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.

Comments

Browser Makers Should Get The Message

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of these addons have millions of downloads. Perhaps browser makers need to get the message and include popular functionality that people want.

Re:Browser Makers Should Get The Message

[master_kaos]

Well think aboout it, why would Google want to have adblock enabled by default, when most of there revenue comes from ads.
Similar with mozilla where a lot of there revenue comes from google (or I guess yahoo now)
Microsoft with bing.

Re:Browser Makers Should Get The Message

[Krojack]

Browser: Google Chrome
Extension: Tabs to the front!
What it does: Brings newly created tabs to the foreground.

When opening a link in a new tab on my phone and having to take the extra time to then change to it enrages me. Why would anyone long press a link and choose "Open in new tab" and not want to view that tab right away? Why does Chrome toss it in the back?

Re:Browser Makers Should Get The Message

[Anonymous Coward]

I almost always want the new tab to open in the back. I'm usually opening shit that I want to read after I finish whatever I'm currently reading.

Re:Browser Makers Should Get The Message

[Tower]

Having a setting for that would be nice, but I much prefer my new tabs to pop to the back. I will usually scan through a page and open the set of links I want to read, then read them after the page I'm on, or switch and dive into one, but a lot of times it is just to build the queue. On my phone, I open them just so I can read them on a real screen later, since I can see my tabs and history from all devices.

Re:Browser Makers Should Get The Message

[JMJimmy]

As well, why not have a neutral platform you can build on to your needs instead of introducing bloat that only some people will like/use.

Firefox:
  - AdBlock Plus + Element Hiding Helper
  - Chatzilla (IRC Chat)
  - FireFTP
  - SnapLinks Plus (right click multi-link select/copy/open)
  - Firebug
  - HTTPS Everywhere
  - Quickdrag (drag drop links into white space to open in new tab, drag drop images to download them)
  - SQLite Manager (manually browse and fix Mozilla's privacy blunders)
  - TableTools2 (manage table data when site options don't offer it)
  - YouTube HD (forces specific sizes when possible)
  - Live HTTP Headers (see what's really being sent)

Re:Browser Makers Should Get The Message

[Dorianny]

Add:

FlashControl (To disable automatic running of applets is a must with the constant 0-day exploits and the widespread use of tracking applets.)

Vanilla Cookie Manager (automatic clean up after gorging on cookies.)

Re:Browser Makers Should Get The Message

[gsslay]

Having them as addons is the browser makers getting the message. Some people want what an addon does, some people don't. Providing capability for addons to deliver functionality is giving people exactly what they want, and not burdening them with stuff they don't want.

Or would you rather have your browsers provided as bloatware full of functionality you don't want and can't get rid of?

Re:Browser Makers Should Get The Message

[qvatch]

Or, as firefox says, why not both?

Re:Browser Makers Should Get The Message

[Em Adespoton]

I'll add:
NoScript (stops most of the baddies, just turn on what you need, when you need it)
Ghostery (clean up what AdBlock Plus and NoScript miss)
FireSSH (because FTP's inherently insecure)
Leet Key (great for transforming all sorts of text)
gTranslate (in-context automatic language translation!)
Tree Style Tab (if you use lots of tabs)

Hola

[X10]

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.

Adblock

[master_kaos]

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.

Re:Adblock

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the same experience. I actually tried to give no ad blocker a chance but so many of the websites I tried to go to would not load in a reasonable amount of time. At first I just stopped following links, but eventually a case came up where really wanted to know what was said on the other side... so installed the ad blocker. It is very strange behavior to make your page unreadable due to advertisements.

Re:Adblock

[Hadlock]

Adblock, Flashblock, uBlock, Ghostery all pick up slightly different items to block which combined do a pretty good job of breaking things like Facebook (whitelisted) and news sites with embedded non-youtube videos. I just don't watch embedded videos anymore, the article is typically better anyways.
 
Now that Youtube is HTML5 by default for 99.99% of their videos you can safely enable flashblock for 100% of all sites, the only one I have whitelisted anymore is Pandora because they're stuck in 2007.

Re:Adblock

[KiloByte]

Adblock and Ghostery work on an opt-out basis, which is semi-adequate for ads and totally inadequate for tracking. Request Policy is my #1 mandatory extension.

Re:Adblock

[AmiMoJo]

Adblock and uBlock use the same rules and subscriptions. They pick up exactly the same stuff, you don't need both. Ghostery is worth having, or Privacy Badger. Flashblock seems kind of redundant, since you can just enable click-to-play on plug-ins.

Re:Adblock

[aaaaaaargh!]

I'd go a little farther and suggest that AdBlock Edge is the most useful plugin. I highly recommend it.

Re:Adblock

[Fencepost]

Heh, I reinstalled Windows recently along with switching to a SSD, and apparently didn't install Flash. I didn't miss it until I saw mention of one of the Flash 0-day exploits and a new update, so I went looking to confirm that it had updated.

Of course, I run with NoScript and RequestPolicy, so I wouldn't have been seeing much Flash content anyway.

Re:Adblock

[Anubis IV]

uBlock and AdBlock do indeed block the same stuff, but if you're going to pick one, go with uBlock, since it's significantly more efficient.

Re:Adblock

[fph il quozientatore]

Adblock, Flashblock, uBlock, Ghostery all pick up slightly different items to block which combined do a pretty good job of breaking things like Facebook

Breaking Facebook is a feature, not a bug, right?

Re:Adblock

[firewrought]

Request Policy is my #1 mandatory extension.

For those who are unfamiliar with it, Request Policy works a lot like NoScript... it lists the domains that the page is trying to load *any* content from (not just scripts), and you whitelist which cross-domain loads you want to allow. On slashdot, for instance, I'm allowing requests to fsdn.com, but disallowing them to gstatic.com and scorecardreasearch.com.

I use it myself, but I can't recommend it. Too much of the web breaks. Credit card payments that bounce to a payment processor's website are especially problematic (I've gotten double-billed at least once). And using it in front of other people is especially awkward when I have to fiddle with a new site for a few minutes to get it to work. Also, I don't know that this provides that much better privacy than AdBlock+EasyPrivacy or some of the host-file blacklists.

Maybe with some extra development Request Policy could be a lot easier. Integration with (or incorporation into) NoScript and/or a community of well-maintained whitelists would make a big difference.

addons

[aahpandasrun]

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...

Clearly AdBlock

[GroeFaZ]

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.

Re:Clearly AdBlock

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Honestly, the security is the real slam dunk for me.

If ads were served through the same channels as the rest of the page, and from the same sources, with the same basic level of trustworthiness, I'd be inclined to be at least slightly conflicted about the poor starving site operator; but that's not how it works anymore. Even relatively 'respectable' ad networks are an architectural nightmare; practically designed to make malicious injection easy. The less respectable ones are no better and don't even bother to try to restrain bad actors.

Whatever arguments there are to be made about some 'implicit contract' to put up with ads as part of the ad-supported-model there may be, there is nothing that justifies the security clusterfuck that is ad distribution. You might as well just scavenge for used needles and shove them into your neck hoping for some left-over drugs as accept ads injected into a page.

Re:Clearly AdBlock

[asimons04]

Mod this up. If advertisers didn't look at Times Square and think, "Yes! This! But...like, everywhere! And louder! And spammier! Maybe throw in 3 autoplaying videos and a few infectious diseases (malvertising)", I wouldn't be so inclined to block ads. As it stands, they can fuck right off.

And content creators aren't off the hook, either. They should vet their ads instead of just allowing whatever scumbag ad-network to throw whatever onto the page (looking at you, Taboola). I think Hack-a-Day does a good job with that; their ads are simple, static images and are relevant to the target audience. Site owners/operators also need to give visitors the option of actually paying them. Case in point is Ars Technica which allows users to subscribe for an ad-free experience or use the site for free with ads. If more sites would adopt similar models, we might stand a chance of taking the internet back from the sensory-raping advertising cartels. I subscribe to Ars and whitelist Hack-a-Day in AdBlock because they make a genuine effort to improve the situation for their audiences. Slashdot allows me to disable advertising, so there is no need to block ads here. I like that these sites are setting an example, but the rest of the internet (or world-wide-web for you pedantic fuckers) needs to pay attention.

My lists

[Nexion]

FireFox:

noscript
ghostery
noredirect
firebug
flash video downloader

Chrome:
scriptno
ghostery

Re:My lists

[Jahta]

A couple more for Firefox:

BetterPrivacy - Deals with "super cookies"
HTTPS-Everywhere - Transparently turns HTTP requests into HTTPS requests for sites that support it

TableTools2 - Sort, filter, copy, etc. table data, even if the web site doesn't support it
Vimperator - Not for everybody, but if you use vi as your editor this adds a lot of keyboard goodness to your browsing experience.

web designers

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:web designers

[whopub]

It's not the web designers' fault! I'm a small time self employed web designer. When it comes to designing a website, we don't do what we want! We don't even do what the customer needs. We end up doing what he asks. Most of the time what they ask for sucks, and that's what they/you get.

Re:web designers

[TWX]

So you're saying that the customer demands cross-site scripting hell, where to look at a simple article I have to have fifteen different sites' javascript enabled, including probably half a dozen ad/tracking sites that have nothing to do with reading text on a screen?

Re:web designers

[gauauu]

So you're saying that the customer demands cross-site scripting hell, where to look at a simple article I have to have fifteen different sites' javascript enabled, including probably half a dozen ad/tracking sites that have nothing to do with reading text on a screen?

Yes.

Re:web designers

[pspahn]

Yes, that's exactly what they're saying. Was there something you weren't clear about?

Do you think developers just sit around all day looking for tracking scripts to start installing on client's sites?

Since the advent of saving markup in the DB, clients have become empowered on what code runs on their site. They google something, find a script snippet that they don't understand, copy and paste it into their CMS' "additional header scripts" field and save. They don't understand the concept of optimizing image files, let alone be concerned with the number HTTP requests on each load.

Re:web designers

[Jason Levine]

Obligatory Oatmeal: How a Web Design Goes Straight To Hell.

Re:web designers

[Anonymous Coward]

With all third-party resources blocked, that is an almost empty page. If you allow access only to s3.amazonaws.com, you get all the content you'd expect on that page. The page still wants to load from 8 more domains though. I find that amusingly self-referential, but I sincerely doubt it is intentional.

Re:web designers

[Darinbob]

You're making a flimsy assumption that there is valuable content on the web.

Web of Trust

[Saysys]

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.

Re:Web of Trust

[Tink2000]

I came in to recommend WOT as well. I install it on all of my clients computers and it really helps cut down on those malicious links because it puts a big red circle beside untrustworthy links.

FYI - Chrome's Task Manager

[RevWaldo]

Chrome has its own task manager under More Tools Task Manager, so you can see which extensions are gumming up the works.

.

Remove Google tracking

[ctrl-alt-canc]

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!

Re:My favorites

[ArcadeMan]

Blue! No! Yelloooooooooooooooooooooooow!

Self-Destructing Cookies

[KlomDark]

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-...

Scrapbook in Firefox

[BrendaEM]

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-...

Tab Mix Plus

[CityZen]

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.

Re:Tab Mix Plus

[wile_e8]

Does anyone know if there is a good equivalent to this on Chrome? I've switched primarily from Firefox to Chrome for multiple other reasons, but the one thing I really miss about Firefox is Tab Mix Plus and customizing ctrl+tab most recently used, tab opening at the end, most recent when closing a tab, etc. Everything I've tried works extremely unreliably, and nothing overrides ctrl+tab behavior (I think this is a Chrome limitation, not an extension problem).

Re:Tab Mix Plus

[jenningsthecat]

Yes, Tab Mix Plus is essential for me. I use it extensively to do things like manage saving and restoring of sessions, change the font and text colour of tabs for instant identification of state, undoing a Close Tab command, closing a tab by double-clicking the tab, and opening a new tab by double clicking the tab bar. When I'm forced to use a browser that doesn't have it I go a little bit crazy and my efficiency drops enormously.

Aside from the usual security and privacy addons, another one I find indispensable is Flashblock. I tend to have many YouTube tabs open at once, and Flashblock calms my urge to strangle and dismember whatever fuckwit decided that videos should play automatically as soon as the page loads.

We'd like your feedback...

[SoCalChris]

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?

Re:We'd like your feedback...

[thegarbz]

To expand on this is there any plugin which can stop all canvas pop-ups?

It seems we spent years getting to a point where we blocked pop-ups only to now have the damn things re-appear using HTML5.

Mine

[arielCo]

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...

Exactly!

[dfm3]

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...)

Re:Exactly!

[Jane Q. Public]

The sole reason Do Not Track was useless was that it was voluntary, and too many interests simply didn't want to honor it. I was really amused by all the cries of "But... but... our ad revenue will dry up and the internet will die!" Hahaha. Script blockers do the same thing, better, without any volunteerism, and the internet hasn't died. "I told you so" comes to mind.

I would add a couple of add-ons to the list above:

* Disconnect, and Disconnect Search, respectively, block 3rd-party requests and do anonymous search.

* Bloody Vikings! lets you create temporary email addresses for those sites that insist on an email address before you can move forward. (Name comes from Monty Python "Spam!" skit.)

* Privacy Badger, from EFF intelligently blocks 3rd-party cookies and tracking. (They tried to make an add-on for Chrome too but announced that it was too difficult and they had given up.)

* User Agent Switcher, mainly for developers, lets you change your browser user agent.

* YSlow, cleverly named add-on from Yahoo, shows developers why web pages are slow.

* Lightbeam from Mozilla shows a good view third parties that have tried to track your browsing over time.

uBlock

[Gravis Zero]

uBlock is great because it's a good ad blocker with minimal overhead. it works on firefox and chrome.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBl...

Give me less.

[AnotherBlackHat]

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.

Cloud to Butt

[rokstar]

I find cloud to butt very useful in terms of maintaining my sanity, YMMV. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...

Here's a few

[Trogre]

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.

Firefox is important, partly because of add-ons.

[Futurepower(R)]

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.