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."

Comments

Sorry but the list is BS

[A beautiful mind]

For example, NoScript, which does make Firefox safer, but isn't worth the hassle Says who?

Re:Sorry but the list is BS

[Gr8Apes]

No kidding. This article should be renamed:

What users need to do to maximize our cashflow.

Re:Sorry but the list is BS

[voice_of_all_reason]

It derides fasterfox for wasting bandwidth (a genuine concern), videodownloader on spurious speed/usage claims, and adblock specifically by saying "where would the web be if everyone blocked ads."

This news source is not objective and is, therefore, made of Fail.

Re:Sorry but the list is BS

[deanoaz]

If the web content disappears because I don't see the ads, then I'll happily live without the content. If my favorite TV shows go off the air because I skip most of the ads when I watch, I'll watch something else instead. If every TV show goes off the air, I'll read more books.

What I won't do is expose myself to more advertising than I have to.

"Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people." - George Bernard Shaw

Re:Sorry but the list is BS

[Andy Dodd]

I think that's why Google has been so successful with their ad system.

The targeting is one thing, but far more important is that Google's ads tend to be far less intrusive (and thus far less likely to get added to a user's blocklist).

Re:Sorry but the list is BS

[misleb]

I think he's saying that most sites simply wouldn't get any revenue because at least he (and probably myself) would neither pay for the content (in most cases) nor suffer ads. I think he's just being honest. Fact is that a lot of sites just wouldn't exist without ad support. But then, so what? That isn't his (or my) problem beyond there being a smaller number of sites available to browse. There was an internet before advertising was ubiquitous, ya know. Even today, plenty of sites manage to get by without advertising OR charging for content.

Finally, what's the "winning" scenario here - consumers (if they can be called that) - getting everything for free?

Winning is businesses finding better ways to make money than by annoying the general user. And yes, I find any and all ads annoying. I don't care if they are relevent or targetted or whatever. If I want to see/here about a company, I will seek them out. If there is any "legitimate"
form of advertising, it is in the form of yellowpages-like directories or catalogs. Beyond that, I don't want to see it or here it. And quite frankly, I don't give a crap how it affects business.

-matthew

Re:Sorry but the list is BS

[BalanceOfJudgement]

Like I am actually overwhelmed. You just don't realize how in prevelent advertising is until you've shielded youself from it for a while. Mass ad blocking is like a drug.

You just said something else, although you didn't realize it:

That mass advertising itself is also like a drug. I'm constantly amazed when I hear people talk about their experiences when they don't watch TV or go on the internet for awhile.. it's like they see the world completely differently, and in fact, they do: without the constant drum of advertising against their skulls, they start to see a world NOT based entirely on crass consumerism, a world where there IS meaning and simply joy in things like going to a picnic or talking to your family or reading a book on a gentle afternoon.

We've become so conditioned to be the perfect consumers that we're actually surprised when we step out of that mold. I never watch or listen to ads anymore, and advertisers be damned: I'll buy your product when and if I need it, and only then will I go looking for it. You do not need to spend every waking moment of my life telling me I am a worthless piece of shit because I don't have the latest gadget or waving things in my face that you KNOW I'm going to have to use credit to buy.

Fuck you, all of you. I am a human being, not a machine you can control.

Sure

[utlemming]

Wow, that was the most biased article that I have read in a long time. The summary, for those that didn't RTFA, they pretty much say avoid all the things that make a web master's life difficult; it was from a website perspective and not from the user. Anyhow, it is not worth the read and definitely is not news.

here's the tell...

[Naurgrim]

They're just pissed that NoScript and AdBlock knock down their revenue stream.

"...while continuing to support the sites we love by allowing most ads to appear."

Bzzt - sorry. I chose to not see ads.

As pointless as the last article

[WarwickRyan]

Adblock is bad because it makes their site readable?

NoScript bad because it stops nasty/naughty javascript?

PDF download bad because it stops embedded PDFs breaking your system (but also stops hacked tracking links from working)?

TrackMeNot because it stops you being tracked and wastes bandwidth?

I'd suggest the only waste of bandwidth their is their site!

#3 = Adblock? No bias there

[Excelcia]

But if everyone blocked ads, how would sites such as ours continue to offer content free of charge?

If everyone who didn't want to see ads blocked them, then the ads that were seen would have more value because they would be seen by people who wanted to see them. Pushing an ad on someone who doesn't want to see it is, what, going to suddenly make that person buy something?

I freely admit I block every ad I can. If I'm going to buy something, I'll actively go looking for it. I resent people telling me that I'm damaging them by not displaying their ads on my PC. Your ads are valueless when displayed on my PC anyway, so why should I expose myself to them? The ad industry has not endeared itself to the internet community. They have only themselves to blame for people wanting to block them.

Fasterfox

[SevenHands]

How about a plugin that fetches all subsequent pages of articles and condenses into a single webpage so a user doesn't have to follow five page links to read the whole article.

Re:Hey, I like NoScript

[Hatta]

Exactly, you only have to whitelist a site once. And it takes all of 2 seconds. Annoying scripts however, will fuck with you every time you visit a site. It's not long until the benefits manifest. And since we tend to spend most of our time on sites we've been before, it's really pretty rare that I have to whitelist anything.

In a perfect world, we wouldn't have to deal with client side scripting at all. It's inconvenient, dangerous, and downright impolite. If you want me to see your page, do your processing on YOUR computer. Until then, noscript will have to do.

Re:Adblock and Adblock Plus?!?!

[StormReaver]

"And don't forget -- gotta navigate all 4 pages for maximum impressions!"

You hit on one of my pet peeves -- web sites that break a single article into multiple pages. I rarely go beyond the first page, and I only read the first page of this self-serving article. If I knew ahead of time that this was one of those articles, I would have skipped it entirely. Maybe a [WARNING: multiple pages] heads-up is warranted on future Slashdot postings.

Re:Hey, I like NoScript

[Mr2cents]

FTA:

For some reason, paranoia seems to be cool among Web geeks [...] Can you be paying attention to security and not be paranoid at the same time?

Fasterfox

[glwtta]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Fasterfox doesn't prefetch links unless you specifically enable that option (or they are marked for prefetching, and who does that?). It doesn't matter which level you select, the indiscriminate prefetching is a separate option.

Its main benefits are multiple connections and pipelining (oh and the timer - I love the timer). To say that you should throw the whole thing out because they don't like prefetching (which is indeed a poor idea) is just plain silly.

Also, what's with the extremely patronizing tone of the whole article? Who made them the hall monitors of the internet?

Re:Hey, I like NoScript

[flynt]

I hate dancing baloney on a web page, and doubly so when it's for useless, distracting, intrusive advertising.

Is there any other kind of dancing baloney?

Re:Missing from the list

[ShieldW0lf]

That's funny as hell.

#1 Fasterfox: Don't use it, it hammers webservers! There are a lot of links on the page that you are NEVER going to click on, mostly ads. This prefetches all those ads from the adservers webserver, but you're not looking at them! Not cool!

#2 NoScript: Don't use it, it's annoying. Plus, it screws up important scripts. For example, the article has these scripts:

function popup( ...
function popup_noscroll( ...
function switchPage( ... // this ord is used for Double Click Integration
ord=Math.random()*10000000000000000;

Do you really want to have to deal with the trouble?

#3 AdBlock: Do you think we do this to provide you with lame lists? We don't. We do this to make you watch ads. And you have to watch them! Didn't you get that under #2? You're breaking the social contract, you bastard!

What a joke.