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."

Comments

Yet more good reasons to switch from IE

[Slashbot Hive-Mind]

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

Re:Yet more good reasons to switch from IE

[qshapadooy]

about:config

Preference Name: image.animation_mode
Value: once

Re:Yet more good reasons to switch from IE

[TMOLI 42]

"Flashblock is an extension for the Mozilla and Firebird browsers that takes a pessemistic approach to dealing with Macromedia Flash content on a webpage and blocks ALL Flash content from loading. It then leaves a placeholder on the page that allows you to click to view the Flash content." - flashblock.mozdev.org

Works well for me but read the notes on the Installation page about known bugs. When you mouse over the blocked flash movies my cpu still shoots up a little, but not nearly as much as without this extention.

Tabs

[frankthechicken]

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.

my most used extension ever...

[huphtur]

...has to be Web Developer.
A MUST for every webnerd.
It even lets you edit CSS live on the web.

adblock

[seanismdotcom]

adblock is one of the greatest extensions I must say. Adblock along with the following filter block 98% of ads..

[Adblock] /[\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/

Re:adblock

[glpierce]

Text in Regular Expressions isn't case-dependent in Adblock - you only need "a" insted of "[Aa]".

Adblock

[strider44]

As extensions go, nothing beats adblock.

Re:Switch tabs ?

[qshapadooy]

You were so close. Control+[1-9] goes to tab 1-9.

Then there's always Control+Tab/Shift Tab or Control+PageUp/Down to go to next/previous tabs.

Wikalong

[phUnBalanced]

A little blatant self promotion. (I apologize)

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.

Re:Why people cling to IE

[SimplePaul]

1. Right-click on an image
2. Select 'Copy Image'
3. Paste into mspaint, Photoshop, etc.

This works fine in FireFox 0.9.3

Some useful links

[t7]

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

Flashblock

[Artichoke]

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.

Re:Flashblock

[fishdan]

Yea, I must agree -- macromedia employs the same tactics as most spyware companies to install stuff without your permission, and with the same excuses. I've stopped allowing Flash on our 300 workstation computers here, and I've banned Flash from the sites we host until I can see Macromedia showing higher level of ethical programming -- namely, I should not need an extension to selectively disable flash.

I talked to a Flash evangelist about this, and he essentially told me " our real business is showing you ads that you cannot avoid. "

Ssshhhhhhh. (Have you tried AdBlock?)

[ubiquitin]

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.

My extensions

[Sunspire]

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.

Warning Parent link is to Goat.sec! and Scat pic!

[spineboy]

just a warning, if you look at it wash your eyes with gasoline.

Re:adblock I have a question ....

[ticklemeozmo]

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

Re:Why people cling to IE

[wagemonkey]

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.

Here is an extension to let her do that too.

Re:I haven't switched...my reasons are...

[Nimey]

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.

You'll want the version that's built with GTK2, here.

BugMeNot

[Takkuri]

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.

extensions and upgrades

[harlows_monkeys]

One thing to be careful with...Firefox doesn't handle upgrades well when you have extensions. For example, if you had the Flash blocker (which makes it so you have to explicitly click to play Flash) installed in 0.8x, and upgraded to 0.9x, and let it import your settings, it also imports whatever it is that tells it that Flash is handled by that extension. But you no longer have that extension, so you simply cannot see Flash.

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.

Re:extensions and upgrades

[typhoonius]

it also imports whatever it is that tells it that Flash is handled by that extension

That'd be userChrome.css, in the chrome directory of your profile directory. Just remove it.

The Weatherfox extension is pretty neat. It shows you your local weather in your status bar. I showed it to my sister so she wouldn't have to use crappy programs like WeatherBug.

Re:Are you sure about that?

[Artichoke]

> And even more evil for uninstalling Flashblock, if that's true.

I am ashamed to discover that it is not true. Abject apologies to Macromedia.

I've failed to entirely recreate my previous findings. My best guess is that Flashblock lets some through its net and I mistook this for Flash Player circumventing Flashblock.

Yes, Flash Click To View is a better name, if more unwieldy.

RETRACTION

[Artichoke]

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.

Re:Ssshhhhhhh. (Have you tried AdBlock?)

[OneFix]

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.

OT: alternatives to weather.com

[varebel]

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.