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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."
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
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.
Doh! Of course it would be there!
Extremely straightforward and easy to find and understand!
Theres me thinking it would be on the Options/Web Features dialog in the "Load images" area.
Sorry for being sarcastic, and I do thank you muchly for the info, it has been something thats bugged me from day one.
I just don't think a novice user could handle changing that.
I wonder what other gems are lurking in the depths of the config area, I shall investigate later...
liqbase
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.
Unfortunately there is no way to know what to change it to so it can be "fixed." Such a wide variety of actions could occur during onClick that it would be very difficult to parse that out and do the right action.
For example, I have used javascript in an href to do the following:
And even with the location and window opens, sometimes it is done with the simple
and sometimes through a function.Random Musings
To add one more concrete example of a great development tool that I regularly use for development of web apps:
Web Developer Extension. This tool makes working with forms, CSS, images, etc. really really easy. I have been using 'View Source' or 'View Selection Source' much less often since I got this extension.
Similarly, I like to be able to search various online resources directly from my browser. To full-text search my bookmarks stored in Simpy I use browser search plugin.
In addition to that, you can get a number of other useful search plugins over at Mycroft (I keep typing Mycrosft - how bad is that!)
Simpy
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.
* Open a new window
/could/ attempt to do something sensible in the majority of cases. Or at least pop up a message saying it can't figure out what to do (maybe presenting a few options?).
/expected/ isn't going to happen is IMHO something that could be improved with just a small amount of thought.
- with contents referenceable by a URL, presumably
* Open a new window to a specific width and height
- which must also contain something pointable to via some sort of URL
* Change the location of the current page
- to something involving a URL at some point, perhaps?
* Change the source of an image on the page
- that image could be displayed in another window via a URL
* Interact with a Flash movie
- which might be referenceable via a URL
* Interact with form elements on screen
- OK, probably no relevant URL for this.
So Firefox
Your point that a general solution is impossible is accepted; however, simply opening a new tab with nothing in it and no indication to the user that what they
Even just a warning would stop me, for example, browsing through interesting adverts in Loot.com, "Open In New Tab"-ing on all the interesting ones, then looking at the tabs to see nothing but (untitled) (untitled) (untitled) (untitled) which is damn annoying.
And the behaviour of Wanadoo's email page to a control-click is just bizarre - you get the mail you clicked on in the current window, and the mailbox in the new window. It's probably quite clever how they managed to engineer exactly the opposite behaviour of what is expected.
Simple and consistent solution: The user middle clicking on any element is doing so because they desire whatever action they clicked on to occur in a new tab. The solution is to make an exact replica of the current page and its state in a new tab, and then act as if the button had been pushed on the replica page instead. Sure, there will be things that don't work right with it, but I think most of the time that will give the correct behavior. Oh, and open in new tab should work with buttons too, not just links.
Is that uninstallation addressed in the EULA (which I know no one reads) or is Macromedia engaging in violation of computer fraud and abuse statutes?
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
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