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Building a Better Mozilla With Plugins

Posted by michael on from the halt-and-catch-fire dept.

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."

22 of 429 comments (clear)

  1. Corporate Acceptance? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Corporate Acceptance? by rjstanford · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

      --
      You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
    2. Re:Corporate Acceptance? by o1d5ch001 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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!!

      --
      Q. What is Calvin's monster snowman called? A. The Torment Of Existence Weighed Against The Horror of Non Being
  2. Tabextension by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  3. Re:At least by PeterPumpkin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. My personal favourite... by Masa · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...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.

  5. All-in-One Gestures by tmhsiao · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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
  6. fav ext by Dreadlord · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  7. What they really need... by mpath · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
  8. My browsing habits are different by spineboy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
  9. BugMeNot by spellraiser · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
  10. actually by not_a_product_id · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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

  11. Mozilla Extensions & MacOS 1-9 by Schlemphfer · · Score: 3, Interesting
    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?

    --
    I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
  12. Re:At least by PeterPumpkin · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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 ;)

  13. Re:IE by KingJoshi · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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
  14. Re:The best of the bunch... by KjetilK · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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
  15. blah blah by XO · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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/
  16. Automatic password plugin? by ghaushe · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Automatic password plugin? by The+One+KEA · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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

      --
      SCREW THE ADS! http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Proud user of teh Fox of Fire - Registered Linux User #289618
  17. Re:useragent spoofing bad? by dmaxwell · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  18. Now if only I could load them by pjpII · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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

  19. Re:Adblock. Simply amazing. by ErikRed1488 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.