Slashdot Mirror
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."
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...
-SaNo
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?
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.
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.
...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.
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.
"My God...It's full of ads!" -Fry, about the Internet, Futurama
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.
The IT section color scheme sucks.
(As subject.)
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.
I'm not sure what the secret to success is, but the secret to failure lies in trying to please everyone -Bill Cosby
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).
..........FULL STOP.
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.
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
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
Maybe you could explain why it isn't a "blank check" -- seems to be the same thing as ActiveX.
I use them for moving between pages of on-line cartoons... erm... as well as...you know...
---
We spoke for about a half an hour. I don't recall a thing we said. - Colorblind James Experience
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?
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
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
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.
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
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!
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
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!)
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
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?
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.
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
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.
/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.
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
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.
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?
I was not touched there by an angel.