Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
I never setup a computer without both
I'd put Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Reader at the top of the list. Microsoft Silverlight is really good, too.
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.
There are no legitimate reasons for cross-site requests and you should never use a referrer for anything, even access control.
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).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
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.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
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.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
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
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..
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.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
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).
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
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.
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/
Video Speed Controller will change your life.
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."
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....