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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."

23 of 429 comments (clear)

  1. Why prefbar is not listed by Enry · · Score: 5, Informative

    From the prefbar web site:

    It does not work with Mozilla Firefox

  2. 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 bpowell423 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Corporate Acceptance? by buckminster · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  3. Re:At least by Jugalator · · Score: 5, Funny

    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? :-)

    --
    Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
  4. magpie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    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.
    1. Re:magpie by Alranor · · Score: 5, Informative
      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 ;)
  5. 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.

  6. missing adblock by fireduck · · Score: 5, Informative

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

  7. 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.

  8. Re:mozilla lacking features by amliebsch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
  9. 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.
  10. Flash Click to View by Spoons · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  11. Re:My two cents by Dios · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  12. Launchy not mentioned by gemal · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

    --
    Henrik Gemal
    gemal.dk
  13. RC2 works in FireFox by smoking2000 · · Score: 5, Informative
    Also from the Prefbar Website (near bottom of the page):

    PrefBar 2.3 RC2 - works with Firefox, and has many new features
  14. Re:What? No Adblock? by AllUsernamesAreGone · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  15. Wait... by KillaKen187 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  16. flash click to play by fermion · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.

    --
    "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
  17. Bookmarklets by Robotron2084 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!

  18. Re:IE by Vilim · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

    --
    History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it - Sir Winston Churchill
  19. Re:I don't get it by BrokenHalo · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.

  20. Re:At least by JimDabell · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.