Ask Slashdot: Best Browser Extensions -- 2016 Edition

Reader LichtSpektren writes: Almost eleven years ago, Slashdot featured an Ask titled "Favorite Firefox Extensions?". I thought it might be worthwhile to ask the question again (Editor's note: we couldn't agree more!), but expand the query to all web browsers now that there's more choices available.

Right now my main browser is Firefox, which I use with uBlock Origin, Disconnect, HTTPS Everywhere, Privacy Badger, NoScript, Self-Destructing Cookies, Decentraleyes, Privacy Settings, and Clean Links. (N.B. the first four of these are also available in Chromium-based browsers.) I use Chrome as a secondary browser, with the first four of the aforementioned extensions, plus also Clear Cache and occasionally Flashcontrol.

This one has nothing to do with security or privacy, but Reedy on Chromium is a really nice tool for speed reading.

What do you use?Let's get this going.

Comments

Adblock Plus, Ghostery

[Anonymous Coward]

I never setup a computer without both

Re:Adblock Plus, Ghostery

[LichtSpektren]

uBlock Origin and Disconnect do the same things as Adblock Plus and Ghostery respectively, minus taking money to let some "acceptable ads" through the filters.

Re:Adblock Plus, Ghostery

[Anubis IV]

Most of the people on Slashdot would be better-served by using either uBlock Origin or uMatrix instead of ABP.

uBlock Origin is a drop-in content blocker that "just works" out of the box. It's great for dropping onto non-techies computers and knowing that they'll be a lot better off. Plus, unlike ABP, it doesn't allow ads through by design for companies willing to pay, and it's also significantly more efficient than ABP in terms of its processing and memory overhead (though APK may point out that it's still less efficient than a hosts file...).

uMatrix, however, is likely better for many of the people around here, since it provides a simple UI made up of a matrix of boxes that allow you to enable/disable different types of content on a per-subdomain basis for each site you visit. By default, it only allows CSS and images from sites other than the one you're on, which blocks basically all tracking immediately, but also breaks functionality on some sites until you whitelist specific items. For me, I find that if I drop it onto a new computer, there's 2-3 weeks of infrequent fiddling needed before I've gotten it configured to the point where I'm not having to open it up on a daily basis, but after that, I only need to pop it open once in a blue moon and it works like a champ.

Ghostery is fine and all, and it used to be one of my go-to add-ons, but I find that for anywhere it comes up short (either because it lets stuff through that it shouldn't, or doesn't let stuff through that I want), it's a pain to manually configure. In contrast, uBlock Origin and uMatrix put those controls right in front of you, which is why they've become my preferred ones.

Re:Adblock Plus, Ghostery

[x_t0ken_407]

Out of curiosity, how does Disconnect compare to uMatrix? I use uBlockO & uMatrix for the ABP+NoScript/Ghostery functionality. uMatrix took getting used to at first but I never leave home without it these days.

Re:Adblock Plus, Ghostery

[Aighearach]

Most of the people on Slashdot would be better-served by using either uBlock Origin or uMatrix instead of ABP.

I would say uBlock Origin and uMatrix.

I'm running both of those, and also scriptblock, but most users will only want uMatrix.

The "regular end user" set that I would recommend is uMatrix, uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, Flashblock. (Flashblock isn't just for flash, it is also for stopping html5 auto-play)

For us grumpy old paranoid farts who don't mind having to fiddle before a site can run client code, then add in scriptblock.

Re:Adblock Plus, Ghostery

[instagib]

I still use ABP because I rely on the Adblock Plus Pop-up addon. This allows for site specific handling of pop-up windows. It is useful on certain contaminated sites. Couldn't find a replacement for this until now. (NoScript requires too much re-enabling of scripts on too many sites in my experience, which makes it useless for me.)

Re:Adblock Plus, Ghostery

[Anonymous Coward]

That's super old.
Mozilla fixed the bug that caused that problem nearly a year ago.
Now they are roughly equal.

What I use?

[nospam007]

Besides all the one you mention, being an asocial asshole I use 'Social Disconnect Plus' to block all Facebook, Twitter etc buttons and servers, Allinone Gestures, Canvasblocker, Google Privacy, 'I don't care about cookies', 'Simple site blocker' to block some newspaper directories that serve otherwise unblockable ads,

I use also Greasemonkey with scripts to circumvent Anti-Adblock measures in WIRED and to replace all occurrences of 'Trump' on a page with 'orange baldyman orangutan', I know it's stupid but it makes me smile every time.:-)

Re:What I use?

[green1]

I don't suppose you'd be willing to share your greasemonkey scripts for the anti-adblock measures?

Re:What I use?

[LichtSpektren]

Privacy Badger will automatically replace the social media buttons for you, there's an option on its dashboard.

Re:What I use?

[pr0fessor]

Opera used to have an asteroids extension that allowed you to shoot elements off the page... Anytime an ad made it through I would blow the website to hell..

Re:What I use?

[LichtSpektren]

Also, thanks for mentioning Canvasblocker -- didn't know about that one, it looks to be useful.

Re:What I use?

[jon3k]

I use also Greasemonkey with scripts to circumvent Anti-Adblock measures in WIRED

Just switch from Adblock Plus to uBlock Origin. WIRED doesn't harass me about using it and it's better anyway.

Re:What I use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook, Twitter etc buttons and servers [] 'I don't care about cookies' [] circumvent Anti-Adblock measures

There are adblockplus/ublock lists for these. I'm currently using
  Anti-ThirdpartySocial
Fanboy’s Annoyance List
Fanboy’s Social Blocking List
EU Prebake and some custom filters that I created with ublockorigin's element picker tool. It's amazing how many modal popups, even some paywalls, are nothing but an overlay element and the site works as normal when the element is deleted from DOM.

Re:What I use?

[nospam007]

"I don't suppose you'd be willing to share your greasemonkey scripts for the anti-adblock measures?"

It's available in the usual userscript places, f.ex. the ones below:

http://reek.github.io/anti-adb...

http://reeksite.com/anti-adblo...

Re:What I use?

[lucm]

Steve Ballmer would never have agreed to the Windows 10 upgrade racket. He was colorful and not a techie, and buying Nokia was misguided, but since he left, common sense has no place at the executive meetings.

Adobe plugins

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd put Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Reader at the top of the list. Microsoft Silverlight is really good, too.

Re:Adobe plugins

[green1]

If silverlight qualifies as "really good" for you, I'd hate to see what you think is bad...

Re:Adobe plugins

[Espectr0]

Plugins are not extensions. Adobe Reader is not even a plugin (if you're doing it right -- but arguably if you're using *any* Adobe software to read PDFs you're doing it wrong) it's a full desktop application.

Whooosh. He was being sarcastic

Re:Adobe plugins

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

If silverlight qualifies as "really good" for you, I'd hate to see what you think is bad...

Lol, silverlight...never used it, never will. Doesn't seem to affect my browsing not to have it installed. If I ever run across a site that's using it I'll just go somewhere else.

Chrome extensions

[green1]

Adblock (with "acceptable ad" turned OFF)
Centre Image
Cisco WebEx (for work)
Disable HTML5 Autoplay
Enhancer for YouTube
Google Calendar
Image Backtrace!
IMG Rotate (why isn't this included by default with so many galleries of sideways iPhone images?)
IPvFoo (I'm on a test group for IPv6 at work)
Linkclump
Mailto: (again, why isn't this default in chrome, you'd think many of their users would want to open mailto: links with gmail?)
Open Frame
QR-Code Tag Extension (because someone depreciated chrome-to-phone)
Right-Click Enabler (Browsers should never allow websites to block right clicks, it's MY browser, not yours!)
Save to Google Drive (Another one google should have included by default)
Text URL Linker (because browsers are too stupid to figure out that text formatted as http://www.somedomainname.com/ are actually URLs even if someone forgot to wrap them in A tags)
View Background Image
View Image
Yet another flags (It's nice to see at a glance where the website is likely actually hosted)

And with all that loaded, and an aggressive ad-filtering DNS server, the web is almost tolerable.

Re:Chrome extensions

[green1]

Don't use adblock plus, or ublock.
adblock works great for me. on the rare occasion that an ad does somehow manage to sneak through, I nuke it pretty quickly either with adblock, or more often by blackholeing the whole host on my DNS server.

Re:Chrome extensions

[hcs_$reboot]

Great. But does your page load at a decent speed after it's been filtered by all those exts?

Re:Chrome extensions

[green1]

Far faster than it loaded without them. Amazing how fast pages load when you strip all the junk out.

Also note that many of those extensions don't do anything unless you request it, so they don't have to "filter" the page, things like right click enabler, open frame, view image, image rotate, IMG backtrace, etc.
About the only ones that actually filter the page are adblock, and disable HTML5 autoplay, Both of which speed up pages quite significantly.

RequestPolicy and RefControl

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no legitimate reasons for cross-site requests and you should never use a referrer for anything, even access control.

Re:RequestPolicy and RefControl

[Aighearach]

Try uMatrix, it blocks all third-party scripts by default, but it is easy to turn them on a per-first-site basis.

I use it together with regular scriptblock, so first I have to say "yes you can use scripts" and then if it wants third party, I have to say yes to each one. There are few sites that get that much access.

It can also strip the referrer for you.

It can also fake the agent string, but IME that will break most mapping applets so if you can't get your government weather radar to work, turn that off.

Serious question

[Captain Splendid]

What do most of these other blockers do that Noscript doesn't? Been using NS for years and it seems to handle all my needs just fine.

Re:Serious question

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

What do most of these other blockers do that Noscript doesn't? Been using NS for years and it seems to handle all my needs just fine.

Yep...I use Adblock and NoScript and together they seem to sanitize the web fairly well.

I've considered installing Ghostery but I'm not sure what it would bring to the table. Blocking ads and scripts seems to cover most of the stuff I don't want running in my browser.

Re:Serious question

[Captain Splendid]

Well, here's the thing. What do you need adblock for? If you're not going to whitelist advertiser domains, they're not showing up in the first place.

Re:Serious question

[amicusNYCL]

I've considered installing Ghostery but I'm not sure what it would bring to the table.

Tracking, privacy, etc. All of those third party domains that have a tracking pixel or some other thing to track you across web sites. If you install Ghostery and configure it you'll see that it has sections for Advertising, Analytics, Beacons, Privacy, and Widgets (Facebook, Twitter, etc). It's blocking over 2,000 items for me. Right now I've got a recent version of Opera with the built-in ad blocking turned on, plus Ghostery, AdBlock, and Privacy Badger, and even here on Slashdot all of them are blocking something (Ghostery 7 items, AdBlock 5, Privacy Badger 2, and Opera is still natively blocking 10 items).

Re:Serious question

[nmb3000]

Well, here's the thing. What do you need adblock for? If you're not going to whitelist advertiser domains, they're not showing up in the first place.

Most, but not all advertising is displayed via Javascript. AdBlock is useful for blocking static images and element hiding rules are nice for just removing text ads or other annoying elements of webpages. There is also the case of allowing domains to execute scripts (temporary or trusted) to make pages functional. AdBlock takes care of any ads that would be displayed as a result.

But yes, NoScript easily takes care of 60-70% of it and AdBlock helps clean up the rest. I don't think Ghostery is necessary with them (or even a good idea, given who owns it).

Re:Serious question

[Captain Splendid]

But if all those tracking domains haven't had a chance to even load in the first place, why would you need Ghostery?

Re:Serious question

[amicusNYCL]

Obviously, you wouldn't, but I provided an example to show that AdBlock does not block all of those. Like I said, I have 4 different ways to block content and all of them are blocking certain pieces. I don't know if all of them are injected via Javascript, but it would be trivial for OP to install Ghostery and determine whether or not it found anything to block.

Re:Serious question

[Captain Splendid]

I don't know if all of them are injected via Javascript

Noscript doesn't just do javascript. That seems to be a common misconception.

Re:Serious question

[Aighearach]

Oh, but they do load! They load the JS, and also cookies and images and image cookies, etc. If you only block the JS, you still get tracked by the image loading.

I recommend Privacy Badger rather than Ghostery, though.

Re:Serious question

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Well, here's the thing. What do you need adblock for? If you're not going to whitelist advertiser domains, they're not showing up in the first place.

As nmb3000 mentioned below, most ads are served via a javascript snippet embedded in the page. NoScript takes care of most ads but it also blocks any malicious javascript that may be in the page as well. It blocks javascript called from other domains as well, so it's pretty effective.

Honey, Dictionary of Numbers

[bluefoxlucid]

For Chrome, Honey, Dictionary of Numbers, Backstay, and Transover. Stop Autoplay for Youtube is a good one, too.

uMatrix or RequestPolicy Continued

[mrchaotica]

uMatrix or RequestPolicy Continued let you block all the cross-site requests and whitelist them yourself instead of relying on a possibly-subverted third-party whitelist (like Ghostery or Adblock).

Re:uMatrix or RequestPolicy Continued

[mrchaotica]

Care to offer up the advantages/reasons for RequestPolicy Continued rather then RequestPolicy?

RequestPolicy Continued is under active development, while the original RequestPolicy has been abandoned by its author.

Also, RequestPolicy Continued allows you to block or unblock several domains at once without having to exit the menu and reload the page each time.

Adblock & NoScript

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Adblock and NoScript seem to make the web a much nicer, faster, safer, cleaner place.

I used a browser without Adblock the other day and was stunned by the amount of crap that litters most pages. Without Adblock and NoScript most pages load megabytes of ads and run dozens of scripts from a hundred different places. Using Adblock speeds up browsing to the point where not using it is downright painful.

Re:Adblock & NoScript

[jebrick]

NoScript is #1 for me.speeds up browsing by stopping all of the crap js from running unless you want it

Re:Adblock & NoScript

[painandgreed]

Adblock and NoScript seem to make the web a much nicer, faster, safer, cleaner place.

Very much so. For the last 6-12 months I've noticed Safari on multiple macs crashing, freezing, and failing to load pages at least one a day. I went and installed various ad blockers as an experiment and so far it's been weeks without a single such crash or freeze. I was willing to let ads by but not when they are actively breaking the internet. Ad in fear of third party injection of malware via ads, and now I'll always install an adblocking extension.

Re:Adblock & NoScript

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Ad in fear of third party injection of malware via ads, and now I'll always install an adblocking extension.

Yep, that all by itself is a good enough reason to install one.

Sadly, the web has become a gaudy, eye-watering shithole, littered with endless ads and social media vomit. I remember when it wasn't that way, when you didn't have to worry that just visiting a site would load malware on your system that would maliciously encrypt your files and hold them for ransom.

It's become the equivalent of a $2 crack whore- an entity with zero morals or ethics who's just looking for any opportunity to rip you off and fuck you over.

My Personal List

[darkain]

Google Voice - send and receive text messages right from the browser.
IPvFoo - shows what connections are IPv4 vs IPv6 with a page. Great for debugging new IPv6 web servers to ensure everything is working properly.

Everything else I use is quite obvious and listed countless times here already, mostly just privacy/blockers.

Primary browser: Vivaldi

[Tyrannosaur]

My primary browser is currently Vivaldi, but I have recently started the search again for a new one because it seems that after a couple hours of youtube my computer cannot do anything... Which just means that I still mostly run chromium extensions

Adguard AdBlocker I am not super picky about my ad blocker, and I generally leave acceptable ads turned on for blockers that support it

Ghostery Privacy matters, and I am suspicious about the many trackers that are all over everywhere...

Magic Actions for Youtube This one is probably my favorite- I get volume control with my scroll wheel, it can disable autoplay, force the html5 player, and really why I use it: I can resize my browser window, and it will fullscreen the youtube video only to that browser window! I used to do this by modifying the url to have "embed" in it, but this only worked on some videos and did not let me undo it to look at the comments. Also available for firefox

Best video downloader 2I haven't used this in a while, so I don't know if it will still work, but this is the only youtube video downloader I have found that works on chromium-based browsers. Firefox, on the other hand, has very many in their add-ons store.

Re:Primary browser: Vivaldi

[LichtSpektren]

Is there any evidence that Chrome chats with Google for anything other than updates, if you turn off "Safe Browsing" and "Search Suggestions" and what not?

Re:Primary browser: Vivaldi

[LichtSpektren]

Their business model by distributing Chrome (and also ChromeOS and Android, by extension) is to get a browser in as many peoples' hands as possible that uses Google as the default search engine, which is their bread and butter. I have not seen any evidence that any of their products outside of the search engine proper is guilty of spying like Windows 10, but I would be happy to be proven wrong.

Re:Primary browser: Vivaldi

[Xian97]

Vivaldi user here too.
Ublock Origin
uMatrix since Chromium based browsers do not have No Script like I used in Firefox
I did have HTTPS Everywhere, but there is a bug in it that prevents you from seeing your Netflix DVD queue so I had to remove it. I still have a DVD plan as there are many titles I want to see that are available on streaming.

Re:Primary browser: Vivaldi

[allo]

chromium (core) is not chrome.

Even if the closed parts in chrome may spy on you is vivaldi not using them. They build on the chromium opensource part, as it is packaged i.e. from debian. And you can bet, they wouldn't package any spyware functions.

Re:Primary browser: Vivaldi

[MrNiceguy_KS]

Best video downloader 2I haven't used this in a while, so I don't know if it will still work, but this is the only youtube video downloader I have found that works on chromium-based browsers. Firefox, on the other hand, has very many in their add-ons store.

I've had a couple of video downloader extensions that quit working, or would work for some videos but not all. I've switched to just pasting the address in at keepvid.com to get a download link.

FoxyProxy

[Sarusa]

If you need a browsing proxy, which is great for things like tunneling out through an ssh link, it's really hard to beat FoxyProxy Standard. Also available for chrome: FoxyProxy Standard

Don't Fuck With Paste

[TechyImmigrant]

The only extension I use on Chrome is "Don't Fuck With Paste", which prevents web sites preventing you from pasting into a field. So I can copy and paste from my password manager.

Re:Don't Fuck With Paste

[Anonymous Coward]

Niiiiice. For those with Firefox, this has a similar setting:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/28tnv0/lpt_stop_websites_from_disabling_copypaste_in/

Re:Don't Fuck With Paste

[allo]

noscript.

Re:Don't Fuck With Paste

[q4Fry]

Mod parent up.

Short List

[wbr1]

Work: uBlock Origin TamperMonkey goo.gl Tabs Outliner Home: uBlock Origin Tabs Outliner Various price comparison and inventory count web scraping tools that change frequently (I run a side biz flipping items on AZ)

Re:Short List

[UnknownSoldier]

+1 for Tabs Outliner! (shows all tabs, vertically, in a separate window)

Tabs Outliner
* https://chrome.google.com/webs...

PREFBAR!

[ealbers]

Prefbar is awesome, you can with a single click enable/disable flash,javascript,cookies, you can click and clear you cache, or clear all...lots of options in a single bar, easy to enable disable each.
There are sites I goto where I want javascript and images OFF...easy to do...

Disconnect is now redundant

[nowsharing]

You don't need Disconnect any longer since Firefox integrated Tracking Protection into the browser.
Enable Tracking Protection
about:config
privacy.trackingprotection.enabled = true

Re:Disconnect is now redundant

[LichtSpektren]

I'm aware of that, but here's the deal on that: Firefox gives you two options -- "strict" or "regular" tracking protection. The strict blocks more things than Disconnect, but it also breaks lots of websites. (I presume the "regular" is exactly equivalent to just using Disconnect.) Occasionally I want to temporarily disable the "strict" protection but still have the "regular", which is not currently an option in Firefox; it's all or nothing. You can switch in the Options menu, but it requires a restart of the browser, so it's a pain in the ass to do it that way. So I keep Disconnect installed so that I can disable the "strict" and still get the "regular" protection.

(Now, all of this is redundant because you can get Disconnect's filters through uBlock Origin, but that's beside the point...)

Re:Disconnect is now redundant

[nowsharing]

Ah, I see. I didn't realize it worked that way. Thanks for the clarification. I have uBlock Origin, so should I just disable FF's tracking protection after enabling the filters?

Re:Disconnect is now redundant

[LichtSpektren]

If you just use the "Normal" protection, then yes; use one or the other, both is redundant. But the "Strict" catches more things than the "Normal", in which case it makes sense to have both going so you can disable the "Strict" protection on occasion but still have the "Normal" filters going.

TrackMeNot

[nowsharing]

Everyone should be installing TrackMeNot to pollute the search engine result tracking pool:
TrackMeNot
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/trackmenot/

By issuing randomized queries to common search-engines, TrackMeNot obfuscates your search profile(s) and registers your discontent with surreptitious tracking.

Re:TrackMeNot

[Thelasko]

Everyone should be installing TrackMeNot to pollute the search engine result tracking pool: TrackMeNot https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/trackmenot/ By issuing randomized queries to common search-engines, TrackMeNot obfuscates your search profile(s) and registers your discontent with surreptitious tracking.

I'm concerned this plugin might trigger Google's bot detection algorithm. Furthermore, wouldn't it be simpler to use DuckDuckGo?

Re:TrackMeNot

[nowsharing]

When I first started using TrackMeNot, once every few months Google would ask me to answer a captcha (bot detection). I haven't had that happen for at least a year now, so they must have fixed it along the way.

Yes, DuckDuckGo is definitely the best solution. But if you're stuck making occasional Google searches or using gmail, it's nice to have TrackMeNot running.

Re:TrackMeNot

[LichtSpektren]

How does TrackMeNot stop gmail tracking? Google reads the contents of your inbox and outbox before you even open your browser.

Re:TrackMeNot

[psyko_chewbacca]

I'm concerned this plugin might trigger Google's bot detection algorithm. Furthermore, wouldn't it be simpler to use DuckDuckGo?

My thoughts exactly! Google, the giant of machine learning certainly could spot this extension blurting out unrelated search request and filter them out accordingly. I also like the fact that it's available in the Chrome Web Store!

Is the source code of this extension publicly available? If so, I'm sorry for the developer, but I would go as far as saying his extension is totally useless...

Re:TrackMeNot

[nowsharing]

It doesn't stop tracking at all, rather it adds a continuous flow of useless search results to your profile, thus obscuring your footprint.

Re:TrackMeNot

[nowsharing]

The source is on github: https://github.com/vtoubiana/TrackMeNot

How It Works
TrackMeNot runs in Firefox and Chrome as a low-priority background process that periodically issues randomized search-queries to popular search engines, e.g., AOL, Yahoo!, Google, and Bing. It hides users' actual search trails in a cloud of 'ghost' queries, significantly increasing the difficulty of aggregating such data into accurate or identifying user profiles...To better simulate user behavior TrackMeNot uses a dynamic query mechanism to 'evolve' each client (uniquely) over time, parsing the results of its searches for 'logical' future query terms with which to replace those already used.

More info at: http://www.cs.nyu.edu/trackmen...

Classic Theme Restorer

[nowsharing]

Classic Theme Restorer brings back the drop down search engine list that they removed. I'm not one of those people who critiques every decision that Mozilla makes, but I was disappointed when they removed the about:config string that allowed you to retain the search engine list.

Classic Theme Restorer
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/

Re:Classic Theme Restorer

[postmortem]

Yep, and it also fixes UI and has convenient buttons to disable non-browser functionality (Pocket, Reader, etc)

An Important One

[jon3k]

Video Speed Controller will change your life.

Drumpfinator for Chrome

[WerewolfOfVulcan]

Replaces all instances of Trump with Drumpf (go to youtube and search for John Oliver Drumpf if you don't get it.)

X-Notifier

[nowsharing]

X-Notifier is a great way to get email updates from lots of different accounts.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/xnotifier/

uMatrix

[McGruber]

I love uMatrix, an extension for Firefox. It's like noscript, but much more powerful: "uMatrix puts you in full control of where your browser is allowed to connect, what type of data it is allowed to download, and what it is allowed to execute. Nobody else decides for you: You choose. You are in full control of your privacy."

Re:uMatrix

[AmiMoJo]

I like the concept but I prefer something a bit more automated. Privacy Badger isn't bad.

Block Talk and Plus for Best Speedup

[michalk]

After a couple of TCPdumps, and a frustrating Firefox experience, I added plus.google.com and talkgadget.google.com to my hosts file. It's amazing, because now I never get hung scripts anymore asking me if I want to kill or continue with the script.

127.0.0.1 plus.google.com
127.0.0.1 talkgadget.google.com

Proper CtrlTabbing

[Cpt. Fwiffo]

I *really* prefer ctrl-tab to open the previous tab, and not cycle through the tabs. So Tab Mix Plus.
Anybody know of another plugin to do that for me?

Re:Proper CtrlTabbing

[nullchar]

On Firefox I use "Tree Style Tab" and "Ctrl-Tab" add-ons.

I don't know how people live without tabs on the side (right or left) and ctrl-tab to quickly switch between most recent tabs.

Re:Proper CtrlTabbing

[allo]

tried ctrl+pgup/pgdown?

Re:Proper CtrlTabbing

[allo]

Ah, that way round. Sorry, i misunderstood this.

Re:UBlock = inferior + inefficient vs. hosts

[danbob999]

Can you temporarily disable host file for a single web site? Does the host file warns you when content is blocked? There is a reason why people prefer an extension to editing a file (which also requires administrative rights).

My Browser Is SeaMonkey

[DERoss]

To a large extent, SeaMonkey extensions are also compatible with Firefox. The reverse is not always true.

I have 27 extensions (not plugins) installed. Here are my most important. Note that three are merely to restore capabilities that were lost when Mozilla developers decided that users really do not know what they need.
* Adblock Plus -- I do not subscribe to any filters; instead, I depend entirely on my own, manually-entered filters.
* Expire history by days -- Some developer at Mozilla decided that the users are wrong, that browser history should be pruned only when the database gets full. This extension restores that prior capability for users to set a preferred life-span for history entries. This extension was Firefox-only, but a Web tool allowed me to convert it for SeaMonkey.
* Find Preferences -- I hate the proliferation of banners in the user interface, another case where developers at Mozilla think they know what users need more than what the users say they need. This extension restores the prior capability to use a popup dialogue to search within a Web page.
* Flashblock -- Yes, I could use the Addons Manager to enable and disable the Flash plugin, Via the PrefBar extension (see below), Flashblock allows me to have a checkbox on my tool bar to enable and disable the Flash plugin without having to open the Addons Manager. Flashblock also indicates where on a Web page Flash presentations are present, provides a simple click to show the presentation, and a context menu to completely delete the presentation.
* Live HTTP headers -- I used this to find that my credit union was setting cookies for Facebook.
* Old Default Image Style -- Again, Mozilla developers decided that the user-set background color was not what users really wanted when displaying only a selected image. Instead, they forced a black background, which conflicts with images that have black along their edges. This extension restored the use of user-set background colors (pale mint green in my case).
* Password Exporter -- I use this to move passwords from my PC to my wife's. This extension was Firefox-only, but a Web tool allowed me to convert it for SeaMonkey.
* Passwords Button -- Part of the Toolbar Buttons extension (see below), this gives me a tool bar button to open the edit window of Password Manager so that I can delete, change, or copy passwords. This extension was Firefox-only, but a Web tool allowed me to convert it for SeaMonkey.
* PrefBar -- I want this as an inherent capability in the vanilla browser. I cannot easily browse without it. I have 31 checkboxes, buttons, and menus setup in PrefBar. Some are from the basic extension, some are added from the PrefBar Web site, and some I created myself.
* Secret Agent -- Although not entirely effective, this confuses attempts by Web servers to track me.
* Show Password On Input -- This is for my master password; see Show my Password below.
* Show my Password -- This is for login passwords. This and the Show Password On Input extension make passwords visible upon my request. I am getting old, and my fingers do not always type what I think I am typing. These let me see if I have mistyped a password and take corrective action.
* Theme Font & Size Changer -- This controls the fonts and their sizes in the browser's user interface, not on rendered Web pages. As I get older, I increase the sizes.
* Toolbar Buttons -- This provides an enhanced set of buttons for customizing my browser's tool bar. Additional buttons beyond that enhanced set are available from the extension's Web site.

Where I indicate "This extension was Firefox-only, but a Web tool allowed me to convert it for SeaMonkey.", the tool is at http://addonconverter.fotokrai....

Cloud To Butt

[neminem]

My favorite was when one of the developers of Kingdom of Loathing forgot they'd installed that, and replaced cloud with butt permanently in some item descriptions after updating them (through their web-based dev tool) without noticing. That was awesome.

My Chrome must-haves

[kav2k]

AdBlock Plus.
HTTPS Everywhere.
Desktop Notifications for StackExchange.
Chrome extension source viewer (allows examining extensions and apps without installing them).
Kicktraq (shows funding graphs embedded in the header of Kickstarter page)
RSS Subscription Extension + The Old Reader Notifier (disclosure: I maintain that one)
A few self-written extensions for Fallen London browser game.

Goggle Mail Checker, Copy Link Text

[LQ]

Sorry if I'm not nerdy enough to run my own SMTP server. And why isn't Copy Link Text built-in? I use it very often.

No Java Plugin?

[wasteoid]

Surely you missed the most useful one that enhances security.

Re:No Java Plugin?

[LichtSpektren]

Surely you missed the most useful one that enhances security.

Only if it's doing something like this: https://it.slashdot.org/story/...

Firefox Extensions

[SeaFox]

Mine:

* Classic Theme Restorer - To undo stupid ideas introduced with Australias.

* DownloadThemAll - To make quick work of downloading a large number of individual images or links on a page.

* The Camelizer - For historical charts of Amazon pricing on items.

* Hover Hound - Because sometimes NewEgg is the better deal even without my Prime shipping.

* UBlock Origin - For general adblockng.

* Ghostery 5.4.11 - Because version 6.0+ has a shitty interface.

* New Private Tab - Allows you to open private browsing as a new tab with other (non-private) tabs on the same window, as opposed to an entirely separate window. Also allows you to swap the state of an existing tab between normal and Private mode.

* Torrent Status - To easily monitor and control a torrent client on a local machine or even a remote one. I use it as my normal torrenting is done through my NAS. I actually donated to the author of this one.

* Video DownloadHelper - For saving streaming media for offline usage.

For Firefox 28

[ChrisMaple]

Back/Forward History Tweaks
Back/forward dropmarker
Classic Compact Options
Clear Cache Button
Cookie Controller
Direct Torrent Downloader
Disable Ctrl-Q Shortcut
Download Manager
Flash Video Downloader
Flashblock
FoxClocks
FxIF
Hide Tab Bar With One Tab
Image Zoom
New tab toolbar button
NextPlease
Open in Browser
Phrase Highlighter
Print selected text
RightToClick
Session Manager
Zoom Page
google-no-tracking-url

Re:UBlock = inferior + inefficient vs. hosts

[LichtSpektren]

Maybe people would take you more seriously if you didn't post like a Russian scammer advertising for viagra.

Privacy Aside

[mythosaz]

....most posts are about privacy, but here's a few that make my life enjoyable in Chrome that aren't privacy related.

General items:

Fireshot - sort of a snipping tool for webpages.
OneTab - a good tab saver and restorer.
Context Menu Search - adds configurable context searchers (IDMB, Wiki, Magic Cards, whatever)
Visualping - takes snapshots of webpages, checks them for changes.

Fun items:

Destiny Item Manager - for, well, Destiny item management.
F.B. Purity - cleans unwanted items from Facebook, since it's an evil I must tolerate.
Reddit Enhancement Suite - vastly improves Reddit.

Pushbullet

[Mefesto44]

I have to say, for productivity extensions, Pushbullet is fantastic. I've been using it for about a month now and I'm not sure how I ever lived without it. It is so easy to send links, data, notifications, and other data through the extension. The SMS feature has been a godsend at work allowing me to keep texting associates and friends without picking up my phone. +1 for Pushbullet!

Re:Stylish

[Luthair]

Stylish is great, I've used it for a few years to make websites with stupid layout and text sizes (I'm looking at you Medium, Jira) render more reasonably. Further, just last night I was using it to make the IKEA kitchen planner user the full screen instead of 600x400px

Chrome Vertical Tabs

[gmit]

My favorite extension for Chrome will be vertical tabs tree: https://www.indiegogo.com/at/c... Of course, only if I would get enough support to finish its development. ;)

Re:Chrome - The Great Suspender

[green1]

While I see the point to this, my usual use case is to open a ton of tabs, and let them load in the background so they're ready by the time I switch to them. It would seem that this would break that making me wait for each one to load after I get there.

FFProfile

[allo]

As Meta-Extension: www.ffprofile.com to create a firefox profile with security defaults. Creates a prefs.js and a zip with some (but not many) extensions.

Re:TreeStyleTab on Firefox

[Bathroom Humor]

I have been using Vivaldi in Windows for a while now, and it has a built-in vertical tab option. The browser isn't fully open sourced, but if Firefox ever goes too far off the deep end, it's nice to have an alternative that offers vertical tabs.

My Firefox extensions

[cshay]

Hope this helps someone:

Adblock Plus - self explanatory
BetterPrivacy - unknown Cookie control including flash cookies
Case Changer - occasionally useful when I accidentally leave the caps lock key on for a few sentence.
Classic Theme Restorer - Makes Firefox like it used to be
Element Hiding Helper for Adblock Plus - makes blocking web annoyances much easier
Extended Copy Menu (fix version) - Adds copy as plain text
Flashblock - I prefer to manually enable Flash when I want to use it
Forecastfox (fix version) - this is a FANTASTIC weather program if you use the addon status bar at the bottom of the browser
FoxReplace - I visit some web forums where people use very offensive racist language. This replaces words that offend me.
FoxyProxy Standard - I use a few proxies from time to time and this makes it easier to set
iMacros for Firefox - nice automatic webpage scripting
Lazarus: Form Recovery - life saver if you type long screeds in a form and something goes wrong
MyWords - maintains a database of common phrases I use
NoScript - self explanatory
NoSquint - increases fonts on a few sites that I have trouble with
Open With - lets me easily load a page in Chrome when it is misbehaving in Firefo
Print pages to PDF - self explanatory
Quora Share - Makes Quora pages open without logging in
Rehost Image - lets me rehost an image to imgur with one click
Restartless Restart - Restarts Firefox with a single menu click
RightToClick - Stops javascript from stealing keystrokes or preventing menu items like Save Image As. Useful on js intensive sites I use often like yahoo mail
Screengrab (fix version) - screenshots of long forum discussions
Self-Destructing Cookies - awesome cookie lifetime manager
Stylish - allows me to redesign certain sites I use a lot to use smaller fonts, less white space
Tab Mix Plus - tab customization
User Agent Switcher - privacy or masquerading as googlebot (useful on Forbes.com)

Re:My Firefox extensions

[nctritech]

Strongly second Tab Mix Plus. The features it adds are extremely helpful.

Nuke Anything

[markdavis]

>What do you use?

One I have not seen mentioned that I like is:

Nuke Anything Enhanced- a GREAT way to hide/remove stuff you don't want to see, especially useful before printing. Also useful for getting rid of distracting animated junk while you are trying to read. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...

Of course, I also use Adblock Plus, and Classic Theme Restorer, and a few others.

OneTab +++

[bogie]

Do people not know about this extension? Nothing better than sucking 20 tabs into a nice group you can label and get back to later. It's the only thing that makes the bloated chrome useable.

Btw side note why isn't Chrome blazing fast at this point? I mean so fast you can't believe the pages loads before you noticed? Is all the code really that far abstracted from the metal? Shouldn't it be leak proof and ultra low memory no matter how badly behaved a webpage is? Can't a company worth half a Trillion dollars make a better browser?

Re: UBlock = inferior + inefficient vs. hosts

[Samantha Wright]

You shut your mouth! APK is a national treasure. Like the World's Largest Ball of Yarn, or Donald Trump's toupee. Anyone who can envision a Slashdot without his enlightened and charming meditations is a dirty, dirty heliocentrist.

...

More soberly, I honestly think he has schizophrenia. His writing and formatting is consistent with that exhibited in TimeCube and bears some resemblance to that of Francis E. Dec, Esq.

I use

[renegade600]

I mainly use firefox but am starting to use chrome more and more since netflix will work with it "out of the box" in Linux.

The addons I mainly use and will install in every browser

get them all
adblock plus
xmarks
last pass

I wish I can find a good one that will stop all autoplaying videos in places like Topix. none of the flash blockers were work nor will the adblockers.

Is there a clickbait remover?

[Camembert]

Actually I find the offensively stupid and distracting clickbait at the bottom of many serious articles more irritating than many ads.
But I am not aware of a clickbait remover.
Does it exist or why not - I cannot be the only one who hates clickbait.

Re:TreeStyleTab on Firefox

[fbumg]

Ditto.

Browser Extensions

[CrashNBrn]

Firefox Developer Extensions

Add-on Compatibility Reporter
Add-ons Manager Context Menu
ContextMenu Extensions (Piro, not signed)
DOM Inspector
Element Inspector
Enhanced Steam
Greasemonkey
LastPass
Multiple Tab Handler (Piro, not signed)
OmniSidebar
Remote XUL Manager
Session Manager
Stylish (only because "User Style Manager" is broken)
SuperUserContent (doesn't really work as well as Stylish or USM)
Tab Groups
Tabhunter
Tree Style Tab (Piro, not signed)
uMatrix
url-addon-bar
Vertical Toolbar

Chrome Canary Extensions

Better History 3.9.14
Bookmark Manager 2.2016.128.11729
Context Menu Search 2.93
Flashcontrol 9.2.415
LastPass: Free Password Manager 4.1.20
Nimble Bookmarks 1.1.0
Page Notes 2.4.10
Post It All : Sticky notes 0.0.1.0
Project Tab Manager 3.0.1
Sidewise Tree Style Tabs 2016.5.5.0
SimpleExtManager 1.4.3.12
SimpleUndoClose 1.3.5.3
Stylish 1.5.2
Tab Manager 4.3.4
Tab Modifier 0.14.3
Tampermonkey BETA 4.1.5259
uMatrix 0.9.3.3

Opera Extensions

Bookmarks by the Side
Classic Tabs
Colors Dev Panel
CSS Diff
DevTools Theme: Zero Dark Matrix
DomFlags
Download Chrome Extension
Download panel
Flashcontrol
Front End Developer Tools
LastPass
MyMenu
Project Tab Manager
Sidewise Tree Style Tabs
SimpleExtManager
SimpleUndoClose
Stylish
Tab Modifier
Violent monkey (likely switch to TamperMonkey)
Matrix

Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 17.0).
Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition.

Still at 29.5 (after pasting all the character counts, it stopped increasing after 29.5 and would not go up, nor let post)
Lorem Ipsum to the rescue.

What is Lorem Ipsum? Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum. Why do we use it? It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using 'Content here, content here', making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for 'lorem ipsum' will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like). Where does it come from? Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source. Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..", comes from a line in section 1.10.32. The standard

Re:Browser Extensions

[CrashNBrn]

Addenum Notes:

Firefox: All Plugins are uninstalled; Thus I disabled "Flash Control"

Chrome: prefer "Post It All : Sticky notes" to "Page Notes"

Opera: last item is uMatrix...

my top 3

[roubles]

1) Lazurus Form Recovery - Caches all form data that I input in text boxes, so if the tab gets accidently closed or the browser crashes, I don't have to re-type my pearls of wisdom
2) POSTman - REST client
3) CamelCamelCamel - Check amazon's price history

Honorable Mention
4) Controlled multi tab browsing - Makes sure I don't open a gazillion tabs.

Re:Some favorites of mine for Firefox

[compro01]

or Firefox is forked.

You might have a look at Pale Moon.

Re:TreeStyleTab on Firefox

[brix]

And for those reading this that either don't know what TreeStyleTabs is or why it is useful ... Modern widescreens make vertical screen space a premium. Most web layouts, of course, are vertical as well. Meaning your content and tab UI at the top (or bottom) of the screen are competing for the same space. TreeStyleTabs, among other features, moves the tab bar to a vertical list on the side, in an area of the screen that probably isn't being used for anything in the first place, and allows you to view more content vertically on the screen at one time.

I probably would never have tried it without the great explanation of someone touting its benefits in an Arstechnica thread, so hopefully repaying that here in this thread for others.

And yes, to tack on a reply to another comment to this parent, it's nice that Vivaldi brings the same base-feature to a Blink-based core.

I use SM 2...

[antdude]

My SeaMonkey extensions are uBlock Origin and Web of Trust (WoT). Plugins are on demand like Flash. No Java since no web sites use it for me. Send referrer disabled, no tracking, etc.

My current installed extensions list...

[antdude]

Last updated: Fri Jul 29 2016 23:15:03 GMT-0700 (Pacific Standard Time)
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:43.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/43.0 SeaMonkey/2.40

Extensions (enabled: 6)
* ChatZilla 0.9.92 (http://chatzilla.hacksrus.com/) (disabled)
* ColorfulTabs 18.1 (http://www.binaryturf.com/free-software/colorfultabs-for-firefox/)
* DOM Inspector 2.0.16.1-signed (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/inspector/)
* IE View 1.5.6 (http://ieview.roub.net/)
* PrefBar 7.0.0.1-signed (http://prefbar.tuxfamily.org/)
* WOT 20151208 (http://www.mywot.com/)
* uBlock Origin 1.7.6 (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock)

I wished there was an updated IE View that didn't have malwares. :(

Classic Theme Restorer!

[trawg]

How has noone suggested Classic Theme Restorer for Firefox! This is what allows you to restore the pre-Australis theme that (imho) marked one of the more serious nails in the coffin for Firefox.

I also use:
- FireGestures, for mouse gestures (how people work without right-click-scroll-up/down to go to the top and bottom of pages is beyond me).
- FoxyProxy, so I can use different proxies for specific URLs, mostly allowing me to test geoip stuff but also coincidentally allowing me to avoid geographical restrictions.
- Flashblock, although I've just realised I can remove this as I've uninstalled Flash months ago so it is kind of redundant.
- Greasemonkey, for a few sites that I've written custom JavaScript handles for.
- QuickJava, an indispensable little toolbar that lives in the status bar allowing you to quickly toggle on/off JavaScript, Java, Silverlight (if you them installed), images, CSS, etc.
- Modify Headers, for development so you can easily inspect & modify HTTP headers.
- Tamper Data, as above.

Chrome extensions

[BrinkeGuthrie]

"Daily links" is great for loading your favorite pages at once. A must. Save to Pocket, Nimbus Screenshot, and World Clocks are terrific. I do wish I could find a credible weather extension tho.

Odd days, even days

[radarskiy]

On odd days, we mock the proles for not using browser extension, thereby leaving themselves vulnerable to security exploits and tracking.

On even days, we mock the proles for using browser extensions, thereby leaving themselves vulnerable to memory leaks.

My favourite addon/extension list:

[iSlasher]

My picks would be:
* uBlock Origin
* LastPass
* Youtube Video Downloader
* Data Saver (For Chrome Only)

Re:AdBlock = inferior + 'souled-out' vs. hosts

[green1]

Ah the host spammer...the outfit who didn't even read the post he's replying too. I do one better than hosts and block it in DNS instead, just like a hosts file but it does every device I own at once.

And hosts isn't always superior to adblock. hosts can't block ads that are served from the same domain as the content you want to see. Adblock can.

I use a far better solution, DNS to block domains that have no redeeming qualities, coupled with adblock to block ads served from hosts that also serve content I'm interested in. Win win.