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Firefox Hacks
The first of several books on the topic of Firefox hacking (two more are due from other publishers in the coming months) Firefox Hacks sets the bar quite high. The author, Nigel McFarlane, has already written a number of other books and articles on similar topics and knows his subject well. He has also enlisted the help of a number of other cognoscenti to cover the more distant corners covered in the book.
A Web browser is a much more complex piece of software than you may realize on first examination, and Firefox -- with the core Gecko engine surrounded by a large wrapper written in XUL and JavaScript -- provides a fertile ground for any number of changes and enhancements. Firefox Hacks does a good job of mapping out the boundaries of this space.
Over the course of the now-traditional 100 hacks found in the same series' other members, this book covers hacking with, on, and to almost all aspects of Firefox and the 'net. The book is broken up into nine chapters, most worth reading by almost everyone -- even the first, "Firefox Basics," taught me a couple of tricks for getting the best out of a slow (and expensive) GPRS connection. The others are "Security," "Installation," "Web Surfing Enhancements," "Power Tools for Web Developers," "Power XML for Web Pages," "Hack the Chrome Ugly," "Hack the Chrome Cleanly," and "Work More Closely With Firefox." I have to say I felt the chapter on Power XML (with 17 of the 100 hacks) was far too general on Web technologies and a little out of place; easily half the hacks in that chapter could have been dropped without any real loss to a reader's understanding of Firefox. I would have preferred more on the browser itself. No insult intended to Seth Dillingham, who wrote four of the hacks I'd throw out -- they are well written and do show how best to deal with Web technologies inside Firefox. I just felt that the space would have been better devoted to more "core" topics.
The first four chapters will be useful to everyone, covering mainly the use of Firefox. From that point, the hacks become increasingly complex as they cover Web development, then modifying the interface, before covering such arcana as creating extensions and custom builds.
I am hard pressed to think of a corner of Firefox not at least touched, though it must be said that the later hacks only touch on the topics covered without really providing a lot of depth. If you get to the last two chapters in the book, performing and expanding on the hacks, you will probably need a great deal more information and assistance to branch out on your own. McFarlane, however, points out the possibilities and gets you started. I didn't feel this was a flaw, just that a line had been drawn, as it must unless the book was going to be three times the size and price.
The book is fairly well written. The quality of writing and editing fall into that middle ground of "fairly good" that one expects from the average O'Reilly book, though not the "excellent" they can sometimes hit. The structure and flow are excellent, making the book readable in large chunks -- enough sticks that when you are back in front of the computer using Firefox you can remember a few things. (Or, sometimes, I remembered that a hint existed and was able to easily find and use the information.)
For a closer look there is a decent page at O'Reilly with links to six example hacks, the table of contents (listing all 100 hacks) and the index.
To conclude, I'm not sure I could recommend this book to everyone; it spends a little too much time a fair way along the technology curve for those who aren't ready for some programming, though for anyone who wants to get their hands dirty and perform some hardcore hacking on their favourite browser, then this is an above-average volume. For someone who is happy as "just a user," this book may be too much: wait and see what else emerges into the Firefox book market -- including O'Reilly's other offering, the soon-to-be-released Don't Click on the Blue E, which they describe as giving "non-technical users a convenient roadmap for switching to a better web browser--Firefox."
Also watch soon for a review of Prentice Hall's Firefox & Thunderbird Garage. You can purchase Firefox Hacks from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
If there is an application I run more often than my Web browser, particularly since I also use it as my email client, then I don't know what it might be. As a Firefox convert
If there is any English that would make me not want to read this article, particularly since English is my first language, then I don't know what that might be.
But if it doesn't tell me how to load Firefox on a memory stick for my PSP, I'm not interested.
An excellent book. The explanation of about:config and its mods are very useful.
I did the opposite of the Anonymity sub-chapter by putting my home page URL into my referrer string.
http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/faq#acrobat
Not only "slowly" but also unstably.
Every system I've applied this FAQ entry to has much better performance.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Hack 27: Fix Web Servers to Support Firefox Content
Hack 31: Take Firefox with You
Hack 43: Waste Time with Toys and Games
Hack 44: Tweak and Troubleshoot CSS Designs
Hack 69: Make New Tags and Widgets with XBL
Hack 92: Get a Custom, Prebuilt Version
--
Fairfax Underground: Where Fairfax County comes out to play
This isn't funny - I have the same problem logging into my company intranet page. It requires a username and password. Under IE these stored passwords are sent immediately. With Firefox I have to click the confirmation each time. It's enough of a hassle that I redirected my Firefox home page away from the intranet.
The new Firefox prototype is amazing. It works by "neuralink" allowing you to think about what website you want to go to and it opens in the browser. The only caveat so far is you have to think in Russian in order for it to work.
Sorry for the slightly offtopic comment, but i have to post this.
O'reilly have a book called Don't click on the blue E! that's a kind of migration guide from IE to Firefox for disenchanted Internet Explorer users.
I just love the title of it. Frankly, how many Firefox users trying to get thir sister/mother/grandma to use Firefox (mostly because they're sick of being called to remove spywares/viruses induced by IE) have actually use that phrase?
A computer makes it possible to do, in half an hour, tasks which were completely unnecessary to do before.
I own several O'Reilly books, many of them relating to Hacks - whether it be for Postfix, OS X, et cetera. It's funny (or perhaps just interesting, depending on your sense of humor) how the term "hack" has evolved over time. Am I a hacker if I utilize a book to balance a shaky table? Of course I'm being a bit facetious with that example!
I understand this might be (mistakenly) modded offtopic, but hopefully the powers that be acknowledge the relevance.
Sahil
This is a pretty ingenious script that
- Opens up windows (or tabs, depending on how you open the link) as fast as your computer can - 100% CPU
- Each window displays gay porn
- Plays a loud sound "Hey everybody I'm looking at gay porno"
- Behind the scenes it also copies the contents of your clipboard to this guy.
It works in IE and firefox. It is simply a page with an image, a flash movie, and a javascript that copies your clipboard to a field then 'submit()'s' the form, reloading the page.Very simple and bypasses popup blockers (at least the ones I have on).
This has got to be a security hole in firefox, both on the ability to open windows/tabs, and copying the clipboard.
If you want to have a look, use:
WARNING: dont click on this link, just copy the wget command to a shell. Dont say I didn't warn you...That's a different problem. Internet explorer won't allow you to submit a password in the URL anymore either.
The reason your intranet works for everyone on IE is because IE supports Windows integrated security. It can tell that you are who you say you are because your machine is joined to the Windows domain.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
If you need windows Auth in firefox do the following: open firefox browse to about:config find network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trused-uris modify the value and enter in your intranet sites that you must pass your username and password to. For some site i connect to i also had to add values to: network.negotiate-auth.delegation-uris network.negotiate-auth.trusted-uris