Top 10 Firefox Extensions to Avoid

jcatcw writes "First there were the 20 must-have Firefox Extension and ensuing Slashdot discussion. Now Computerworld has the top 10 to avoid. For example, NoScript, which does make Firefox safer, but isn't worth the hassle, Or, VideoDownloader for slow downloads, when it works at all. Then there's Greasemonkey — on both lists."

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[stormpunk]

I'll be happy when slashdot submissions list the allononepage version of articles.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=printArticleBasic&articleId=9015599

Re:Hey, I like NoScript

[Saint Aardvark]

One more "me, too". I hate dancing baloney on a web page, and doubly so when it's for useless, distracting, intrusive advertising. Not to mention all the stupid security problems that come up when you just blindly trust any code to run in your web browser.

For a handful of sites, JavaScript is worth turning on; for everything else, there's NoScript.

The web with NoScript is so much better!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, I miss some content, but normally NoScript is saving me so much time getting there and missing junk adds, flash garbage etc.etc. that the benefit outweighs the losses hundreds of times over.

constantly having to whitelist sites so that scripts can execute in order

I admit I don't use myspace / facebook and things that go boing (though I guess that even if I did, whitelisting two sites one time wouldn't really stress me out) but I have to say that you are sadly deluded if you think that I keep whitelisting your site to see the stupid scripts on it. Most of the time, if it doesn't work straight up, then it's a good sign that the content wasn't worth it. You learn this quickly since on the first day you use noscrpt you do try whitelisting, but soon you realise you aren't really seeing anything worthwhile.

Simple message: if you are designing a site; make sure it works fine without the scripts. Otherwise you will lose viewers who just don't care enough.

VideoDownloader *is* extremely useful

[cos(x)]

For those who cannot (*BSD, non-i386 Linux) or do not want to run Flash, VideoDownloader is pretty much the only way to watch YouTube videos. That, and sometimes it actually is great to fetch a video from YouTube for offline viewing, even if you have Flash installed. Sure, the server that the extension uses may go down sometimes, but so what? Just wait a couple of seconds and try again.

The Real List of Extensions to avoid.

[mr_3ntropy]

Here is the real list of problematic extensions. I found it when trying to figure out why my FF has become so slow that I have had to go back to IE (yes, imagine how bad it must be). My tabs just remain stuck on "Loading..." with a white page and nothing happens. And the memory usage keeps climbing. Yes even with all latest versions of everything. So I set out to minimize my add-ons to the barest that I must have.

So far I have 4 I can't live without. Adblock, IE View Lite, Firefox View, and BugmeNot. Out of these I am assuming only an "Always on" types like Adblock can cause memory + slowdown issues. The others should not hurt much right?

The blacklist has some popular extensions like Adblock, but usually its only the older versions with problems. Tab Browser Extensions and Tab Browser Preferences particularly stand out as they are not recommended.

Oh and the article is drivel.

Re:Missing from the list

[jimicus]

This has to be the first time in history a link to goatse could reasonably be modded +5 Informative. It won't, of course - it'll be modded -5, Troll.

But since you ask:

http://www.goatse.cz/

[shudder] I prefer THIS informative link

[Ahnteis]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goatse

At least, I think so. There's no way I'm actually clicking on your link.

Re:Missing from the list

[Bretai]

You're breaking the social contract, you bastard!

So, would it be wrong to show people the whole list, allowing many people to ignore their ad-laden web page altogether?

Fasterfox
NoScript
Adblock Plus
PDF Download
VideoDownloader
Greasemonkey
ScribeFire
TrackMeNot
Tabbrowser Preferences
Tabbrowser Extensions
FormSpy

Hmmm. It doesn't feel wrong.