Exploring Firefox Extensions 484
Gary writes "If you haven't made the switch to Mozilla Firefox it may be because you aren't aware of the great benefits Firefox has over IE. Flexbeta has posted a nice HOWTO guide on Firefox extensions; my favorite is the Target Alert extension which displays a small graphic next to links that are not web pages. For example a mailto: link will display a small envelope, a link to a PDF file will display a small Adobe icon, etc."
Yet more good reasons to switch from IE (Score:5, Informative)
1. Middle click to open link in new window/tab
2. Find as you type
3. Themes/Skins/Chromes
4. Customizable toolbars
5. Plugins that allow me to put just about anything on the toolbars
6. Great development tools - javascript console, venkman debugger, live-headers plugin
All that boils down to:
1. Easier to use
2. Easier to customize
3. Broader advanced feature set
Tabs (Score:4, Informative)
And for browsing Slashdot, this [beggarchooser.com] kind of helps.
my most used extension ever... (Score:5, Informative)
A MUST for every webnerd.
It even lets you edit CSS live on the web.
adblock (Score:5, Informative)
[Adblock]
Re:Yet more good reasons to switch from IE (Score:5, Informative)
Preference Name: image.animation_mode
Value: once
Adblock (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Switch tabs ? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Switch tabs ? (Score:3, Informative)
Then there's always Control+Tab/Shift Tab or Control+PageUp/Down to go to next/previous tabs.
Wikalong (Score:5, Informative)
I've written up a little extension called Wikalong [phunnel.org].
Basically, it puts a wiki in your sidebar, that is indexed off the current page you are viewing. The wiki is online so anyone using the plugin, that visits a page you make notes on will see your notes, and vice versa.
It doesn't work perfectly yet, but I'm hoping to attract some smarter people than I to help get it straightened out.
More details on the site I linked above.
Re:Why people cling to IE (Score:3, Informative)
2. Select 'Copy Image'
3. Paste into mspaint, Photoshop, etc.
This works fine in FireFox 0.9.3
Some useful links (Score:5, Informative)
Some extensions I'm currently using:
Flat Bookmark Editing [bluweb.com]
Add Bookmark Here [gorgias.de]
CuteMenus [mozdev.org]
Paste and Go [tecwizards.de]
Gmail Notifier [nexgenmedia.net](Still works)
Free iPods? Sure. freeipods.com [freeipods.com]
Re:Compact Menu Extension (Score:3, Informative)
1. Right-click on any of the icons (say the home icon) and choose 'Customize'.
2. Choose small icons.
3. Then drag all icons and bars (such as the URL and Search) into the top menu bar. Everything should now be along the top. And if there are any icons you do not want or need, simply drag them onto the Customize Box.
4. But you say, there are still two bars without anything in them. Correct. Solve that by going 'View' > 'Toolbars' > and unselect both 'Navigation Toolbar' and 'Bookmark Toolbar.'
Not that the way you did it is wrong. Just that you will want to know about the feature of Customizing for other uses.
Flashblock (Score:4, Informative)
Flashblock [mozdev.org] replaces Macromedia Flash animations with a button you have to click to download and run the animation. Most uses of Flash are abominations to me; I like to choose when to consume it.
Gripe wrt Macromedia: a couple of days back I installed the latest and greatest Flash player from Macromedia on my WinXP box and it uninstalled Flashblock for me.
Better yet: it also prevents subsequent (re-)installation of Flashblock.
Solution: download Flaskblock.xpi, unzip it, mod so that it installs under a nom de guerre, rezip and install.
Anybody at Macromedia, if you're listening: STOP BEING NAUGHTY.
Re:Why people cling to IE (Score:2, Informative)
I also held back for a long time for the exact same reason. There is an extension for mozilla that does it, but in Firefox 0.9 there is a "copy image" function built in when you right click on any image.
Ssshhhhhhh. (Have you tried AdBlock?) (Score:5, Informative)
My extensions (Score:5, Informative)
Magpie [bengoodger.com]. Those who've used FlashGet with IE will love this little thing. It'll snatch all the files pointed to by links from a page according to some pattern, for example *jpg, and save them to disk or open them up as tabs. Great for collecting "nature pictures".
Firefox's bookmark dialog's "Create in" feature pisses me off. It never, ever, has the folders you need in it's puny little drop down. OpenBook [chuonthis.com] removes it and replaces it with the full bookmarks folder tree.
You can reorder tabs with MiniT [mozdev.org] using simple drag and drop on the tab bar. I think this should maybe be added to Firefox itself, it's pretty basic functionality.
Re:I haven't switched...my reasons are... (Score:3, Informative)
Warning Parent link is to Goat.sec! and Scat pic! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Tabs (Score:3, Informative)
Various bookmarklets [squarefree.com]
Re:adblock (Score:3, Informative)
Re:adblock (Score:4, Informative)
Re:adblock I have a question .... (Score:4, Informative)
Does anyone know of a way to stop this kind of advertising besides turning off JavaScript in the browser?
You can block the individual JS files that load. Try blocking http://www.tek-tips.com/jsource.js
Re:Why people cling to IE (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I haven't switched...my reasons are... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:adblock I have a question .... (Score:2, Informative)
127.0.0.1 server.that.you.are.blocking.com
BugMeNot (Score:5, Informative)
This is especially useful for a one-time posting on a site, or to read members-only newspapers and things like IGN Insider.
Re:Flashblock (Score:5, Informative)
I talked to a Flash evangelist about this, and he essentially told me " our real business is showing you ads that you cannot avoid. "
extensions and upgrades (Score:4, Informative)
And since you don't have that externsion...you can't conveniently uninstall it to restore Flash, and since that externsion wasn't available for 0.9x you could not reinstall it (it may have since become available). What you had to do was poke around in Firefox's files and figure out what to delete to remove the extension. Yuck!
So, before doing a major upgrade, uninstall all extensions.
Re:Tabs (Score:2, Informative)
I used to love Tabbrowser Extensions, but it got bigger and slower over time until it finally became unbearable for me. I still think it's a brilliant extension, but I use Firefox instead of Mozilla specifically because I don't want one package that does everything. (:
Piro points to a list of smaller extensions [mozillazine.org] that add features from TBE on an individual basis. I use a few of those and love them. But the one thing I really miss from TBE is the coloured tabgroups. I loved having related tabs all grouped together, and being able to close the group without closing all my other tabs as well.
I have a few years of experience writing/hacking Mozilla-and-family extensions, so I may eventually tackle this myself. But I'm quite busy (lazy) and I keep hoping someone else will miss it enough to write a tabgroup extension for me. (:
Better version of miniT (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Extensions = extensive crashes (Score:2, Informative)
Maybe it's my installation, but every time I try to install an extension either it doesn't install or I have to reinstall firefox because it won't start anymore.
That's been a major problem for a while, because extensions are/were essentially becoming part of the main program. You could uninstall them manually [mozdev.org], but it was a tricky, fragile practice. Fortunately, Firefox 0.9 introduced a new extension manager that makes the process much easier -- if the extension author supports it. Which leads us to the next point.
I'd say the extensions system needs just a bit more work. And mind you, I've seen a lot of mozilla bugs as I've been with mozilla since version 0.8.x
Not all of the problems are with the extension system itself. An extension can be well or poorly written; it can have bugs, incompatibilities, etc., just like you won't always have a success with every program you see on freshmeat and try out. It's not automatically stable just because it's an extension. If the extension author has written their extension to support the new extension manager, it's easy to uninstall if you determine it's of no use to you, but ideally, a bit of research should be done before you try an extension out. Sites like ExtensionRoom [mozdev.org] and update.mozilla.org [mozilla.org] have a place for users to put reviews and comments, so it's a good idea to glance over those, and see if lots of other people have problems, before taking the plunge.
Some more good ones (Score:2, Informative)
Dictionary Search [mozdev.org]: Lets you set up various online encyclopedias and dictionaries (e.g. Wikipedia, M-W.com) so you can highlight any word in a website, right click and get a definition for it.
Allow Right-Click [roachfiend.com]: Allows you to right click on sites/objects that have that option disabled.
IEView [mozdev.org]: Adds the option to open the page in IE to the right-click context menu for those few sites who won't come out of the stone ages and believe MS is the end-all, be-all of browsers.
Basics [mozthemes.tk]: Adds a button to the tab bar to open new tabs. This was available in Mozilla and I missed it when I first moved to Firefox.
Unclose Tab [mozilla.org]: Sometimes I'll close the wrong tab by mistake. This extension allows you to right click the tab bar and re-open a tab you just closed.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Are you sure about that? (Score:3, Informative)
I am ashamed to discover that it is not true. Abject apologies to Macromedia.
I've failed to entirely recreate my previous findings. My best guess is that Flashblock lets some through its net and I mistook this for Flash Player circumventing Flashblock.
Yes, Flash Click To View is a better name, if more unwieldy.
RETRACTION (Score:3, Informative)
I've investigated this further and can't reproduce my results.
My best guess is that Flashblock is not hooking all the possible ways of triggering a Flash object, and I mistook this for untoward behaviour by the latest Flash Player.
Abject apologies to Macromedia.
Re:Yet more good reasons to switch from IE (Score:3, Informative)
Works well for me but read the notes on the Installation page about known bugs. When you mouse over the blocked flash movies my cpu still shoots up a little, but not nearly as much as without this extention.
Re:Ssshhhhhhh. (Have you tried AdBlock?) (Score:5, Informative)
I would think someone would have designed a new extention with more bells and whistles.
Re:Tabs (Score:1, Informative)
Uninstall the "plugin downloader plugin" (you can just delete or read-protect libnullplugin.so on Linux).
Re:Yet more good reasons to switch from IE (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What about search engines? (Score:1, Informative)
OT: alternatives to weather.com (Score:3, Informative)
However, since discovering the following resources, I don't even bother with Weather.com anymore.
http://www.weather.gov/ [weather.gov]
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ [noaa.gov]
http://weather.unisys.com/ [unisys.com]
These sites offer much more in-depth technical information and are not funded by ad revenue.