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Exploring Firefox Extensions
Gary writes "If you haven't made the switch to Mozilla Firefox it may be because you aren't aware of the great benefits Firefox has over IE. Flexbeta has posted a nice HOWTO guide on Firefox extensions; my favorite is the Target Alert extension which displays a small graphic next to links that are not web pages. For example a mailto: link will display a small envelope, a link to a PDF file will display a small Adobe icon, etc."
You know, I wish they would stop changing their name. I use Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox as my sole browser and absolutely enjoy it. The problem is, I am trying to get my family to use it as well, but trying to keep them straight on what it is called is getting a little ridiculous. Conversation with family: "You know that browser I gave you a link on...No, not Mozilla. Yeah, it was Firebird. No now its called Firefox. I don't know why, just use it"
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We are the collective Slashbot HiveMind
FireFox features I can't live without:
1. Middle click to open link in new window/tab
2. Find as you type
3. Themes/Skins/Chromes
4. Customizable toolbars
5. Plugins that allow me to put just about anything on the toolbars
6. Great development tools - javascript console, venkman debugger, live-headers plugin
All that boils down to:
1. Easier to use
2. Easier to customize
3. Broader advanced feature set
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We are the collective Slashbot HiveMind
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 for browsing Slashdot, this kind of helps.
Thought I might as well make the effort to read the article before commenting. But it's /.ed already.
My favourite: webdeveloper.
You know what I miss? Leeches.
...has to be Web Developer.
A MUST for every webnerd.
It even lets you edit CSS live on the web.
adblock is one of the greatest extensions I must say. Adblock along with the following filter block 98% of ads..
/[\W\d][Aa]d(server|s|remote)?[\W\d]/ /[\W\d][Bb]anner(s|id\=)?[\W\d]/ /[\W\d][Ss]ponsors?[\W\d]/ /amazon\.com.*\W(promotions|marketing|merchants|st ores|associates)\W/ /yimg\.com.*\W(a|flash)\W/
[Adblock]
http://seanism.com/
The best thing I like about firefox is not that it has extensions , but that the extensions are done up in Javascript and XUL (most of them are). I can safely install most of these because I just take a peek at the code (*tinfoil hat*) to make sure there are no obvious backdoors in it.
:)
Thankfully most extensions are done up cleanly , so it's easy to understand that there is no "crazy" code or backdoors hidden.
Lastly they run the same (almost) everywhere
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Is there a nice extension that does shortcut keys to tabs ?
(E.g. galeon -> Alt + 2 = Jump to window 2)
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www.jmeeting.com - meet friends.
Firefox is the ultimate porn browser !
As extensions go, nothing beats adblock.
When one of my work mates stepped out for a bit leaving his Firefox running , we just opened Yahoo and did a "Show Passwords" in Webdeveloper :)
That'll teach him not to leave his PC unlocked.
If you know who I am, I'll have to kill you
The thing that has kept me away from Firefox and Mozilla is that each has very large menu bars when compared to IE. You have the Standard Menu bar, the back/forward/stop/etc bar, the address bar; it all adds up.
With IE you could always throw them all up on one line with small icons and it took up very little space at the top of your window when you have the browser minimized.
The Compact Menu extension for Firefox allows me to setup the menu bar very similarly; then just use a small icon theme and boom I have almost the same effect.
Now that I can see the screen the way I want I have to admit firefox is indeed a very nice browser.
I wish somebody would port mozex to Mac OS X. (And no, I don't think I could manage it myself)
I introduced my step-daughter's girl friend to Firefox when she was complaining about all the pop-ups in IE, but after about 5 minutes she switched back to IE. The only reason: In IE you can copy an image to the clip buffer and paste it into Photoshop or some other graphic program (she was grabbing pictures to make her Livejournal icons), but in Firefox (and Mozilla) you have to save the image and then open it in Photoshop as an extra step. Evidently managing all those little files was more effort to her than dismissing all the popups.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
1: Mozilla Firefox had terrible fonts on Linux. I know there is the possibility of using one compiled with xft. But where is it? Whenever a new release is announced, the version producing those bad fonts is what I find.
2: I find that it is slower than Konqueror on most sites. My only use of Mozilla Firefox is on Gmail. I wonder why Google will not support Konqueror yet.
3: Firefox keeps some important passwords long after I have logged out of my online baking site. It is not the problem of the site but Firefox. I have confirmed this.
Please note that I am no expert in these matters. I just download stuff and use it as such.
Cb..
Well guess what, I'm still using the damn thing and have become a huge evangelist for it. And 99.9% of the reason is the great extension mechanism and growing library of how-did-I-live-without-this extensions. If the browser wars really do take off, I think that XUL might have a bigger impact long term, but definitely for now extensions are the killer app that is pulling people onto the Mozilla platform.
Peer Pressure
I've written up a little extension called Wikalong.
Basically, it puts a wiki in your sidebar, that is indexed off the current page you are viewing. The wiki is online so anyone using the plugin, that visits a page you make notes on will see your notes, and vice versa.
It doesn't work perfectly yet, but I'm hoping to attract some smarter people than I to help get it straightened out.
More details on the site I linked above.
I am quite interested in how the Mozilla team decide what goes into the browser, and what should be left as an extension. Many built-in features of Firefox can actually made made as an extension instead, which could make the browser more lightweight and start up faster. Yes it would require the user to download more extensions, and I think it could be solved by providing extension packs with several useful extensions put into one easy-to-install package.
..is Adblock http://adblock.mozdev.org/
Blocks all annoying ads. Highly custumisable.
It's a pleasure to browse the web without ads!
I came across this a while ago and thought it would be useful for helping out some novice users who don't understand helper applications and the like. Alas, it's mostly useless. It uses the 3 digit extension, not the MIME type. So it's useless for content served dynamically via CGI scripts. It would also be trivial for a malicious user to create a website, post some .doc files, which would show up as Word Documents, and instead change the MIME type and serve up JavaScript or VBScript to do something evil.
The right way to do this is to get the HTTP Headers and see what MIME type is being returned by the server.
I'm a FireFox user - have been since it was Phoenix - but so many of the skins and plugins have too much of a "Oooh, shiny!" factor to them. How about more flexible X.509 configuration or a harcore Kiosk mode (that's the reason most kiosks run IE) or something like that. It has the same problem as WinAMP - there are far too many skins (40% of which have UI design issues; 40% of which are identical to each other, and 20% might be useful) and not enough technical plugins.
To pre-emptively fend off trolls, yes I know it's free, you get what you pay for, if you don't like it go code it yourself, etc, etc.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
I use webdeveloper - it certainly is very useful... I also use session saver, which is a bit like an extremely scaled down Tabbrowser extensions. It has in problem in that if you don't close the main browser window as the last Firefox window, it is extremely hard (well, I haven't found a way) to get Firefox back to opening in a mode that includes any toolbars, an address bar, and from a website that isn't "Sign up for Gmail" (as was the last window that I closed -.-). Oh - is it just me or doesn't the webpage the article is linked to work at the moment? :S
I also love WebDeveloper, DownThemAll, GMailCompose, SwitchProxy, and the ever-popular TabBrowser Prefs.
OK, maybe I'm a little over-extensioned.
'Apply new extension without Firefox restart'-Extension
An email has been sent to the administrator notifying them of the problem. Please try again later.
Is this a direct effect of the slashddos plugin?
Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
Linux users can select text in a webpage and middle-click: this will take them to the first hit in Google with the selected text as search term. This is amazing!
So I propose a new internet game. Start from a page, e.g. slashdot, and try to reach a certain other page, say somethingawful.com, by just selecting text and middle-clicking. Clicking hyperlinks is not allowed! Have fun!
hi guys -- anyone out there an XUL expert? we're hiring! we need someone who can do some GUI work and help us set up a build system for our project. can you contact me at murray@qunu.com ? (there should be 2/3 months full time work here)
thanks in advance...
Maybe it's my installation, but every time I try to install an extension either it doesn't install or I have to reinstall firefox because it won't start anymore. I'm writing this in konqueror as I just tried to install adblocker and firefox won't start anymore after quitting.
I'd say the extensions system needs just a bit more work. And mind you, I've seen a lot of mozilla bugs as I've been with mozilla since version 0.8.x
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"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
Texturizer.net has a nice collection of extensions you may not find on mozilla's dev site.
Some extensions I'm currently using:
Flat Bookmark Editing
Add Bookmark Here
CuteMenus
Paste and Go
Gmail Notifier(Still works)
Free iPods? Sure. freeipods.com
Nuke Anything is a favorite of mine. Right click an image, table, or even a frame, select "Remove this object" and it's zapped from the page layout. Quite useful for removing images or overly large margins.
Ahh... I can always rely on /. for a daily dose of Victorian puritanism.
Flashblock replaces Macromedia Flash animations with a button you have to click to download and run the animation. Most uses of Flash are abominations to me; I like to choose when to consume it.
Gripe wrt Macromedia: a couple of days back I installed the latest and greatest Flash player from Macromedia on my WinXP box and it uninstalled Flashblock for me.
Better yet: it also prevents subsequent (re-)installation of Flashblock.
Solution: download Flaskblock.xpi, unzip it, mod so that it installs under a nom de guerre, rezip and install.
Anybody at Macromedia, if you're listening: STOP BEING NAUGHTY.
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Arse
not only adblock is great. Custom hosts file greatly increases browsing sanity.
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
stop slashdoting useful web sites
can't download anything now
/ss
Tabbrowser Preferences - very useful, nearly everything you can dream of to configure the tab-behaviour /.
ReloadEvery - the only reason why I use Firefox, autoreload is a must and just perfect for pages like
Linkification - alot of boards that I use have clickable links disabled for "security reasons". This extension brings back the link.
googlebar - not really necessary but nice to have
Dict - not used yet, but sounds promising
BookmarksHome - great thing, always missed it
Autofill - not used yet, but sounds good
Did I miss anything necessary?
...signed XPI?
I mean before all those bells and whistles. As a plugin developer i greatly miss them
(not this, but one that really works).
And pleaaaaaaase before you tell me it's useless, go ahead and try to convince some Joe user to install "unsigned hence possibly dangerous" plugin.
Shouldn't you be getting to your "Nazis for Bush" meeting?
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
I changed recently from IE to Opera. It took one week to give up using IE by mistake. Opera is far superior for everyday use BUT I still have use IE sometimes when pages are not looking otherwise readable. Two favourite functionalities, without I can not live and well not sure if you really need anything else :)
Mouse gestures and mouse zoom for pages with too small print (too common mistake).
I haven't switched [from Mozilla Suite], and will not switch anytime soon because I find that: -
1: Mozilla Suite has an email client.
2: I can access the same calendar application from both the browser and the email client.
3: For the most part, Firefox extensions work perfectly on the suite.
4: I already have junk mail controls set on Mozilla. If I were to import mail into Thunderbird, the first time I run Junk Mail Controls on the folder about half of my emails end up in Trash.
The World is Yours.
...like this one piss me off. Why do I need to read the intro text and then click "Next" to go to page 2? And then later to go to page 3, 4, 5, etc?
Why do people think it's cool to split articles up into pages like this, making the user click a "Next page" link? Are they aware that web browsers have a veritcal scroll bar? Do they know they could show us the whole thing at once?
It's not as though simple text will take too long to transfer. Do they just want us to see a wider array of their ads?
One of the many things I hate. thingsihate.org
I think it was thirdvoice back in '99 that had something similar which had lawsuits aflyin'. Amazing how things have settled down. :)
Does anyone know of a way to stop this kind of advertising besides turning off JavaScript in the browser?
Are there any Firefox extensions in place that can recognize these types of adverts and squash them? There are often enough DHTML layes in a page these days that I assume it's hard to tell the difference between one meant for advertising and another meant to hold helpful content to support the page.
The idea's nice, but for those of us who don't like having a sidebar open all the time, a useful feature to have would be having the information in some kind of drop down box that can be opened/closed depending on when it's wanted.
it's a link to yet another 'Gay Nigger Association of America' domain.
Well since everyone is asking something in this thread I'll ask too :)
Is it possible to open link in next available tab in mozilla? You see, I may have tabs 1 and 2 reserved for browsing slashdot, 1:st tab for main level comments and 2:nd tab for comment threads. I would like to open threads to 2:nd tab just by clicking a link, not by drag & drop.
I know its possible to open a link into a new tab but I dont want that because I may have tabs 3,4,5 etc. reserved for something else.
Better turn down your speaker volume before clicking this one.
Uses a raial slur towards people of African-American descent. Very offensive.
simply surfing to websites to compromise your machine? I agree, there's lots more hoops to jump through to compromise your box with firefox.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Pssssst. What really revolutionized my browsing and will make it very hard for me to switch away from FireFox is AdBlock. Right-click on any image, flash animation, or iframe, and you can permanently add it to a block list. (Sshhhhh Don't tell anyone, but I don't see ads on slashdot, CNN, NYTimes, or any of my favorite periodicals any more.) If there was a way to keep a centralized list of blocked sites or an easy way to import and export the lists, then you'd have a real-time distributed content-blocking system.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Here's some extensions I like that I haven't seen mentioned yet:
Magpie. Those who've used FlashGet with IE will love this little thing. It'll snatch all the files pointed to by links from a page according to some pattern, for example *jpg, and save them to disk or open them up as tabs. Great for collecting "nature pictures".
Firefox's bookmark dialog's "Create in" feature pisses me off. It never, ever, has the folders you need in it's puny little drop down. OpenBook removes it and replaces it with the full bookmarks folder tree.
You can reorder tabs with MiniT using simple drag and drop on the tab bar. I think this should maybe be added to Firefox itself, it's pretty basic functionality.
It's like deja vu all over again.
nt
I like the way it allows the creation of things for niche markets. For example, tarzan.spoox.org is the most comprehensive online discography for drumnbass, and you can get things which let you search tarzan by track/artist/label, from where the google search is.
INTERESTING - Fucking tossers, dont even click on links before modding them up
MOD PARENT DOWN goatse
Are you so stupid that you can't even read the other replies that have already said that?
Fucking dimbulb.
For example, the Alert box that appears when you type an invalid address like this which brings up the dialogue [xyz could not be found. Please check the name and try again.]
I would like to have all those types of dialogue messages appear inside one of those seamless alert notice thingies that a lot of software uses nowadays -- the one that appears in the bottom right-hand side of the desktop of application and displays the message (much like some IM programs, the latest Norton AV -- "Automatic updates are complete", etc, etc) and then disappears (usually scrolls off the screen) automatically after a few seconds without any user interaction required.
just a warning, if you look at it wash your eyes with gasoline.
..........FULL STOP.
...from using Firefox. When posting to forums, Firefox's input text box is way too narrow. FF Developers have said that it is a bug in the html generated by forum software. Both MSIE and Opera handle this "bug" just fine. It is one thing to adhere to a standard, but when it impacts usability, a little flexibility is needed.
If it weren't for that annoyance, I'd use FF.
Hey idiotboy, did you fail basic reading comprehension? Four posters just said the same thing before you did.
How dumb are you? Do you ride the short bus to school? Apparently even retards are given computers and access to Slashdot.
you'd have to create an "environment value" indicating you used the middle button instead, and all javascript functions triggered by that event should be tabbed.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"harcore Kiosk mode (that's the reason most kiosks run IE)"
I have yet to see a IE-based kiosk that I would call secure. The ones in my university library removed all the menus, so you can supposedly only go to sites on their page. If you just hit Ctrl-N you get a new window with all the menus, and an address bar so you can go anywhere you want. Of course you can't actually close that window because it's in kiosk mode, so I usually fix the history, point it to an innocuous site, and minimize it.
Try as I might, I can't get the bloody things to work! Is there some secret to these?
Advertisers seem to be finding a way around AdBlock by using those floating DHTML ads that fly across your screen and land in the middle of the screen and block the story you're trying to read. (Wow, that's annoying).
Does anyone know of a way to stop this kind of advertising besides turning off JavaScript in the browser?
You can block the individual JS files that load. Try blocking http://www.tek-tips.com/jsource.js
When modding "Informative", please make sure it both has a source and IS actually informative.
Prevent pop-up windows from being not-resizable ?
I often use the 'print this page' link - because when reading news it's often a far better layout for reading. Some sites pops up the printer page in a non-resizable puny little window. I'd like to be able to override the non-resizability ?
Check out my PHP Url Validator
I love Firesomething ... it really is fun for those who are moderately easy to amuse. Seeing Mozilla Megachinchilla or Mozilla Powerlemur always cracks me up... you can add your own prefixes and animals, too.
Who doesn't like free music?
Is it possiple to have Firefox logging how much time I spend on Slashdot?
except I haven't written it yet.
Baz
It would be much better if they can include at least a couple of the top rated/popular extensions as an option in the custom installation of Firefox's new RC/release?
h p?f=8
As a start, I would like to suggest:
- "All-in-One Gestures" (very similar to the Opera interface)
- "Adblock"
- Target Alert (mentioned above).
The included extensions should customizable during setup.
Later, it would be nice if the installer could offer a (dynamically retrieved) list of available extensions.
Please also post your comments in the Mozillazine forum:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.p
Maybe this link works.
File extensions are so 1990s. My site doesn't use them, so TA would be useless there unless it does a HEAD request for every link and looks at the returned media type.
Ydco co
Uninstalling user-installed software? That's unforgivable. Too bad. I used to think Flash was annoying. I guess it's not just flash that sucks, but all of Macromedia.
Here's a rule of thumb: How much can you afford to annoy your customers? That's exactly how much flash you want to inflict on visitors to your site.
What proportion of people sit through a flash movie, versus the number who click "skip intro?" I've asked that question a lot, and never gotten an answer. Web developers aren't tracking it. They aren't about to point out that an expensive feature only drives customers away. Nobody is actually looking at those statistics. These irritating time wasters are just put up without any concern for whether they are an asset or a liability.
Only a few people are so dumb that they are impressed with an online movie that they didn't choose to watch. "Ooh! Looky! Stuff on the screen is MOVING!" Maybe those people are the ideal targets for marketing.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
There is also the tried-and-true trick of null-routing the advertisers' domain name(s) to your local host. Just add the following to your hosts file:
127.0.0.1 server.that.you.are.blocking.com
I'm surprised no one's mentioned BugMeNot yet. It connects to a database of usernames and passwords, allowing you to log in as the public BugMeNot account.
This is especially useful for a one-time posting on a site, or to read members-only newspapers and things like IGN Insider.
--the browser component, has the animated images turn on or off or adjust times directly in easy for joe user to find preferences where it should be. I don't know why it isn't in firefox, have to ask them boys about that. I want a browser and email and editor, so I run the suite, and will continue to do so as long as mozilla keeps offering it. I always preferred the full netscape communicator over the stand alone navigator anyway... The chat client in Mozilla, ehh, tried it, I still prefer x-chat though, although I'll retry it with every new release, maybe it will get better.
There have been too many buffer overflows and exploits in the Flash player for my professional comfort. Policy on my own network is to uninstall Flash from Windows machines. If something comes along like the howstuffworks.com animation of the Prius transmission that justifies running Flash, then it has to be good enough to justify installing Flash.
>it uninstalled Flashblock for me
My network policy may get stricter because of this news.
And since you don't have that externsion...you can't conveniently uninstall it to restore Flash, and since that externsion wasn't available for 0.9x you could not reinstall it (it may have since become available). What you had to do was poke around in Firefox's files and figure out what to delete to remove the extension. Yuck!
So, before doing a major upgrade, uninstall all extensions.
ahem why not just not install the player browser plugin?
or is that somehow too easy?
Don't Tread on OpenSource
"If you haven't made the switch to Mozilla Firefox it may be because you aren't aware of the great benefits Firefox has over IE." Insensitive clod! I use Safari, over which Firefox has NO benefits for me whatsoever. IE? What's that?
Apparently even retards are given computers and access to Slashdot.
You can spot them by how they feel compelled to reply to redundant posts insulting the posters, without realising there is a short time delay between them and it is easy to make a redundant post becuase you never saw the previous ones.
The new extension manager was rushed out with Firefox 0.9, and had a number of major bugs. While most of those have been fixed, some problems seem to persist.
This is really frustrating. I am the developer of a Firefox extension. Problems with installing and uninstalling get blamed on it. However, extensions for Firefox 0.9+ no longer contain any installer or uinstaller code.
Flashblock has received a ton of complaints about it not working or Flash sites stopping working etc. Many people seem to think its a buggy extension. Plus considering 90%+ of users use IE I'm surprised they would go to that length for a minority used browser and an even more minority used extension.
Anyway if what you said is true that's aweful and probably illegal to boot. I'd verify what you think is happening is really happening or at least get someone else to verify it. Then file complaints with Macromedia and then spread the word to the big tech sites. Start with the Mozillazine forums first though and make sure that you can get others to reproduce this.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Does anyone know of a way to stop this kind of advertising besides turning off JavaScript in the browser?
Try emailing them and telling them. Then stop visiting their site. Websites depend on traffic and ads like that and the ones that happen during a page transition are the kind of thing that make my blood boil.
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
I use the PageUp/PageDown keys a lot on my notebook...but it seems the cursor always gets hung up in a frame or on a graphic.
Any way to fix that?
The Flash plug-in on Mac is such that under Mozilla it causes high CPU usage. A webpage with several Flash ads on a G3-class Mac will peg the CPU at 100% effectively DOS-ing your browser. You lose any browser context you have, hence dataloss.
So, flashblock is mandatory on these computers.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Here's some more extensions I use that I haven't seen mentioned.
Dictionary Search: Lets you set up various online encyclopedias and dictionaries (e.g. Wikipedia, M-W.com) so you can highlight any word in a website, right click and get a definition for it.
Allow Right-Click: Allows you to right click on sites/objects that have that option disabled.
IEView: Adds the option to open the page in IE to the right-click context menu for those few sites who won't come out of the stone ages and believe MS is the end-all, be-all of browsers.
Basics: Adds a button to the tab bar to open new tabs. This was available in Mozilla and I missed it when I first moved to Firefox.
Unclose Tab: Sometimes I'll close the wrong tab by mistake. This extension allows you to right click the tab bar and re-open a tab you just closed.
Sometimes Flash is either useful or necessary. Mostly it's neither.
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Arse
Show Old Extensions 0.1.6
>> it has been something thats bugged me from day one.
>So ask for your money back.
Yeah, and since IE came to me free of charge too, I guess I can't complain about that either, huh?
It's this kind of "the-software-was-free-so-love-it-or-else" attitude that impedes FOSS progress. Making something free doesn't make it bulletproof or impervious to critique.
-E-
Thanks for the tip on the infinitive. I hadn't had my morning coffee yet and it showed. You are correct. The "to" that went with "to do" was part of an infinitive. If I had been sharper, I would have included infinitives in my post to the AC. As for ending sentences with a preposition: there is nothing in English that prevents sentences from ending in a preposition. I would invite you to google at your leisure. You will discover that your high school english teacher was wrong and/or a snob. I am too lazy to do more than include these two links which I now point you to:
. html
2 .html
http://www.cbc.ca/news/indepth/words/prepositions
http://www.grammartips.homestead.com/prepositions
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
This target alert extension looks really cool. Too bad I just installed it in Linux, restarted and see nothing.
I gave up on extensions a long time ago in
Linux, I don't know if they work in Windows or what but 90% do not work right in Linux. Right now the only one I use that works is the bugmenot extension.
The reason I personally have not switched is because I can't view most of the sites I want to frequent - at least not with Active X enabled, which is quite a pain.
And I don't like little boxes with X's in them because my extension is incompatible.
Stop assuming that the reason why Firefox isn't used is because we're all stupid.
Extensions are a great idea - in theory. However, in reality there is a serious problem.
The Mozilla/Firefox developers keep changing basic structures in the program and as a result, each new release tends to break many themes/extensions. This problem is further compounded when the creator of an extension doesn't constantly release new versions of their extension (because they have a life, or just lost interest or whatever).
As a long time Mozilla user this is becoming quite annoying.
I was one of those people that installed Firefox over a version with Adblock and Flash Click to View installed. Now, my Firefox can't see Flash files and I have to fire up Mozilla 1.31 when I want to play Defend Your Castle or something.
At first, I was kind of annoyed about this, but then I began to realize how many ads aren't showing up. There are all kinds of stupid flash things out there, and I don't have to see them anymore. Now, I just tell people that I broke my Flash on purpose.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to fire up Moz. 1.31 and go fling some stick figures so hard that they go splat behind my castle.
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
Do you want to tell that to Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain? Ask him to rewrite The Adventures of Tom Sawyer because you're hyper-sensitive. Mark Twain only used racial slurs because he was writing a period book and like it or not, that was the status quo.
Aren't you the same type of jerk that nagged everyone not to depict the Twin Towers after 9/11, even to change pre-shot scenes. I was enraged when people got upset at the fact the title of "Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers" could be compared with the Sears Twin Towers and tried to have the name changed.
Art is art and you may not agree with it, but you should respect an artists ability to express themselves how they wish. I don't say "nigger" in regular conversation but if I was writing a period piece of literature, I wouldn't mind saying it because readers should respect my freedom to express myself.
Its missing that part where people can take over your computer through exploits that seem to be inherent in IE.
I really miss that feature. I really miss the weekly security patches to keep IE from eating my system alive.
And ActiveX. Oh my, its so wonderful, html is so limiting, but with ActiveX, my browser can do anything to my computer that anybody else wants it to. Isn't that really really cool?
So I can see why you miss IE.
For work I use Firefox. But on my home machine I use Mozilla, since I actually like having browsing and mail handy. But several of these that I tried to install said "no install script found". What gives?
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Don't you know, homosexuals are morally superior to those hetros?
As a Democrat I can honeslty say Hetroes are Der Juden.
If you haven't made the switch to Mozilla Firefox it may be because you aren't aware of the great benefits Firefox has over IE
Or because you use Opera, Safari, Mozilla, Konqueror, Camino or OmniWeb. IE and Firefox are not the only two browsers out there.
What I haven't done is make the switch to Firefox from Mozilla. Because I like the ability to do things like cut/paste/save formatted web content, and casually compose web pages.
Why did they remove the Composer component of Mozilla in Firefox? Why is Firefox being heralded, when it's just another consumer-grade browser engineered to discourage content creation.
Here's to the full Mozilla suite, forever.
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
And how precisely does Firefox know that a given link leads to a PDF file (or doesn't lead to one, for that matter)? Content type is determined by examining the response header, not the URL. Failing to obey this rule is the cause of endless browser woes.
It may be the case that guessing based on extension gives the right answer often enough to make this extension useful, but users should beware of trusting it completely.
(Note that the mailto: check *is* entirely safe, since that's a protocol check on the URL itself.)
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
If you haven't made the switch to Mozilla Firefox it may be because you aren't aware of the great benefits Firefox has over IE.
No, it is because I'm not aware of the great benefits Firefox has over Opera.
Opera is small and self-contained. I don't have to download anything else to have features like mouse gestures, custom searches, opening selected text as a link, or autorefresh, nor do I have to worry about a browser upgrade breaking half of my third-party extensions.
Sure, there are plenty of extensions that do things Opera doesn't, but I don't need a Wiki in my sidebar; I don't need to Nuke Anything; and I certainly don't need to play interactive fiction games in my browser.
... almost every extension I've tried had produced unstable behavior from Mozilla. Now I stick to the default, although admittedly I miss the extension behavior.
In my day, we used Mosaic, had to slough uphill thru 3 feet of snow to reach the computer, and liked it!
One to block any line of text containing the phrase "free ipod".
p.s. if you can't read the line above, can you tell me what extensions you're using...
You might have lost a job due to outsourcing, but blame it on your president/congress/CEO and spare the poor Indians!
raj
Sarovar.org Hosting for open source projects in Indi
" 5. Plugins that allow me to put just about anything on the toolbars "
Excuse me, but has everyone gone quite mad!? If we were talking about IE, everyone here would be tearing strips off them for the way BHOs are a terrible vulnerability, are full of spyware and trojans, and one of the worst mistakes since ActiveX. So why isn't everyone saying the same? It's the same situation and the same mistake, and you're all acting like a bunch of M$ users talking about the wonderful toolbar they've just downloaded for their browser that tells the time / checks the weather / pops up useful offers and adverts whenever you do a search.
Good thing the database has a problem so we can visit a working site.
I've investigated this further and can't reproduce my results.
My best guess is that Flashblock is not hooking all the possible ways of triggering a Flash object, and I mistook this for untoward behaviour by the latest Flash Player.
Abject apologies to Macromedia.
__
Arse
I haven't switched [from Konqueror], and will not switch anytime soon
That's perfectly KO--the main thing is, you haven't gone back to Windows and IE.
I think all of these intra-OSS browser wars, while perhaps useful for creating a bit of competition, ultimately can do greater harm to browser development. Instead of poaching users from other non-IE browsers, one purpose of these OSS browsers should be to get enough people off IE that Microsoft no longer has a browser monopoly. Gecko-based browsers are good. KHTML-based browsers are good. I personally use the latest version of Galeon; many others here use Firefox on Windows. Ultimately, the pages we look at should all look close to the same, and not require the use of proprietary, OS-specific extensions or allowances for bad coding practices, like IE often does.
If the new browsers can become widespread enough that the IE monopoly is cracked, webpage writers will have to write standards-compliant pages that don't require MS-only functionality, lest they lock out, say, 20% of their potential market. Once that happens, there will be fewer IE-only coders going into corporate settings to design intranets, fewer people growing up on writing VB apps for their own uses before going into the corporate world, presenting an even greater threat to the other MS monopoly--the desktop.
I use Galeon, you use Konq--neither of us use IE, and that's a good thing.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
I often find myself using keyboard for everything else than clicking "next page" when I read a long article split across multiple pages. Having to use the mouse for navigation to next page is really an annoyance.
Around version 0.5, I saw a plugin to solve this somewhat. I have been searching for it ever since without any luck.
This plugin was able to recognize typical variations of links leading to "next page", and then you could go to that page with a keyboard shortcut.
Anyone who knows what happened to that plugin?
Customizable search plugins are another really great feature. How come nobody has mentioned them?
:
If you're a power user and you want a bunch of extensions that put you in immediate browser heaven try these
1) Adblock (block ads) from update.mozilla.org
2) Tabbrowser Extensions (supercharged tabbed browsing) from extensionroom.mozdev.org
3) Mousegestures (mouse & rocker gestures) from update.mozilla.org
4) WebDeveloper (a must for anyone curious about a web page's construction) from update.mozilla.org
5) Bug Me Not (no need to register with those pesky sites like NY Times - requires Java tho)
6) Foxytunes (control Winamp/XMMS/Noatun/Windows Media Player/RealPlayer or any other Linux/Win media player from Firefox) from update.mozilla.org
7) PasteAndGo (no more pasting a URL and then hitting "Go" or hitting Enter) from update.mozilla.org
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
That would be Stumble Upon. You get a community of like minded users AND discover pages that they like.
I like how I have everything set up in Firefox. All of my favorite extensions, rss feeds, booksmarks, etc. Is there an easy way to back this all up? I'd also like to configure a single install package that install all of the extensions I want. Possibly by saving the extension files in subfolders?
Try the filters listed here. They block most ads for most people and very little else. The only one I've found a problem with is IMP...it has a "redirect.php" script that it runs on login which triggers one of the filters. I think there should be an adblock exclution list. It's actually interesting how popular adblock has remained even though there hasn't been a major update since at least Firefox 0.7...
I would think someone would have designed a new extention with more bells and whistles.
1. Freezes periodically (more frequently than acceptable) on NYT.com.
For me its a showstopper since I read the Times online everyday. what happens is that a single window will freeze and then all windows will subsequently freeze and I'll have to kill the entire program to recover the browser. Absolutely HORID to loose all your windows on a regular basis, especially when you open 20 articles ahead of time to read them.
I think it has something to do the ads that NYT runs and Firefox tries to kill (pop-ups, etc). Anyway, Windows XP/Firefox 0.9.1/p4 2.4 512mb.
-rt
And one I never see mentioned, spellbound. It allows one to right click on a webpages text entry box, and do a spellcheck on what has been typed.
Everything will be taken away from you.
They fix the memory usage problem in Windows. You know, when Firefox hasn't been in focus for a while, its virtual memory is really large compared to the mem usage (in Taskbar) and when you switch to it it sits there for a few dozen seconds slooooowly increasing its mem usage. I KNOW Windows is capable of allocating a GB of memory in a few seconds, so what the heck is the problem?
My favorite is the "ad blocker" blocker :-)
http://www.blue.lu/other/blocker/ or http://www.adblock.org/
Or a nuke icon, btw?
A virus icon for those intelligent M$ users? Or, maybe, a "click here if you're a man" icon for malignant links... >;-P
anyone figured out how to get their thinkpad's middlebutton/scrollbutton to do horizontal scrolling with their trackpoint (just like the vertical scrolling)?
Extensions rock! but unfortunately allot of them arn't all in one place - you gotta look! :( what im missing from opera is tabs that depress when you click them (yeah i know its stupid but its an interface thing - you need to make it look like somethings happening the instant you click) and what i really loved about opera is that if it crashed it would save the session automatically! any ideas?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Mode parent down, he is a free ipod spammer.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
...the best way to stay current with the slashdot rss feed
One could be using Firefox on a corporate intranet for some web-based accounting software, could one not?
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
my favorite extention is AdBlock, it's like having a subscription to SlashDot, only it's FREE!
Yes, several minutes is a "short time delay". I always tell my boss that when I arrive to work 17 minutes late. For some reason, he doesn't agree with you and me on that issue.
Have a look in your Bible. God is completely fine with lesbians, it only says that 'a man lying with a man is an abomination'.
Strange that a book written by a bunch of men is A-OK with lesbians.
"If you haven't made the switch to Mozilla Firefox it may be because you aren't aware of the great benefits Firefox has over IE."
It's because I'm not aware of any great benefits over Opera.
And yes, I use the ad-supported version.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
"my favorite is the Target Alert extension which displays a small graphic next to links that are not web pages. For example a mailto: link will display a small envelope, a link to a PDF file will display a small Adobe icon, etc."
Although I will admit I get caught by the PDF links sometimes. It would be better if the site designer carefully noted in his text which links are to non-Web pages. That works in ANY browser.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I am kind of amazed by the fact nobody seems to mention those two issues (quick search on 3 pages at +2). Granted those are not features.
Hell yeah, it works great. Long live firefox
I just don't like the fact that every time I upgrade Firefox to a new version, I lose all my extensions and I have to download them all over again. Fbog!
Will it kill them to have a feature to download the latest version of extensions during an upgrade?
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
chances are, your not rich enough for a tax break anyway, asshole
I used to think Weather.com was the coolest thing since sliced bread. Of course, it took Firefox's popup blocking along with the Adblock extension to make browsing it tolerable.
However, since discovering the following resources, I don't even bother with Weather.com anymore.
http://www.weather.gov/
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
http://weather.unisys.com/
These sites offer much more in-depth technical information and are not funded by ad revenue.
It uses regular expressions. Very little (If anything, you can always just add &&!site to the end of the math parts of the regexes to "whitelist") needs to be ubdated.
Not a sentence!
While writing a regex for most ppl here isn't a problem, it isn't easy for the majority of the general public. The point is that making AdBlock easier to use would make it an option for more mainstream users.
Does anyone know of a way to stop this kind of advertising besides turning off JavaScript in the browser?
Yeah, don't visit the site and send the feedback department a nasty letter. Float-over ads like that should be considered a traffic killer and avoided.
You're right thate. That extension sees a word ending in "doc" and if that word is hyperlinked it assumes it's a Word Document and adds the "W" logo.
So, it's not perfect, but then, you get what you pay for.
Scott
©20014 angrykeyboarder & Elmer Fudd. All Wights Wesewved
As usual, I'm in the minority. But of all the extensions you can get for Firefox, Adblock is not one that I bother with.
I really don't mind ads. As long as they are not popups (and Firefox's built-in popup blocker kills most of those) I'm cool.
Scott
©20014 angrykeyboarder & Elmer Fudd. All Wights Wesewved
As has been mentioned before the extention is only used to give the user a hint on what link it is. Mozilla/Firefox will naturally do a proper determination if the link is hit.
It would be possible to do a real MIME lookup but that would cause unnecessary load on the receiving WWW server. I guess HTTP1.1 allows multiple requests so coupled with only headers it wouldn't be that bad. Still since it's not exactly critical I don't see the point in doing that.
Has anybody seriously considered this? Does anyone know what would be involved in creating it? A window manager that's as easily extensible as Firefox would be great... does it exist and I just dont know what to google for? Seems like the kind of thing somebody would have at least tried and given up on by now. Only reference I've found is somebody else saying it would be neat, and doing nothing about it. (guys like me are everywhere, I guess :)
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
That's my favorite extension for firefox : Google Pagerank extension.
You may not be in the minority - it could be me. With a 400mghz laptop as my primary machine, if a web page loads one of those damned .swf ads, then my whole web experience slows to a crawl. Being able to effectively kill off those ads makes web browsing enjoyable again.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
I've been using a combination of Avant and Opera for a while now, and i love the idea of firefox (web dev tools especially) but until i can find a plugin that keeps my tabs i can't switch over to it as my main browser.
Avant and Opera both remember which pages you had open, so if you exit (or better yet if it crashes) when you restart the browser they give you an option of continuing where you left off.
I just can't live without this these days, and i'm sure there must be aplugin that does it. Anyone?
Microsoft is always saying that open source projects only copy and never innovate. Well, I guess Foxfire extensions pretty well disprove that claim.
You say I may not be?
Scott
©20014 angrykeyboarder & Elmer Fudd. All Wights Wesewved
Slashdot can't code worth shit, it's an article about firefox, and it doesn't even load right!
shame on you slashdot!
I gave up on Firefox around 0.8 because it was crashing too often the same week Mozilla 1.7 came out. Moz's been pretty reliable, though of course Slashdot and a few other web sites often render incorrectly because somebody's playing games with vertical spacing, but a redraw usually fixes that.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Firefox was a bit faster, but not really that much, and it would occasionally crash, losing all my tabs and windows, which very seldom happens on Mozilla. It was nice to have extensions (most of the Firefox extensions don't work on Mozilla), but very few of them were that important compared to not crashing.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks