find the keywords... and it's missing.

I tried this, Googlebar, but I didn't like the lag it produced when I used it. After I installed it yesterday, it made my browser unresponsive when I highlighted... which just doesn't work for me.

Can anyone suggest an alternative? I'm really just interested in the highlight feature, as I used to use it all the time.

Go-Back for Cookie Blocking/Cookie file manager?

[rump_carrot]

I have one problem with cookie blocking:

I almost always reflexively block cookies (it gives me a rare feeling of power or something).

However, every once in a while I discover I need to allow the cookie to use the site (for example, Orbitz, or something like that).

Then, I have to figure out how to "unblock" the last cookie(s) I've blocked.

The prolem is, I have a massive list of blocked cookies, and as far as I can see, they are not arranged chronologically, thus, it is often very time consuming to figure out which one is from the site you are trying to visit.

Are there any Mozilla plugins (or tricks) that could resolve this proble? Some type of "cookie file manager", or "list blocked cookies chronologically?"

I'd like too see a plugin called "Netcaptor"

[AbRASiON]

Don't know if any of you guys and girls out there use Netcaptor but it's an excellent tabbed browser.

The author is great - responds to a lot of emails but it is unfortunately a shell on top of IE.

The package has been getting worse and worse as IE gets worse and worse - but the feature set is absoloutely golden.

Example, when I accidentally close a page I didn't mean to - Control Q - re-opens it.

BIG ONE which Firefox doesn't do: - when I open a new tab (say a link from slashdot) with the middle button (same in both apps) - Netcaptor goes directly to the next tab to the right, Firefox throws my new page (tab) straight to the end of the line - so I have to click to the end rather than just go to the next Window (sounds small, but when you get used to it - it's pain to be without it)

When you hit control N (control T in Firefox) Netcaptor ALWAYS defaults to your cursor being on the address line.

I prefer F2 / F3 to switch tabs (just habit really from control page up / down in Fox)

Captorgroups (text file with X urls in it - open that group opens all X sites)
Example the News group would go to
cnn.com
msnbc.com
theage.com.au
heraldsun.c om.au
someothernewspublication.com.blah

Very handy for geeks with video card regular pages or cpu / chipset regular pages or pr0.......... etc

Oh quick search (alias)

type in "g bob" it'll search google for "bob"
(customisable - can set it up for imdb)

Example I want to look up Fight Club I can be in captor and do the following ALL ON THE k/B

Control N (new tab - autmatically moves my cursor to the address line for typing)
type in "imdb fight club" (hit enter)
wait
bingo I'm on the page at imdb

(wouldn't be surprised if Fox had this somewhere)

Basically to summarise my post - someone out there go copy every feature of captor - it's an absoloute dream to use besides some small (IE) niggly problems.

Re:I'd like too see a plugin called "Netcaptor"

[AbRASiON]

Sorry to reply to my own post but here's a review of Netcaptor I wrote up personally (and it shows) about 3 years back.

It lists the features and how they work, perhaps it will help someone understand just how cool those features are and make use of them as a plugin for fox.

(yes it supported most of the things I listed 3 or 4 years ago)

http://members.iinet.net.au/~scottylans/captor/c ap tor.html

Now if only I could load them

[pjpII]

The biggest problem is that for many Windows users, there seems to be a serious bug that prevents them from installing extensions at all- it may be related to the uninstallation between .9 and .9.1. The relevant MozillaZine page is here

Risks in installing too many extensions?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was using Firefox on my main work machine
until a week ago, when I (think I) installed
one extension too many.

Upon attempting to restart Firefox I got the
dreaded program error and full circle feedback
program.

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling, and I
just tried installing .91, and it still barfs.

Please folks... is there anybody who can
suggest a way I can make FireFox .91 work
on this box again?

Re:Risks in installing too many extensions?

[GhodMode]

My guess is that something has become corrupt in your profile.

I think Firefox just installs into a single directory without messing with your registry or anything else. After uninstalling, delete the directory that it left behind (probably in C:\Program Files\Firefox) and any subdirectories.

Please note that I have very little experience with Firefox on a Windows computer. I use Linux :) Proceed at your own risk.

--
-- GhodMode

NO MORE IE!!! WOOHOO!!

[GhodMode]

I have three computers and I've just recently done away with my last instance of a MS Operating System. One of my biggest compatibility concerns was web browsing. Thanks to great plugins I'm happy to say that I have everything working very well on Fedora Core 2 and Firefox, including sites like AtomFilms.com and Yahoo's launch.

Now that CERT has recommended surfers consider browsers other than IE I'm looking forward to seeing better support and recognition for these alternatives.

I'm not an "Anything But Microsoft" advocate, but I do feel a little like they have sort of a strangle-hold on the market.

RSS Reader

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the RSS Reader plugin for Firefox. Very slick! Yes, it works with 0.9.1.

Re:frist psot

[T-Keith]

That's why I use SpellBound

Corporate Acceptance could lead to rejection

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only a matter of when, not if, a major exploit works through mozilla and once again infects millions of windows machines, and then it will set back open source and adopting alternative OS/browser combinations for years.

It's a short term tactical and longer term strategic mistake to be releasing mozilla for windows. Not 1% of the people here will agree with me, but wait until that exploit happens, and it will. Then you won't get corporate acceptance, they will just stick with the stuff they have like they are now, figuring there's no practical difference no matter what they do. Using mozilla as a transitional "crutch" to get people to switch is only half good,and that is a valid half, BUT, the other half that is potentially completely bad is being completely ignored. I feel that it would have been better to just stick to not blending the philosphies and goals and coding, just to recognize that a monopoly OS is not worthwhile coding for any longer for long range security, cost and useability goals. The coders time and efforts are being diluted and wasted by coding for Redmond for free when Redmond will never give back a thing except hand you a bill for their "services". The mozilla windows coders are just working for Microsoft for free, that's it,and the hard part to boot, doing what Redmond should have done in the first place, now they won't have to,Mozilla has done it for them, Redmond can sit back and rake in the money and laugh at the volunteerrs they have to keep them in the monopoly scamster seat. And,although it can give somewhat more security and functionalit, no one may claim with a straight face that they "know" about all potential vulnerabilities in the future, and it is giving windows users a somewhat false sense of security, and just perpetuating use of windows and their dominance, with the resultant "insecure" internet that we have now, and the expensive computing environment people are stuck with.

It would have been better in my opinion to make switching browsers also entail switching OS, in the sense of "if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right". Just switching browsers is a half way, half baked measure that I predict will backfire on the ones doing that now. When I don't know, but that it will, I have little doubt.

Think about these same exact articles now,look at the words in these latest advisories, they are still ignoring and back handedly dissing and putting down and dismissing alternative Oses. With the same exact set of cirrently active vulnerabilities, they COULDN'T be advocating switching to another browser for windows if it didn't exist, they would have been FORCED to say in public, admit it finally, and officially, be forced to broadcast it on the major networks, to take notice of it throughout government, that windows is so broken it shouldn't be used on the internet AT ALL and they thenwould have been FORCED to recommend that people switch to another OS/browser combination if that was the only option away from windows insecurity and useability. But, open source windows browsers have shot themselves in the foot by giving Redmond a free skate on avoiding their responsibilites, and in the time it took me to write this, Redmond has made a few million more dollars DESPITE their vulnerabilities and lack of any effort to address them, because mozilla pulled their chestnuts out of the fire. Wouldn't it have been better to just to have let the entire windows /explorer combination completely crash and burn to get a paradigm shift change? Giving them (Redmond and windows users) a better browser for free without forcing a switch to an open source OS. is, to me, no different than being an enabler for an alcoholic. it's a short term flawed concept that has been soundly trashed and righteously so,because it won't work trying to help an alcoholic see where they might be doing something wrong.

I know as an analogy it isn't perfect, but it's close enough if you honestly care about both helping people to switch to a better OS and browser, and also wish to make microsoft eat up their obscene profits they have ripped off illegally over the decades now.

What I'd like to see

[alexo]

Is an add-on that allows one to rewrite URLs on the fly.

That would allow, for example, to automatically go to "printable" versions of web pages.

How much money....

[Anonymous Coward]

.... has your corporation billed and successfully collected from microsoft from the MS SQL fiasco? You say they can yell at MS, but so what? RTeally, so what? What ever happens if any corporation yells at MS? They get a slightly cheaper deal on the next batch of crap? Has anyone ever gotten their money back and been reimbursed for extra manhours of labor to fix their stuff? I want to see it, see the proof that makes these managers and bosses insist it'sa better deal. If this actualproof exists, then great! Stick with MS, if not, got to FOSS, because it'sless cost and more functional. Stand up to the boss and ask politily where MS cut them a refund or compensation check, actual money, for their supposedly superior products when they have FUBARED. I dare and challenge anyone to do that and provide verifiable references to the fact.

Risks in installing too many extensions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks Ghodmode.

I was the original poster.

I tried killing every trace of Firefox I
could find on hard drives and in the
registry. Still no luck.

Maybe I'll have to kill off Mozilla too,
but I'd really hate to do that, especially
since Moz 1.8a is still working.

Pornzilla

[rd_syringe]

I just love the idea of this, though it doesn't seem to be updated very often.

Plug for Bookmarksync

[Simulant]

If you use multiple machines and have an ftp or web server handy, this one is great. http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/install.php/B ookmarks_FTP_0.9.6.xpi?id=14&vid=15

Re:Plug for Bookmarksync

[mikefoley]

I think that only works with Firefox.

(Why do developers only put out Firefox extensions?)

FIX THE CALENDAR!

[EvilStein]

All these other plugins are just fluff if adoption is severely hampered by the lack of a fully functional calendar.

Build the calendar, and they will come.. come away from Outlook.
It *can* happen.

Calendar should be #1 priority right now.. mail & news is great, the browser is great.. but the lack of a calendar *really is stopping people* from switching. At least with the dozens of small businesses that I do consulting for, it is.

I cannot emphasize this enough - a lot of small businesses (without exchange) stick to Outlook because of the pretty pointy clicky calendar.

"sunbird" isn't even close. The Mozilla Calendar is waay far off.

Come on, guys... let's dooooo it!

Re:FIX THE CALENDAR!

[data64]

If that is their only beef, maybe should point them to Yahoo! calendar (http://calendar.yahoo.com/)

Re:FIX THE CALENDAR!

[gordgekko]

I have to agree with you. It's one of the two things (the other being the tasks/to-do list feature that I really miss. I made the switch and I'm fairly happy about it but it was something I used in Outlook fairly regularly.

Re:FIX THE CALENDAR!

[Anonymous Coward]

The calendar for Firefox, etc is at least as good as Outlook's. The build from 6/22 works great in .9.1 Give it a try, you wuss. http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/download. html

Re:FIX THE CALENDAR!

[EvilStein]

No, it's NOT "just as good" - it's a buggy piece of crap that can't even recognize its own invitations.

*Serious* work needs to be done on the calendar.

They had

[xant]

If you look at the roadmap, and scroll down to the "OUT FOR 1.0" area, you'll see that they did in fact consider doing just that. I believe it was originally targetted for 0.9. It's probably out due to lack of resources, so contribute some time to the project and they may put it in. :-)

Do these extensions exist yet?

[Greg W.]

Do these extensions exist yet?

• Middle click a form submit button to submit the form and get the response page in a new tab/window, without losing the current window. That would be perfect for slashdot's front-page poll.
• Press some key or click something to launch a user-configurable external editor to type text into a textarea just like the one I'm typing in right now.
• Enable Javascript (or Java or Flash) on a per-domain (or even per-URL) basis.
• Click to impeach politician or repeal law of choice. ;-)

Re:Do these extensions exist yet?

[zot o'connor]

Middle click a form submit button to submit the form and get the response page in a new tab/window, without losing the current window. That would be perfect for slashdot's front-page poll.

I am not sure if this is Mozilla or Multizilla, but you can dupe the tab into a new tab, which is what I do. It works with mouse guestures as well.

Enable Javascript (or Java or Flash) on a per-domain (or even per-URL) basis.

Multizilla does this. It is easier to block/unblock once you are on the site.

Re:Do these extensions exist yet?

[zot o'connor]

Mozex allows you to edit the text area! I've had it for a year and did not realize that.

Load it. Set the editor With Full Path. Right click -> Mozex-> Edit Text Area

You must click back in the area after saving it.

I am writing this is gvim!

& Linuxers complain about poor desktop usage

[DABANSHEE]

Fact is Linux will never take off on the desktop till people can easily install binaries while the keyboard is hidden under a saturday morning broadsheet, simply by moving the curser over a link or a icon & clicking the button on the mouse.

Manage plugins across computers

[Resseguie]

I use several machines on a daily basis. I run Mozilla on all of them for web browsing and mail. I often run across a great plugin and install it on the machine I am currently using. I then have to remember/make a note/etc to install it on the other machines (or I find myself trying shortcuts that don't work because my plugins are out of sync).

Is there an easy way to manage plugins across multiple computers so that I can keep them all the same?

opera

[paxmark1]

any nice plugins for opera?

GMail Extensions

[Jedbro]

For all the GMail users out there, some must have extensions
- GMail Notifier
- GMailCompose

The best feature from MyIE2

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget to note that it was the MyIE2 developers that came up with that innovation.

If only they could overlay all their browser tweaks to the Gecko engine, it'd be perfect. As it stands, they can use the Gecko engine, but it's still a bit of a hack without the extra functionality.

Different Local and Global Optima

[4of12]

making a fiscally responsible choice

That is key.

And the reality is that, very often, choosing Microsoft solutions are locally optimal. Given that you have an existing infrastructure of Microsoft products and given that most of your employees are familiar with these products (quirks and all), the incremental best next move is more Microsoft products.

And most decision makers are heavily swayed by the here and now and what the impact will be on the bottom line of next quarter's results.

But if you start to look at hidden costs in terms of downtime, of vendor lock-in, and the rate at which Microsoft will actually deliver those new products as part of your SA investment, the cost of extra dedicated servers, server admins, desktop support techs, etc., then the long term optimum is pointing away from Microsoft and towards free and open source software solutions.

It takes a courageous manager to risk a couple of quarters of adaptation and user retraining for the better long term solution.

Phoenix, Firebird, Firefox, Firesomething!

[bunnyman]

Firesomething - Run Mozilla Spacemoose one day, Mozilla Mooncow the next!

I recommend

[RedA$$edMonkey]

The googlebar. It is very handy, just type in what you want and it opens your search in a new tab and can highlight your search words. It also does searches in froogle, dictionary and a pile of other stuff. Get it! No more clicking on google and then entering your search. It's always there.

http://googlebar.mozdev.org/index.html

Where's the plugin for "smaller footprint"?

[Kazoo the Clown]

IE still runs places where Firefox will not, or does so poorly as to be useless (32M W98, for example). Less is more...

Re:& Linuxers complain about poor desktop usag

[ocelotbob]

you mean like going to the desktop menu, going to system, configuration, packaging, browse available software? Linux has had gui-based installers for years, it's just that for the set around here, it's usually faster to go through the command line.

Multizilla

[zot o'connor]

Multizilla and Mouse Guestures are two add-ons I cannot live with out. They make browsing far more efficient for me, and really cut down on research time. Multizilla adds tabs browsing tools, referrer tools, adblocks, better brefs, session saving, on the fly perms (cookie, image, js, popups, java, plugin) and a whole lot of other features . It is so smooth I often think they are part of mozilla and wonder when I switch machines, or users, why mozilla changed!

Mouse Guestures take a while to get used too, but I even use them on a touch pad because they are so cool. And it really funny watching someone demo on that pad who is getting nervous because they just opened some windows for no reason, then their hand starts to shake :)

More features? How about just better fonts?

[ylikone]

The fonts in Firefox 0.8 were fine, but with 0.9 and 0.9.1 the fonts look terrible. I've tried changing my default fonts, changing sizes, enabling/disabling anti-aliasing/hinting. I've heard that they switched the system that handles font rendering (either through gtk or gnome or something), but in my opinion it is considerably worse now. Hope this gets resolved before 1.0 hits!

I just installed PrefBar...

[cr0sh]

Haven't played with it much (but it does seem nice on first glance), but I do have a question that I am wondering if any of you could answer (otherwise I am going to have to dig a bit to figure it out):

How do I position this new toolbar within the rest of the "default" toolbars - right now I have "stacked": Menubar, Navbar, Bookmarks, PrefBar, then tabs - I would like to reorder this "stack" to position things better.

I haven't looked deep enough, nor have I googled extensively on the problem. Tell me what I need to change/modify/add - if it is possible, that is.

Also - if anyone can give me a pointer, is is possible to set up a mime type or something to have XINE play inside the browser (or heck, even just fire up) - can anyone reccommend a good site showing all of this extra goodness howto?

Thank you in advance...

Open Closes Tabs in Multizilla

[zot o'connor]

Multizilla does this. You right click on any tab and at the bottom there is reopen closed tabs, or you can hit CTRL+Z.

Re: Nuke anything

[Lord Bitman]

Woops, there goes your post :)

Prefbar removal

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe that people still release stuff like PrefBar that's easy to install and a pain in the @ss to remove.

Read the FAQ for the instructions. Yes, you only have to edit 1 file and delete 3, but come on, you wrote a clever app, now spend an hour to let us easily remove it!

Bug has already been fixed...

[Duckman5]

I'm sorry, but that's totally incorrect.
According to the bugzilla entry (Copy the link and paste it in a new window. Links from slashdot are disabled.) for that bug, the problem is resolved. I can confirm that that is correct because I am running Firefox 0.8 right now, and the demo application was denied UniversalXPConnect priveledges.

Re:Bug has already been fixed...

[JimDabell]

I'm sorry, but that's totally incorrect.

Yep, that's already been pointed out elsewhere in the thread.

According to the bugzilla entry for that bug, the problem is resolved.

Please remember that being marked resolved means that a fix has been checked into CVS. It doesn't mean that it's available in normal builds. In this particular case, it appears that the fix has already made it into a release build, but that's not guaranteed just because it's marked as resolved in Bugzilla.

Lack of drivers could lead to rejection

[tepples]

It would have been better in my opinion to make switching browsers also entail switching OS, in the sense of "if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right".

I find "get them to switch operating systems NOW" a bad policy. Many households and organizations have sunk significant amounts of money into hardware for which no Free device driver or ported proprietary device driver exists. I will consider your opinion on the matter the moment you point to a working Linux driver for (say) the Microtek Scanmaker 4850 scanner, which the SANE web site lists as unsupported.

3rd button emulation in Windows 98

[tepples]

Perhaps your Windows 98 machine's mouse driver had 3rd button emulation turned on. Do you still have access to the Control Panel of said Windows 98 machine?

W0t?-Light viewing.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Looks like the wired article has copy-pasted and not done any real work."

Sounds like most Slashdot posters.

Anyway this, and this do me nicely.

makes more sense than what firefox does

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see a problem with edit->preferences. I mean that really is what you're doing: editing your preferences.

Firefox (and IE) on the other hand, make no sense at all. Tools->options!!? Since when have my cookies settings, my home page, and my langauge been "tools"!!? All of thoses things are selections, choices, or PREFERENCES, but they sure as heck aren't opitonal tools!

Look deeper into Firefox, much of this is there...

[megabyte405]

BIG ONE which Firefox doesn't do: - when I open a new tab (say a link from slashdot) with the middle button (same in both apps) - Netcaptor goes directly to the next tab to the right, Firefox throws my new page (tab) straight to the end of the line - so I have to click to the end rather than just go to the next Window (sounds small, but when you get used to it - it's pain to be without it)

Can't find the GUI'ed pref in firefox, but could have sworn at least Mozilla AS and earlier FireFoxish builds had a pref for opening new tabs in background. I find the current behavior to be much more intuitive, but you are accustomed to a different method, hence why it's a good use of prefs.

Captorgroups (text file with X urls in it - open that group opens all X sites) Example the News group would go to cnn.com msnbc.com theage.com.au heraldsun.com.au someothernewspublication.com.blah

This one I know they have: Go to bookmarks, bookmark this page. Check the box "Bookmark all tabs in a folder", and set the name to whatever. Now, it's a sub menu in the bookmarks menu with an "Open in Tabs" option, and as a folder in the sidebar you can right click for the same option. You could even install the Magpie extension (google it, it's popular) and you can download those <cough>media files</cough> for perusal at your own pace.

Example I want to look up Fight Club I can be in captor and do the following ALL ON THE k/B Control N (new tab - autmatically moves my cursor to the address line for typing)

Ctrl-T, Ctrl-L (Open Location) does that. Not too much longer.

type in "imdb fight club" (hit enter)

I agree, I'm betting FF has this somewhere. I know they mentioned a Keywords thing in the Why page, probably a good place to start looking.

wait

Hopefully with FF, you can skip this step. Even on dialup (like me), it's pretty snappy.

bingo I'm on the page at imdb