Firefox feature sought

On 25-Jun-2008, at 14:59, Adam C. Engst wrote:

> What are your favorite Firefox add-ons? I've picked up a few, and am
> considering writing an article about the best ones.

The top two:

Web Developer is a must have for anyone who does much HTML coding. It
is, by itself, enough reason to run Firefox.

Adblock Plus is the single best ad blocker I've ever seen, and is also
reason enough to run Firefox, especially when coupled with the ABP
Filterset.G.

Others:
NoScript lets you control which sites you allow to run javascripts,
and is nearly reason enough to run Firefox.

DownloadHelper: gives you easy access to embedded content (flash
movies, etc)

I use a few others as well:

Forcastfox gives you a quick look at the weather in your browser
window's activity bar.

TabHistory populates new tabs with the current tab's history.
Remarkably useful.

Gmarks integrates with Google Bookmarks and would be more useful if I
used it more.

ColorfulTabs gives each tab a different color and helps me separate
the tabs in the bar, especially when I have 10 or 20 open. This one is
just eye-candy, but I find it helpful.

I also use the Aero Silver Fox Basic Theme (or GrApple Yummy) which I
think looks a bit better than 3.0's default (though FF3's default is
better than FF2s was).

--On June 25, 2008 1:59:38 PM -0700 "Adam C. Engst" <acetidbits.com> wrote:

> What are your favorite Firefox add-ons? I've picked up a few, and am
> considering writing an article about the best ones.

NoScript - Lets you block scripting on a website by website basis. The only
add-on tempting me to move from Camino to Firefox. Currently Camino can
only block everywhere or nowhere.This blocks all the scripting methods used
to get around pop-up blockers.

Flashbock - don't auto-play flash. I hate moving ads (and I really hate
audio ads) and auto-play movies. This is far as I go with ad blocking
(other than cookie blocking). Static/text ads don't bother me so I leave
those. Camino has this built-in.

S3Fox - Use this on the Windows version. Let's me grab files from my Amazon
S3 repository. I use interarchy on the mac for this.

DownloadThemAll - I use this to batch download files off my TiVo. Takes a
little configuration to accomplish this, but using it for bulk downloads on
most sites is painless.

There were a couple of web development tools that were neat but I just
didn't use them very much after I installed them.

Kevin

My favorite add-ons that keep me using Firefox over Omniweb and Safari are:

1) Adblock Plus - just say no to blinking adds, annoying videos and all the distracting crud on the web. Makes me feel a little guilty about all the free ad-supported web sites, but I never clicked on ads anyway. Whenever a new version of Safari is released, I try it for a day, but I am driven back to Firefox by the video ads that just won't go away.

2) NoScript - allows you to control which Javascripts or Java apps execute on a given web site. If you don't want doubleclick to fire, you can block it.

3) Answers - a good alternative to Safari's dictionary, etc. when right clicking on a word.

I'm looking forward to hearing what other Firefox add-ons folks think are must haves.

Walt Nelson 4D Developer

On Jun 25, 2008, at 4:59 PM, Adam C. Engst wrote:

> What are your favorite Firefox add-ons? I've picked up a few, and am
> considering writing an article about the best ones.

I only use add-ons as part of web development and evaluation of web
sites.

Web Developer - "Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer
tools" (Firefox 3 compatible) Puts lots of options in a toolbar (and
menu, and contextual menu). My favorites are Disable JavaScript, Show
CSS Information (shows CSS related to element under your cursor),
Resize 1024x768, View Generated Source (as opposed to View Source
which doesn't include changes made by JavaScript), Validate HTML
(sends current URL to validator.w3.org), and Validate Local HTML
(sends "generated source" version of page to validator.w3.org)

Firebug - "Web Development Evolved" Some features overlap with Web
Developer, particularly good for Javascript debugging

Live HTTP Headers - "View HTTP headers of a page while
browsing" (Firefox 3 compatible) Helpful for following redirects,
values submitted in cookies & form POSTs, AJAX activity


These two can help when you're evaluating a site using a screen reader
when you don't have a screen reader (you can do some testing with free
trial versions but the two most popular, JAWS and Window-Eyes, cost
about $900).

Fangs - "Renders a text version of a web page similar to screen reader
output" (Firefox 3 compatible) Not really a substitute for actual
screen reader testing but gives you the sense of what its like to
experience a web page in one dimension instead of two. No apparent
updates to emulation since 2005 (only updates for Firefox
compatibility).

FireVox - "Talking browser extension built on the CLC-4-TTS suite"
more like using a screen reader just for the browser but crude
compared to real screen readers or using VoiceOver in Safari.

Adam C. Engst ace-at-tidbits.com |TidBITS/1.0-Allow| wrote:
> What are your favorite Firefox add-ons? I've picked up a few, and am
> considering writing an article about the best ones.
>
> cheers... -Adam
>

For me, the list would be:

1) Tab Mix Plus - Simply the best tab customization add-on I've found. Many options for behavior and appearance customization.

2) NewsFox - RSS/Atom news reader (it sometimes would hang up with many articles in Firefox 2, but have not tried in Firefox 3)

3) ScrapBook - Allows quick capture and organization of web pages for off-line viewing.

4) FoxClocks - Allows a display of current times for various locations in the status bar.

5) Morning Coffee - Allows a set of routine web sites to be opened on certain days. Currently doesn't work with Firefox 3.

And those already described:

6) NoScript
7) Flashblock
8) Adblock Plus (although I do deactivate it on the TidBITS website!)
9) DownLoadThemAll!


There are also others I have but they currently do not work with Firefox 3.

Regards,

Ed H.

On 26-Jun-2008, at 09:46, Kevin van Haaren wrote:
> --On June 25, 2008 1:59:38 PM -0700 "Adam C. Engst"
> <acetidbits.com> wrote:
>
>> What are your favorite Firefox add-ons? I've picked up a few, and am
>> considering writing an article about the best ones.
>
> NoScript - Lets you block scripting on a website by website basis.
> The only
> add-on tempting me to move from Camino to Firefox. Currently Camino
> can
> only block everywhere or nowhere.This blocks all the scripting
> methods used
> to get around pop-up blockers.
>
> Flashbock - don't auto-play flash. I hate moving ads (and I really
> hate
> audio ads) and auto-play movies. This is far as I go with ad blocking
> (other than cookie blocking). Static/text ads don't bother me so I
> leave
> those. Camino has this built-in.

If you have NoScript, Flashblock is not needed. I've yet to find a
flash movie that played on a site where I had not allowed scripts.
Also, NoScript has a neat little "blocked object" that lets you
specifically load the movie if you want without even allowing scripts.

NoScript does have on bug. If a site I am on is not allowed to run
scripts, then a local script I have in my menus cannot run (for
example, the tw3.it or tinyurl scripts). Small annoyance.

Use FlashBlock if you want to avoid flash movies and don't want to run
NoScript.

On 26-Jun-2008, at 09:46, WNelsonLists wrote:
> I'm looking forward to hearing what other Firefox add-ons folks
> think are must haves.

I just ran into a site that redirected me away because I was a mac
user, so I have another one to add

User Agent Switcher: When you need it, you need it. The rest of the
time, it's a waste of space.

At 1:59 PM -0700 6/25/08, Adam C. Engst wrote:
>What are your favorite Firefox add-ons? I've picked up a few, and am
>considering writing an article about the best ones.

Delicious Bookmarks
Firebug
Google Toolbar
NoScript (absolute MUST have)
Selenium IDE
Shazou (not compat. w/ FF3)
--
Regards,
Chuck

On 6/27/08 8:44 AM, LewisGmail wrote:
>
>
> User Agent Switcher: When you need it, you need it. The rest of the
> time, it's a waste of space.
>
>

just take the icon off your toolbar. There's still a menu under Tools.
No space wasted, unless you consider an item in a usually-closed menu to
be waste space?

kazar

Here's another good one I just found from a note on NYTimes.com

Q & A Tip of the Week: Previewing Search Results

By J. D. BIERSDORFER Published: June 26, 2008

Sometimes in your Google search results it’s hard to tell from just the text link and description if the Web pages have the information you actually want. The Google Preview browser extension adds a small thumbnail image of each hit on your results page to help you see what you’re getting before you click the link. Versions are available for Firefox and Internet Explorer at www.googlepreview.com, and despite the name Google Preview also works with Yahoo search results.

I have a number of Firefox extensions that I haven't seen mentioned here.

Firstly, I have a handful of extensions to make Firefox more Mac-like: Fission adds a Safari-like progress bar in the address bar and DragDropUpload lets me drag and drop items into "select an item to upload" type fields.

Then I have a couple extensions that let me customize my web browsing experience: AdBlock has been mentioned, but I also have the AdBlock Filterset G Updater, which takes advantage of an excellent online ad filter database to keep ad filtering up to date; Greasemonkey is a great add-on that lets you add javascripts to pages for all kinds of interesting effects, including wholly customizing the behavior of a website; and finally I have Stylish, which lets me add style sheets to specific web pages to customize their look or behavior (there's great style sheets for the Google apps, for example).

Lastly, I use Mozilla Weave to keep my settings sync'd up between home and work (it's a pretty solid replacement for the no-longer-available Google Browser Sync); Gmail Notifier helps me keep updated on my emails from my status bar; and Verisign's OpenID Seatbelt makes it easier to use Verisign's highly secure OpenID services; I also have the DOM inspector and InspectThis, which I mostly use to hack my UserChrome.css file to customize Firefox's appearance.

-- Nik

nikinik.net | http://inik.net | http://notions.inik.net

On Jun 25, 2008, at 1:59 PM, Adam C. Engst wrote:

> What are your favorite Firefox add-ons? I've picked up a few, and am
> considering writing an article about the best ones.

A new one for Firefox 3:

Quartz PDF Plugin (aka firefox-mac-pdf)

Still needs a little polish (for instance, to allow saving PDFs), but
is very fast and nice to have when you read online PDFs frequently
(like I do). Far, far faster than Adobe's Safari plugin.

- Todd

On Jun 25, 2008, at 1:59 PM, Adam C. Engst wrote:

> What are your favorite Firefox add-ons? I've picked up a few, and am
> considering writing an article about the best ones.

I thought of another one I hadn't seen mentioned yet:

Resizable Textarea

Very handy for those tech support web forms and similar data entry
pages that give you a miserly 2 line/30 character wide textarea field
to enter a lengthy description; with this installed you can just click-
and-drag the field corner to resize it to a more usable size.

- Todd

GTDInbox: Organizes Gmail with a GTD-style task system.

Remember The Milk for Gmail: Puts reminders on your Gmail page, and can turn mail into tasks.

I like the WorldCat search extension, which allows you to search libraries worldwide. Enter an author or title, and a zip code, and it lists libraries that have the book, sorted by their distance from your zip code.

http://www.worldcat.org/toolbars/default.jsp

Dorothy

For me the deal killer with Firefox has always been that you can't select text and graphics on a web page and copy and paste or drag and drop it to another application. In Safari, Mail or NetNewsWire I can do this and retain the text formating and graphics. In Firefox only the unformatted text is transfered. The formatting and graphics are lost. Is there an add-on that will do this? If not, I'm sticking with Safari.

Gary

>On 25-Jun-2008, at 14:59, Adam C. Engst wrote:
>
>> What are your favorite Firefox add-ons? I've picked up a few, and am
>> considering writing an article about the best ones.

        "Session Fix" (among others) gives the option of saving the session
(keeping all the web pages and tabs that are currently open) when closing
the application so that they are restored the next launch.


--
* Johann Beda - contact link: <http://xri.net/=j-beda> *
* Johann's MostlyMac Computer Consulting - <http://mmcc.beda.ca/> *

On 16/07/2008 11:59 PM, "Johann Beda" <st-tidbits.combeda.ca> spake thus:

> "Session Fix" (among others) gives the option of saving the session
> (keeping all the web pages and tabs that are currently open) when closing
> the application so that they are restored the next launch.

Is this necessary any more, given that Firefox 3 now does this itself?
(Preferences -> Main -> When Firefox starts -> Show my windows and tabs from
last time.) Or does it add more features?

--
Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
http://xri.net/=nigel.stanger

At 4:47 AM -0700 7/17/08, Nigel Stanger wrote:
>On 16/07/2008 11:59 PM, "Johann Beda" <st-tidbits.combeda.ca> spake thus:
>
>> "Session Fix" (among others) gives the option of saving the session
>> (keeping all the web pages and tabs that are currently open) when closing
>> the application so that they are restored the next launch.
>
>Is this necessary any more, given that Firefox 3 now does this itself?
>(Preferences -> Main -> When Firefox starts -> Show my windows and tabs from
>last time.) Or does it add more features?
>

        I haven't upgraded to FF3 yet, so I don't really know. The thing I
like about SF under FF2 is that it gives a choice each shutdown rather than
doing it all the time.


--
* Johann Beda - contact link: <http://xri.net/=j-beda> *
* Johann's MostlyMac Computer Consulting - <http://mmcc.beda.ca/> *

On 19/07/2008 12:03 AM, "Johann Beda" <st-tidbits.combeda.ca> spake thus:

> I haven't upgraded to FF3 yet, so I don't really know. The thing I
> like about SF under FF2 is that it gives a choice each shutdown rather than
> doing it all the time.

Ah, yes. The Firefox 3 built-in is all or nothing.

--
Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
http://xri.net/=nigel.stanger