Firefox/Thunderbird Plugins: Is Less More? 457
comforteagle writes "I've published the first of a two part look at the new dynamic duo of Mozilla's Firefox and Thunderbird. While most folks thus far agree with the 'less is more' mantra when it comes to the base applications, the plugins seem to be a different story. Hey, there's little wiggle room to debate that the firefox base application (the subject of the first article) isn't the shizzle, but how about the add-ons and plugins? For that matter, do you agree that less is more. or is too little included?"
Flash (Score:2, Interesting)
firebird problems (Score:3, Interesting)
A great plugin for Thunderbird, which allows you to use GPG to sign/encrypt your email messages. Very cool!
I like the simple but expandable model (Score:5, Interesting)
However, for it to be successful in the mainstream the customization has to be super easy and painless.
I have had difficulties in the past with customizing Mozilla/Netscape, particularly with trying to switch to small buttons/icons, and that's frustrating.
So why bother? (Score:2, Interesting)
Different Setups for Different Tasks (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Google Bar (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, I personally would rather not have my browser and mail program in one binary. Often I want to kill my browser so it forgets about security permissions (or heck every now and then it blows up all by itself). Having to restart my mail program too is annoying. Now all I have to do is figure out how to make firefox speak Java....
Re:Depends (Score:5, Interesting)
- 1 package with only the barebone browser.
- 1 package with the browser and x of the most used plugins. perhaps an option during install to manually select which plugins to install or not(custom install)
- 1 package with the browser and the whole shebang.
ofc some sort of verification would be needed before a 3rd party plugin would be added to an "official" download...
GPG: enigmail (Score:2, Interesting)
link [mozdev.org] for the lazy (and slashdotting).
Re:Depends (Score:3, Interesting)
about:config
Quite possibly the coolest thing since sliced bread.RSS Reader (Score:3, Interesting)
Perfect for me but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Incorporated (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm currently using mozilla and while I understand there may be legal issues stopping them, I would have preferred them to include flash/java/shockwave/etc with the package as standard.
Re:Google Bar (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I Wish Moz Would Rely a Little Less on Plugins (Score:5, Interesting)
Well... (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess I shouldn't be complaining, since Firefox is still beta software, but it would be nice if they could at least make old extensions and themes not completely crash/freeze the browser. On my system, having an old theme or extension installed is usually good enough to make Firefox crash or freeze at startup.
If the milestone releases were stable enough for everyday use, that'd probably make it easier. But every firefox/firebird/etc milestone I've used has had showstopper bugs that drove me to the nightly builds. 0.8 for example has a cache corruption bug (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1236
I think it would be really good if the Firefox devs could backport bug fixes to the milestone releases, so that it would be possible to get a very stable version of Firefox, even if it's missing some of the shiny new features. Right now I'm stuck using a nightly that doesn't support almost any of the extensions I use, and still has a bunch of bugs that weren't in 0.8, just so I can browse the web without feeling like I'm using a crippled version of IE.
Another solution would be to just settle on a standardized plugin API and stick with it, so that extensions and plugins don't break in bizarre ways every time a new nightly comes out. I'm not sure how realistic that idea is, though, based on how complex the Mozilla/Gecko/XPCOM framework is.
Basically, I love Firefox, and I loved plain Mozilla before Firefox came out, but they're both way too unpredictable. It would be nice if something could be done to 'settle them down' a little bit. Even now Firefox randomly crashes while I'm loading various pages, and exhibits lots of funky little behaviors I'm just getting used to, and I can reproduce all this on other machines. Nuking my profile and installing the latest Firefox nightly is becoming a daily affair for me. All this maintenance is nearly enough to send me back to IE.
Re:I Wish Moz Would Rely a Little Less on Plugins (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Google Bar (Score:1, Interesting)
I use this every day and it is why I don't make Firefox my main browser.
Re:Google Bar - PR for Mozilla sort of available (Score:2, Interesting)
Speaking of the download manager (Score:5, Interesting)
Well... (Score:1, Interesting)
At least one place was offering some kind of spyware XPI that I remember hearing about, and the last thing I want to see is for us Mozilla users to start having some of the same spyware problems as IE has long had...
Calendar/Sunbird is a more interesting plugin (Score:3, Interesting)
Sunbird [mozilla.org]
It's almost usable. I wish it was geared a bit towards multi-user being an outlook replacement. I have it setup right now for two users to get in and make changes, but there's no way to tell which user made the changes, etc. I'm sure it will improve over time.
I just wish the web-based installs would work (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem I have is that installing plugins over the web for Firefox or Thunderbird is non-trivial, at least on Linux. I haven't been able to get Java to work at all on recent versions. And in order to get any of the "automatic installs" to work, I have to run the browser as root; installing stuff in the user's home directory doesn't work. I haven't figured out at all how to get Thunderbird plugins to work.
Part of the problem seems to be related to the browsers themselves, part of the problem seems to be with the plugins and extensions themselves.
One extension also wiped out my complete bookmark file, even though it wasn't even bookmark related.
Downloading extensions over the web also raises lots of security issues and versioning problems.
If these browsers are going to ship lean-and-mean, then their web-based install features must work correctly, for regular users, on all platforms, and securely.
Since Firefox and Thunderbird still seem to be far from that state, it would probably be better to include most reasonably stable and moderately sized plug-ins with each release for now, but to disable them. That way, novice users don't get confused, but experienced users don't have the hassles and worries of web-based installs.
Re:I like the simple but expandable model (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Google Bar (Score:2, Interesting)
Less is absolutely more (Score:2, Interesting)
1. Adblock & Flash "click-to-play" extensions (the only ones I use, actually) 2. Popup-blocking and a sensible refusal to remap keys to stupid things (e.g., I can still right click to view source or download images even if a web site designer has included an annoying-yet-useless bit of javascript) 3. Bookmark shortcuts in the location bar (e.g. "dict inane" or "google al qaeda training manual") 4. Tabbed browsing
The wonder of adblock and flash click to play has almost redefined the web from my vantage point; banners and annoying animations are virtually non-existant on sites I frequent.
Re:I like the simple but expandable model (Score:5, Interesting)
who is the targeted user? (Score:4, Interesting)
If the targeted user is a computer savy person, or at least someone who likes to tinker, then less is better. Someone like this can add what they want. Actually I think most people can add what they want for that matter, but will they?
If the targeted user is someone who does only a little tinkering then it is to little.
The real problem is, if you already have a browser on your computer ( windows / IE or mac safari ) are you going to download another browser? Some people ( like me ) will, but the majority will use what is installed already. So the first hurdle is getting people to download the browser. Then if you bundle to much that download becomes to big, and problematic. On the other hand if you bundle to little then why bother to download it in the first place?
I actually think it is really a catch 22.
From Firefox devs mouth into web devs ears... (Score:3, Interesting)
I use Safari and Opera for 99.9% of pages and they are pretty good at blocking the worst offenders, by design and because they tend to write IE-specific Javascript anyway. Firefox sounds like the right thing to install on PCs of friends who don't want to buy Opera.
Re:I Wish Moz Would Rely a Little Less on Plugins (Score:1, Interesting)
Sorry if someone already mentioned it, but...
Try Firefox Black Diamond edition.
http://blackdiamond.mozdev.org/installation.htm
It still takes a bit of tweaking, but some of the best pluggins are already installed.
Perhaps
the problem with extensions (Score:2, Interesting)
Some well known extensions like "TBE" replicate every single tabbrowser related security hole which has been fixed in mozilla proper for the past year.
Added to this is that a lot of these extensions are basically javascript reimplementations of c++ functionality that was ripped out since the firefox developers thought useless. Adding more than a handful of extensions has a very noticable impact on the vaunted speed of these programs.
Well known mozilla developers refuse to use extensions unless they've personally reviewed its code (which naturally enough they don't have time for).
Me, I'm following their lead. I have a lot more trust in them than in some anonymous extension writers (if they were good, they'd be working on the main products rather than writing extensions).
Re:I like the simple but expandable model (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.google.com/search?q=%s
And give it a shortcut of "g"
So I can type "g site:slashdot.org SCO" and find out all about our favorite company!
Seen at the bottom of Google's Mozilla page [google.com].
My Only Complaint (Score:2, Interesting)
script language="JavaScript"
function foo(){
bar();
shizzle();
}
function bar(){
document.write("Bling\n");
}
function shizzle(){
document.write("Bling\n");
}
The function foo() will cause FireFox to only write "Bling" instead of "Bling Bling". The function also causes the page to 'hang'.
This script will work in IE. Let's not give people an excuse to stick with IE because websites X,Y and Z do not work with FireFox.
Re:Speaking of the download manager (Score:3, Interesting)
If only there were an Office Suite... (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been ranting for years that what we need are applications that come with a base set of features that you can extend via plugin type dealies at will. It could even work in a non-opensource setting. Imagine Microsoft selling WordLite with just the features that the common man uses (about 1% of what's included now). If, at some point in the future you wished to add feature X, you pull up the Office web site, choose the feature, pay a nominal fee to download it and install it. Voila! You're able to pay for ONLY the features you want while people with different needs can pay for ONLY the features they need. And I don't get stuck installing half a gig worth of crap I'll never use.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Interesting)
A few other bugs are annoying, some pages won't work (need IE). I also found one where your bookmarks get trashed after a crash (that was fun). Now I have an extension to automatically upload my bookmarks to a local FTP.
This is by far one of the greatest strengths of Firefox, the wide range of plugins available, and if you don't find one you need, it's not difficult to write!
I have not yet come across one person who prefers IE over Firefox after having used both and I introduce practically everyone I know to it. Excellent job Moz dev team, keep up the great work.
Re:I like the simple but expandable model (Score:3, Interesting)
I renamed my firefox start script to "firefox.sh", and recated a new script