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Ask Slashdot: Most Useful Browser Extensions?
An anonymous reader writes: One of the most powerful features of modern browsers is the ability to install third-party extensions. They allow third-party developers to work on really useful niche functionality, and let users customize their browser with the tools they need. Unfortunately, this environment has the same discover-ability and security problems as standalone software. Thus, my question: what are your most useful (and safe) browser extensions? I can't live without some privacy basics like NoScript, AdBlock, and Ghostery. I also find FoxyProxy helpful for getting around geolocation requirements for media streaming. OneTab works pretty well for saving groups of browser tabs, and Pushbullet keeps getting better at managing my phone while I'm at my PC.
A lot of these addons have millions of downloads. Perhaps browser makers need to get the message and include popular functionality that people want.
Hola internet is the most useful plugin. It helps me watch video's from the US, Canada and the UK that are limited to their respective countries. I wonder, I have BBC on my TV, I can rightfully watch any BBC program, but I can't use the service on the bbc web site to watch it a day later. With Hola, I can.
no, I don't have a sig
Adblock is the 2nd thing I install on a fresh install (right after Chrome)
I had the misfortune of having to use a computer that did not have it installed. The internet pretty much seemed unusable.
Why of course a TLS validator: https://www.dnssec-validator.cz/
Death to the CA cartels! Support self-signed TLS certificates with a DNSSEC/TLSA Validator
I'm so bored I reply sarcastically on Slashdot! So random!
Definitely Adblock, Lastpass, Chrome Remote Desktop, and Tampermonkey. There's a great gmail pop3 mail checker for my pop3 only work email that works with gmail: http://www.danielslaughter.com...
While I do regret the real financial consequences for creators whose content I consume and appreciate, the annoyance factor and sometimes security risks of online advertising far outstrip my capacity for caring. Pure text ads would be fine by me, but as soon as ads start screaming at me audio-visually, I turn them the fuck off, no matter how much I like the content they surround.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
FireFox:
noscript
ghostery
noredirect
firebug
flash video downloader
Chrome:
scriptno
ghostery
It's not the browsers fault, it's the web designers. when I have my add-ons on full privacy mode, I cannot use any of my financial sites. Web designers are under the impression that input checking always has to be done on the client side.
And Yahoo!'s web pages are so crappy they don't even render correctly when I have all my add-ons running.
Google does it right - their pages don't require all the bells and whistles to be turned on in order to view the page.
But anyway, non of these add-ons would be required if web designers weren't so inept.
Web of Trust rates pages before you click on them and when you hit a pop-up it blocks the page if it's not trustworthy until you explicitly give the pop-up permission.
Chrome has its own task manager under More Tools Task Manager, so you can see which extensions are gumming up the works.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
This nice plugin will ease your life while searching for information on google by removing URL tracking.
Adblock is also a plugin I use almost always, but I had to disable it on some ecommerce sites, since it causes the merchant goods to disappear!
Flash.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
[...] and I know people who swear by Tree Style Tabs
Reporting in.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Blue! No! Yelloooooooooooooooooooooooow!
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
IE Tab, for when you absolutely have to...
Some people are like slinkys. They're useless, but it puts a smile on your face to push them down the stairs.
There is a huge assumption implicit in this question - the browser that you use.
Not all of those plugins are available for all browsers. And any recommended plugin really needs to identify the ecosystem that it works in.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Doesn't cure all the ways they try to track you, but definitely puts a major dent in their efforts:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...
I also use https everywhere and I use privacy badger.
I have over 3,000 webpages and over 2000 links saved and organized in Scrapbook. Scrapbook can recursively safe entire websites. Searching for good information is tedious with search engines. Webpages come and go. Scrapbook lets you build a library, your own personal knowledgeable over years. You can highlight text and save the results, too. All the webpages can be be organized in a tree-like hierarchal manner.
The only issue with it has to do with synchronization and differential backups. It should be rewritten to save Mozilla Archive Format files MAFF's so that synchronization would be quicker from machine to machine.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
i very much agree with GroeFaz, when the ads completely drown out everything else on my machine (whether it's a pc, tablet or phone) they have to be blocked. this is especially true of ads with annoying audio. on my pc if it's just a visual ad i can switch to another desktop and not be bothered, but when the ad contains audio, game over. someday enough people will be using ad blocking technology to where the the people paying for the ads will not see any return on their money. at that point, advertisers will begin to go away (or at least in my dreams they'll go away!)
(or print to) pdf. Most useful after AdBlock.
All the tabs as a tree on the left. Very useful. All links opened from a tab nest under it. Trees can collapsed at any node. Most important feature is that I can collapse the tree to keep the logos and first website names from prying eyes at work. When I use WebEx or Google+ to share a desktop, I don't want sites like DailyKos, Mother Jones or Salon to show up in the tab line. Now it gets conveniently collapsed under "C++ STL Reference" ;-)
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I use many plugins and my go-to ones are CookieMonster, Ghostery, FlashBlock, NoScript and RefControl. CookieMonster, Ghostery and Flashblock are easy to get used to, but NoScript and RefControl make an interesting pair.
Using these at first is incredibly painful. It is a true education how fragile the construction of some web sites is, with scripts and components coming from all over the place. Because you have to approve every cross site reference, separately to load and to execute scripts, you really get a feel for how cobbled-together some sites really are -- random CSSs loading from who knows where, scripts from google, trackers, CDNs, web design houses, software vendors -- a real dogs breakfast. It can be a challenge to work out how much actually has to run in order for the site to work, versus how much is analytics and advertising overheads.
As I type this, scripts from three different google tracking systems, as well as rpxnow and ooyala, whoever they are, are NOT running in my browser. But for some reason slashdot won't work without loading some junk from fsdn.com.
Not really sure that any extensions that I install are particularly "useful". However, here's a list of tools that I find especially useful that have to do with web browsing.
OK, I snuck an actual browser extension in there. But it really only enables what should be core functionality.
I can't understand why "focus last selected tab" isn't default on all browsers. Essentially, I need ctrl-tab to work as well as alt-tab does with applications. I have to have Tab Mix Plus in order to get this as well as other features that let me control how/where tabs pop up.
The only absolutely essential addon for me is NoScript. Everything else is gravy; tasty gravy perhaps, but gravy. HTTPSEverywhere is really high on the gravy list.
Am a great fan of gesture based navigation. Right click + up for new tab, L-shape for close tab left/right for back and forward.
From the ones already listed, and in addition, I would like to point out HTTPS-everywhere, Calomel SSL Validation and Strict Transport Security (HSTS is important!). FlagFox for fun.
...my question: what are your most useful (and safe) browser extensions?...
The ones that have a level of quality that is on par with the browser. I've found too many extensions that are so buggy that they are useless.
If you're a collector, there are 3 must-have extensions for Firefox.
DownThemAll: Lets you download embedded and linked files on a page, with pretty good filtering options.
VideoDownloadHelper: Lets you download streaming videos.
Save Images: Download multiple images at once.
Others:
Right To Click: If pages disable right-clicking, this extension allows you to re-enable it.
Print Edit: Remove elements from a page before printing or turning it into a PDF.
Classic Theme Restorer: Get rid of the Australis interface and re-enable options Firefox took away in recent versions.
I have several other extensions as well, but they're just tweaks for my own personal preferences. The ones above, along with the usual Adblock, Ghostery, and Flashblock, are the ones I recommend to everyone.
It's the main reason why I am sticking to Firefox and not use any other browser (chromium, rekonq, arora, konqueror...)
Here's a couple of little QoL perks I haven't seen (I skimmed) mentioned:
* Text-to-link (or something like that) or any other equivalent that will grab URLs and hyperlink them. You should (as always) double-check the actual destination of a weird link/post/message.
* Text-to-image (or something like that) is a toss-up. Any direct IMG link will be displayed in-page (handy on forums), but sometimes it makes layouts look a little awkward. You can blacklist sites (use wildcard) or pages from triggering it.
* Used to have one that would try to capture text fields (like the post I'm writing) and would allow for some historical fetching, like if your browser crashes or a Next Page load fails. L*S did one gag dedicated to just this. Might want to check the fine boilerplate (I didn't) or just skip it if you're super-tinfoil, seeing captures of yourself can feel uncanny. Some of you may already be in the habit of clipboard/notepad dumping for safety, but consider that automation is consistent.
Echoing on NoScript and RequestPolicy, they're privacy tweaks but also improve safety. After whitelists are done, page layout and even load times can improve. Take control of what your machines accesses.
Is there an extension that blocks these "We'd like your feedback" messages that seem to be popping up on every single site lately? Or a way to block them easily with AdBlock?
- Pushbullet for all the reasons given by others here.
- uBlock - ad blocking that is not opted out of by the highest bidder
- Airdroid - okay, technically not an extension/app but still a good app for extending your phone's reach to your desktop.
- Sunrise - nicely done Chrome app that looks and plays just like the mobile version.
- Chrome Remote Desktop - Very handy for making my iMac usable from anywhere and also for doing remote help for mom and dad when they call with computer problems.
noscript, that is all.
I love the Imgur Uploader and TinyURL Generator addons. Imgur is my fave pichost, the addon doesn't even make you save the pic to the HDD. A right & left click auto-copies the right code and pastes it...everything's in the pipe 5 x 5, Spunkmeyer.
Chrome to Phone (send a link from your desk/laptop to your phone to view later)
Snipe (search and locate tabs)
Diigo bookmark (best alternative to Delicious after Delicious went downhill - save links to cloud with tags etc)
Tabs Outliner (manage windows and tabs, recover sessions, hibernate windows and tabs - absolutely awesome!)
AdBlock (of course)
ColorToggle has made the web so much easier on the eyes, stopping all the bleach white backgrounds. Hostname in Titlebar also makes auto-typing with KeePass less spoof-able and more reliable. My own FocyOverride has also helped make KeePass a bit easier to use. Having used some blocking add-on's like RequestPolicy I don't feel comfortable with the shady practice of consuming content without paying the price of seeing the ads.
I recommend the 'element hiding helper' for adblock plus.
Additionally to the local ads, it allowed me to easily remove sports, games, promotions, donation reminders, religious stuff and other unwanted things from my usual sources.
Chrome: Adblock Plus, Web Of Trust, (WOT), Xmarks, Context Menu Search (allows you to highlight text as a search parameter and open results in a new tab. ex: Dictionary.com, Wikipedia, Google, etc)
Open in Browser: Because some sites insist that I should save that PDF to open it.
Session Manager: a.k.a. "task freezer". Save and restore any or all of your open windows and tabs along with their histories.
Google and TinEye Reverse Image search. TinEye's matching engine is more powerful; Google has a much bigger database.
Offline QR code Generator: the easiest way to send page/image/link URLs and arbitrary text to my phone: [highlight text if applicable,] right click on page/image/link, "Show QR", aim phone.
Restartless Restart: Because it's Firefox and Control-Alt-R is much faster than killing the process.
Context Search X: highlight, right click, "Search with", pick any of my engines. Very flexible; allows custom accelerator keys.
Context Highlight: highlight multiple words or phrases all over the current page. Not perfect but really useful.
Live HTTP headers: Disabled since Fx ships with devtools.
It's All Text!: Edit those pesky textareas in your preferred editor. Perfect for HTML boards and wikis.
And obviously Adblock Plus.
Not shown: custom search engines for Google Images, Wiktionary, Google Translate, Gmail...
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
I work with a lot of web-based tools (bugzilla, Jira, wikis, etc.) that include a lot of writing. Being able to autosave and recover web form input has saved me many hours of effort after the browser crashed, laptop ran out of battery, accidentally closing a tab, etc.
I also work with people all around the world, so Fox Clocks is very helpful by adding clocks for various cities to the Firefox status bar and/or a mouseover popup.
Haven't seen Netcraft Anti-Phishing bar mentioned yet either. It is helpful to detect malicious sites, and always interesting to see a bit of info on websites I visit (Slashdot currently ranks 8806 and has been around since March 2002 it tells me).
Also using NoScript, Tabmix Plus, WOT, Cookie Controller.
...when you visit a clickbait site such as Cracked.com, blocks all the "you may also be interested in" stuff so that you just see what you came to see and don't get distracted into visiting millions of other "10 signs you are a serial procrastinator, number 5 will turn your underwear into a war-zone" links?
So far, after Googling, I have only been able to find "Anti-Upworthy" which de-sensationalises the language of clickbait headlines, but ideally, I'd like to block the display of "you may also be interested in" stuff. And no, using a .hosts file to block the offending site is not an answer because I don't get to see the original article I came to see.
The main reason I still use firefox.
If I had mod points, I'd mod you up.
First, having a platform onto which developers can build plugins that users can choose from and enable as needed is far superior to being stuck with the single half-baked implementation that is built in to the browser.
Second, building features directly into browsers eliminates any chance of security-through-obscurity that comes with an ecosystem of security and ad blocking plugins. Two examples: popup blockers (everything is done in javascript now), and the do not track header (arguably, useless even before major browsers implemented it, but even more useless now...)
Remove any section of the loaded HTML... Perfect if you want to copy/paste content when event the print version of a site has tons of ads/logo/etc... (no Chrome support, unfortunately)
\m/
adblock or adblock plus (for now) or adblock edge.
lose != loose
Until approximately a month ago, I used Firefox. The extensions I made the most use of were all privacy related:
NoScript (duh)
Ghostery (allowed me to block the little niggling crap scripts allowed through from the first party domain with NoScript)
Self destructing cookies (whitelisting cookies, brilliant idea)
BetterPrivacy (dealt with flash cookies, though I think Firefox handles those itself now)
Scriptish (which is 99% scripts I make for my own use, like removing the sitenotice node here on Slashdot)
Then I switched to Chrome and got uMatrix, and felt like a complete pleb. It never quite dawns on you the kind of content amalgamation a simple webpage actually is until you have a comprehensive breakdown by subdomain of where every cookie, script, XML HTTP request, plugin, CSS file, image, etc. is all coming from. It even has built-in options to spoof your useragent and clear the browser cache on regular intervals, spoof referers, block hyperlink auditing, etc. Switch that bad-boy into what I call "hostile mode" (block everything that the user does not explicitly whitelist) and you feel like Gandalf.
uMatrix covers the function of Noscript and Ghostery very well, and I found an extension called Tab Cookie which covers the function of Self Destructing Cookies. Tampermonkey replaced Scriptish, though I've yet to find something with a similar function to BetterPrivacy. Hulu is one of the sites I frequent with a flash cookie whose existence is obvious (the volume level) and I've noticed it is not resetting between logins, so it must not be handled by TabCookie.
Potatoes are friggin' magical. Can you power an alarm clock with a carrot? No, sir!
Is there an extension to prevent Chrome from automatically updating extensions?
(I'm tired of finding something I was depending upon no longer working because I got an "update")
Extensions to the browser? This used to be called "programs you install on your computer". Weird.
I'm pretty sure that 'extensions' 'plugins' and the like have been recognized as distinct from full 'programs'(even if, in practice, the line is architecturally somewhat blurry, depending on how elegant the extension mechanism provided by the main program is).
I know that I was using Winamp plugins well before I had a remotely reliable internet connection, and most sufficiently sprawling programs tend to spawn a plugin or extension mechanism sooner or later. In fact, some are barely more than a default set of plugins lodged in a labyrinthine mechanism for adding more(looking at you, Lotus Notes...)
Lazarus Form Recovery - keeps a continuous history of all forms. Essential if your job consists of manipulating web interfaces all day. .
Saved Password Editor - Clue's in the name.
Check4Changes - Reloads a page and alerts you [sound or email] when a specific element has changed.
reallyremember - saves passwords on forms with autocomplete="off" set
Tree Style Tab - move the tabs to the side of the browser instead of the top.
uBlock is great because it's a good ad blocker with minimal overhead. it works on firefox and chrome.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBl...
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Text free browsing for when reading people's stupid comments becomes just too much.
You were critically hit for no damage. The bruise will look nice, and maybe the scars will make good party talk.
retro removes the nasty compose window
Sent from my ENIAC
These allow you to edit a web page. Remove the ads, the fluff, anything you don't like. Or simply select the text that interests you and poke CMD-i to isolate it. Print, copy the text, or make a PDF if you want to keep it. Aardvark is legacy, may not work on your newer Firefox. Hack seems to work well.
...omphaloskepsis often...
By far the most useful extensions are the ones that reduce my "browsing experience"
Things which prevent things from being pushed at me (NoScript, AdBlock)
Things which allow me watch videos at my pace and choice of quality instead of "streaming". (youtube downloader)
And in general things which reduce the number of features I'm forced to contend with.
For Firefox, I use Nuke Anything Enhanced 1.1 when overlays, ads, etc. on broken or poorly designed pages obscure the text I'm trying to read. Basically you right-click over the object and select "Remove this object" (and there is an undo). At first I installed it out of curiosity, but I'm surprised how often it is useful.
Last updated: Wed Feb 18 2015 11:28:06 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time)
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:35.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/35.0 SeaMonkey/2.32.1
Extensions (enabled: 7)
* Adblock Plus 2.6.7 (http://adblockplus.org/en/)
* British English Dictionary 1.19.1 (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/british-english-dictionary/?src=api)
* ColorfulTabs 18.1 (http://www.binaryturf.com/free-software/colorfultabs-for-firefox/)
* DOM Inspector 2.0.15 (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/inspector/)
* IE View 1.5.6 (http://ieview.roub.net/)
* PrefBar 6.5.0 (http://prefbar.tuxfamily.org/)
* WOT 20131030 (http://www.mywot.com/)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-... I'm surprised this isn't built in to the browser itself.
Perhaps you could ask the browser extension sites themselves....
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...
https://chrome.google.com/webs...
Most have highlighted the most common for slashdot users are:
I find cloud to butt very useful in terms of maintaining my sanity, YMMV. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...
Lastpass - probably the biggest thing most users can do to improve security, use a secure password manager.
NoScript - another critical security tool
Adblock Plus
BetterPrivacy
WOT - web of trust, gives quick security info on any website
Lazarus - really useful ability to recover input, prevent losing a post
CompactMenu - add menu to the navigation toolbar, hide menu bar
TooManyTabs - great for saving lots of tabs
Places Context Menu - allows bookmarks to be sorted by visit count
Maybe someone already posted this, but I can't see it! https://gist.github.com/Mini-G...
Greasemonkey for Firefox
Tampermonkey for Chrome
I've spent a lot of time writing and maintaining scripts to add beauty and functionality to the Hollywood Stock Exchange, http://hsx.com/. Check 'em out if you play, or start to play: http://ez-edzep.tripod.com/
Firefox: LastPass, NoScript, Better Privacy, uBlock, Disconnect, Pocket, HTTPS Everywhere, RES, Free Memory, Configuration Mania, DownThemAll, Extended Statusbar, Fire Gestures, MEGA, OmniBar
I'd like whatever plugin it is that keeps Firefox from ballooning to 1+ GB of RAM if I have a few tabs open.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Here's what I use at present. I consider all of the highly useful.
Status-4-evar because no desktop browser should be without a status bar
Tab Mix Plus for its excellent session handling and handling of unread tabs.
Tree Style Tab for its correct placement of tabs on widescreen monitors (on the left, not at the top) and its absolutely wonderful hierarchical tree of tabs.
One of the many YouTube video downloaders
Flashblock for obvious reasons
Adblock, for when ads get to invasive.
Disable CTRL-Q Shortcut because 'q' is too close to 'w' on my keyboard.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
About 2 years ago Mozilla decided to always use some of your precious screen real estate to show a row of tabs, even when that's a total waste because you only have one tab open. The fix:
"Hide Tab Bar With One Tab"
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
My favorite Safari extensions..
OpenAtEnd -- makes new tabs go to the far right
Right Exit -- closing a tab moves you to the next tab on the right, not the left
ClickToPlugin -- the superset of ClickToFlash
How about no extra browser extensions? Or even an extension or two which limits the other browser extensions?
Browser plugins have the WORST security surface. If you want to do something, do it outside of a browser so that you're not giving every and any site you visit the opportunity to exploit something you only run once in a great while.
Netflix no longer requires Silverlight, so we can remove that. Once Hulu moves away from the crapstorm which is Adobe Flash, it'll be more realistic to completely trash that forever (I will have a party when that happens!) Don't get me started on Adobe Acrobat and PDFs in browsers... Java - shit - what a MESS! Who the hell wants to run Java in a browser anyway? There has to be a better way. Keep around an old Windows machine if you want to feel dirty by trolling around for the latest disease and let Java die.
It'd be nice if something like ClickToPlugin were available for all the browsers (it's for Safari), but I learned from The Register how to make plugins click-to-play on Firefox and Chrome. See the bottom of this article:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
Firefox is extraordinarily important to all of humanity. Without the open-source Firefox, our communication with each other with web pages would be severely limited by abusive managers of huge companies. For example, Microsoft's Internet Explorer version 6 had an enormous number of quirks; web designers wasted huge amounts of time dealing with that.
Mozilla Foundation has exhibited a combination of excellent and poor management, in my opinion.
Add-ons are very useful. One of the most important aspects of Firefox is the huge number of Add-ons available. Here are some I've found necessary:
Adblock Edge, ads were yesterday! Attacks sometimes pose as ads. Stop tracking. Advertisers of run annoying ads.
BetterPrivacy, "Super-Cookie Safeguard", eliminate sneaky tracking.
Classic Theme Restorer, required because of Mozilla Foundation's bad management of GUIs.
Close tabs to the left, title says it all. What? Why is that necessary? Why does Firefox have only "Close tabs to the right"?
Cookies Manager+, needed because of poor management of Slashdot by the parent company, Dice Holdings.
FEBE, backup your Firefox data. Restores only to the same profile. Use MozBackup to restore to a different profile, such as when you move to the Pale Moon 64-bit version of Firefox to get away from Mozilla Foundation bad management.
Ghostery, protect your privacy.
iMacros for Firefox, help jump through log-on hoops.
Mozilla Archive Format, save everything you see displayed on a web page.
NoScript, protect against attacks, stop tracking.
Nuke Anything, Enhanced, remove areas of a web page.
Restart-less Restart, Firefox frequently crashes when there are many windows and tabs, because of the memory-hogging bug that Mozilla Foundation hasn't fixed in 9 years.
Session Manager, when Firefox crashes, go back to the Windows and tabs you had before the crash.
Session Manager Export Tool, export windows and tabs of a Firefox session to HTML.
Snap Links Plus, opens multiple links inside a selected area.
SQLite Manager, manage any SQLite database.
Tab Mix Plus, fix Firefox's insufficient GUI design.
In a Windows command-line window, type:
/svc
/medsvc
services.msc
Right-click on Google services, choose "Properties", then choose "Disable" as the "Startup type".
Google installs at least 3 system services:
Google Update Service (gupdate), "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Update\GoogleUpdate.exe"
Google Update Service (gupdatem), "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Update\GoogleUpdate.exe"
Google Updater Service (gusvc), "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Common\Google Updater\GoogleUpdaterService.exe"
Well first it's Thierry with two 'r's, but I've never seen titi being used as a diminutive for it, though that's because nobody would stand to it being used in public. Then there's the titi parisien but I've never seen titi refering to a small person.
But all this misses the point. Just like an uninspired English-speaking programmer will call his variable 'foo' and then 'bar' if he needs a second one, a French programmer will call his variable 'toto' (from the classic Toto jokes) and then 'titi' if he needs a second one (and then 'tata' but normally by the time he reaches tutu he realizes he really needs to straighten up ;-) ).
So what this really tells us is that this developer has a collegue whose username is 'toto'.
Uhh...
A) You look like a crazy spammer with your insane formatting, massive hyperbole, and numerous comments that seem to be frothing at the mouth. It's no wonder Palant stopped responding to you.
B) I never suggested people should use AdBlock. Quite the contrary, in fact, since I already pointed out that it wasn't particularly efficient and suggested that people should use an alternative to it. I know that reading my single sentence is asking a lot of you, but you might be advised to read it a bit more carefully next time before you make multiple comments, each of which has dozens of lines of inapplicable text that look to have been written by a madman.
C) Custom hosts files complement browser addons, rather than replacing them. I use both uBlock and a custom hosts file, and I'd encourage others to do so as well, since each handles various things better or differently than the other. For instance, hosts are more efficient and can prevent the ad server from ever getting my request, which addons sometimes can't do, but it can't remove the element from the page where the ad would have showed, whereas an addon can. Hosts files are also a bit more hands-on in keeping up-to-date than addons, but they have the benefit of working across any browser or Internet service on your computer, whereas addons are easier to keep up-to-date, but only work in the browser where they are installed.
TL;DR: Read more carefully, use both, and stop posting tirades. We'll all be happier, you included.
Firefox has this add-on called Quickdrag (there are some clones around but this one is clean, small and simple) with a very basic premise but it's one of the greatest speed boosters I've ever had the pleasure of using: drag and drop any piece of text and it automatically launches a search on the search engine enabled in the search bar. If it's a link, it'll open a new tab with the link as URL. It's so simple to use but is a huge time saver. A few things to bear in mind however: since it hasn't been updated in quite a long time one of its functions which saves a dragged and dropped image (not being captured by javascript that is) doesn't work and you must manually disable adware using the last option in its option menu.
If you use Chrome, the Auto Text Expander extension will become a must have. Create some text trigger shortcut, enter it, and it expands to any sort of text you want to enter into a textual field that you find yourself entering often.
-- I fear explanations explanatory of things explained.
Def. HTTPS Everywhere. getcocoon, Firebug, Live HTTP Headers, and Better Privacy. I generally do not use more than 5 extensions.
TL;DR: Read more carefully, use both, and stop posting tirades. We'll all be happier, you included.
Nicely measured response! Usually such responses fall on deaf ears and only invite further flame from that guy, but it looks like you (to use that guy's lingo) destroyed him. :-)