My Firefox plugins
2007-Feb-05, Monday 22:46![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matgbK, I've had a few different but very similar conversations with people recently, along the lines of
So, for the benefits of those that want to see just why Firefox is good, I thought I'd use Extension List Dumper and, well, write it up. This'll also serve as a back up incase I need to install elsewhere quickly, etc. Multi-purpose posting FTW!
Oh,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nadriel? This post isn't specifically aimed at you, but just take it as being a scatter gun pointed very close to your general direction...
Allows loging in to sites that require registration to read content, saves time and is useful, don't use it much.
A very useful little trick if I'm blogging, it'll give me an HTML formatted list of links (with titles) for all the tabs I have open in a window, and it's customisable (so I can put the title="" text in automatically, which I like to do when possible so it saves me time)
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deepestsender. I even have a tag for this little baby, it's a blogging client made by, and for LJ users, but also good for Wordpress, Blogger and anything else that uses the Atom API. I'm currently helping out beta testing the new Friends Editor, which, well, looks to be TEH AWESOMENESS. Sorry. I like it, OK?
Y'know how Fx lets you highlight, right click and google/whatever your favourite search engine is? Well this one'll perform a dictionary lookup on any words you don't know instead. Don't use it much, but it's useful.
If you've got a del.icio.us account, you already know and likely use this. It's just, well, good.
Came with the install. Um, never used it. No idea what it's actually for. Perhaps I should?
Integrated download manager. Once click functionality for links, it'll restart, split large files into chunks, store things for later DLing, and it also has a nifty little right click/download all links, especially good for thumbnail galleries and the like. Very useful, I like, a lot.
This is just cool. Creates Lorem Ipsum text into your clipboard. Very good for new sites when I need some quick content for pages.
Also very useful. Allows you to copy a tab, complete with forward/back history, either into a new tab. Not as useful as the New Window extension, below, but can have its moments. Normally if you want to compare the page you were just on to the page you're now on. One of the many many reasons why developers should never use target="_blank".
Um, does exactly what it says on the tin. More importantly, it's what I'm using to make this post...
I raved about this one before, and I still really like it. Great for finding those little glitches, and for just seeing what the hell they did to get that effect. Very very nice.
Yeah, um, this looks to be great. It'll back up all your extensions into a zip, or do other funky things. Things I really should've, y'know, actually done. But useful.
INSTALL THIS ONE NOW. It's the first thing I grab every time. It stops all flash from working, and replaces it with a transparent logo to click on. No annoying flash adverts, no flash generated pop ups, etc. Also, if you click a link that's to a flash generated site (and there are some bloody awful sites entirely in flash out there), the site won't start loading until you tell it to, so your bandwidth will survive. Useful even if you're not on dial up.
I resisted this for ages, but eventually succumbed. Basically, people write javascript fiddles for websites, and greasemonkey runs them. You chose the scripts you want, and it does the rest. For example, I'm using one that preloads a list of all my LJ tags on the update page, which is useful. There is one that'll rearrange the LJ update page to go close to how it used to be, but given how badly laid out that was, well, YMMV I guess.
For those websites that just don't get it, and also for user testing, click a button, the site you're on will open up in Internet Explorer as well. Timesaving.
I could use this more if I remembered it. Right click on an image on a site, it'll create XHTML formatted text in your clipboard allowing you to display that image. Hotlinking remains naughty, but this is a nice little timesaver.
Makes ctrl+tab work in the same way that alt+tab does for windows, ie it'll take you to your previous tabs not cycle through them. Dead useful, I'm very used to it just being there...
The same person that told me to install DownThemAll told me about Linky. I've never actually used it, but it must be good. I'll figure out what it does someday...
Simply exceptional for LJers; when typing in an LJ comment or post box, right click, the context menu gives you many many options for codes, inserts, etc. Very cool.
This is a great one if at a site that uses consecutive numbers for it's pages, but has poor navigation structure (webcomics like, for example, Megatokyo or Angels spring to mind), basically you tell it which bit of the url is changing, and it'll do the navigation work for you. I use it pretty much every time I go back to catch up on a fair number of poorly archived comics.
Does exactly what it says. The new tab button should be on the tab bar, it's where it was on Mozilla and it's where IE puts it, why Fx Puts it elsewhere is beyond me.
Nifty little thing; lets you define what you want to happen when you open a new tab. Best trick is when there's a url in the clipboard.
Basically, takes you to wherever your install of Fx is keeping all the info.
theweaselking linked me to this one ages ago, and it's a lifesaver. You know how EVERY usability guideline in the book says ALWAYS tell people you're linking to a URL, but so many sites don't? Well this one'll detect when there's a pdf file on the way, interrupt and ask you what you want to do, including turning said pdf into html, which is dead useful.
Um, yeah. I use this one constantly, and forget that it's not standard. Double click a tab, it'll reload it, great for the friends page, when editing, or simply to look at a random thing again. Not sure why I prefer it to the reload button, but I really really do.
Y'know how sometimes people don't make links to display as links, so you just get a display of text you know is a url but you can't click? Well this one, highlight, right click, open the url anyway! Bargain.
Puts the Google PageRank and the Alexa status into the bottom left of my window. Not as useful for the avarage user, but I find it fun. Fairly useful if you're plotting a Google Bomb.
Like Duplicate Tab, only to a completely new window. For those moments when you're at ?skip=200 on your friends page and you want to keep going further back but have run out of screen space for your tab needs. Doubles up well with the copy all urls above, if there's a post or search with a lot of good content, take it to a new window then open all the links before copying.
Many many little tricks that make tabbed browsing so much nicer. Again, an extension I forget I've got, and get confused when trying to do stuff on someone else's machine.
For the Fx team, for the inevitable crashes (and yes, I know too many extensions can (does) cause crashes).
SO VERY COOL. Sorry. Allows you to actually download streamed videos from sites such as YouTube very easily. Especially useful if you're on a dial-up (I was) or a slightly choppy wireless (I am), but, well, download and watch at your leisure. Combines well with DownThemAll for renaming on Download goodness.
Very very cool developer extension, especially good for people learning html, creates a formatted html chart blocking all the elements into container blocks, so you can see what is in where. Much better than a simple view source.
If you build sites at all, you need this. If you just like to look at what sites are doing, this is cool. If you want to turn of various things, like CSS, with one click, this is good to. Takes up real estate at the top, but who cares, it's good.
ETA: Follow up post with more here.
That's it, there is no more. Except, of course, there is. Notice the complete lack of adblock in the above list; I place adverts on sites, and I like that sites get payments just for me looking at them, so I don't block ads, but many like to. And there are doubtless many (many) extras out there it hasn't occurred to me to even try. All the links, by the way, are to wherever the developer says they're based. If they don't link to a download page, blame them, not me, but you can search Mozdev by name to find em if you want them.
Anyone got any favourites I've missed?
Oh yeah; obligatory what I've been up to bit; drove out to Reading Friday to helpfaeriecween with some moving (have car, will drive stuff), and then we all piled to freedrinkdave's local club, good fun. Left Reading to drive Devon wards, got near the outskirts of Exeter and decided to detour, went into town to dudeulike's internet cafe in Exeter, used his kitchen to cook a pizza, went to the Hub (again), saw many many people, draxar turned up and said it was ok to crash at the Circus, so stopped staying sober and had a great evening. Sunday I drove to Torquay, filled the car up, mostly books, then drove back up here. Unloaded car, then collapsed, exhausted. Spent today unpacking boxes, moving stuff around, cooking and updating my CV a bit and making it look much better. Tomorrow into town to do some volunteering at Cowley St. Plus probably some 'register with employment agency' stuff (again).
If you're using Firefox but not using any plugins, you might as well be using Opera, because, quite simply, while Fx is great for security, customisation and flexibility, Opera is as good on security, is probably better for usability, and is better out of the box but nowhere near as flexible.
So, for the benefits of those that want to see just why Firefox is good, I thought I'd use Extension List Dumper and, well, write it up. This'll also serve as a back up incase I need to install elsewhere quickly, etc. Multi-purpose posting FTW!
Oh,
nadriel? This post isn't specifically aimed at you, but just take it as being a scatter gun pointed very close to your general direction...- British English Dictionary 1.19
Allows loging in to sites that require registration to read content, saves time and is useful, don't use it much.
A very useful little trick if I'm blogging, it'll give me an HTML formatted list of links (with titles) for all the tabs I have open in a window, and it's customisable (so I can put the title="" text in automatically, which I like to do when possible so it saves me time)
deepestsender. I even have a tag for this little baby, it's a blogging client made by, and for LJ users, but also good for Wordpress, Blogger and anything else that uses the Atom API. I'm currently helping out beta testing the new Friends Editor, which, well, looks to be TEH AWESOMENESS. Sorry. I like it, OK?Y'know how Fx lets you highlight, right click and google/whatever your favourite search engine is? Well this one'll perform a dictionary lookup on any words you don't know instead. Don't use it much, but it's useful.
If you've got a del.icio.us account, you already know and likely use this. It's just, well, good.
Came with the install. Um, never used it. No idea what it's actually for. Perhaps I should?
Integrated download manager. Once click functionality for links, it'll restart, split large files into chunks, store things for later DLing, and it also has a nifty little right click/download all links, especially good for thumbnail galleries and the like. Very useful, I like, a lot.
This is just cool. Creates Lorem Ipsum text into your clipboard. Very good for new sites when I need some quick content for pages.
Also very useful. Allows you to copy a tab, complete with forward/back history, either into a new tab. Not as useful as the New Window extension, below, but can have its moments. Normally if you want to compare the page you were just on to the page you're now on. One of the many many reasons why developers should never use target="_blank".
Um, does exactly what it says on the tin. More importantly, it's what I'm using to make this post...
I raved about this one before, and I still really like it. Great for finding those little glitches, and for just seeing what the hell they did to get that effect. Very very nice.
Yeah, um, this looks to be great. It'll back up all your extensions into a zip, or do other funky things. Things I really should've, y'know, actually done. But useful.
INSTALL THIS ONE NOW. It's the first thing I grab every time. It stops all flash from working, and replaces it with a transparent logo to click on. No annoying flash adverts, no flash generated pop ups, etc. Also, if you click a link that's to a flash generated site (and there are some bloody awful sites entirely in flash out there), the site won't start loading until you tell it to, so your bandwidth will survive. Useful even if you're not on dial up.
I resisted this for ages, but eventually succumbed. Basically, people write javascript fiddles for websites, and greasemonkey runs them. You chose the scripts you want, and it does the rest. For example, I'm using one that preloads a list of all my LJ tags on the update page, which is useful. There is one that'll rearrange the LJ update page to go close to how it used to be, but given how badly laid out that was, well, YMMV I guess.
For those websites that just don't get it, and also for user testing, click a button, the site you're on will open up in Internet Explorer as well. Timesaving.
I could use this more if I remembered it. Right click on an image on a site, it'll create XHTML formatted text in your clipboard allowing you to display that image. Hotlinking remains naughty, but this is a nice little timesaver.
Makes ctrl+tab work in the same way that alt+tab does for windows, ie it'll take you to your previous tabs not cycle through them. Dead useful, I'm very used to it just being there...
The same person that told me to install DownThemAll told me about Linky. I've never actually used it, but it must be good. I'll figure out what it does someday...
Simply exceptional for LJers; when typing in an LJ comment or post box, right click, the context menu gives you many many options for codes, inserts, etc. Very cool.
This is a great one if at a site that uses consecutive numbers for it's pages, but has poor navigation structure (webcomics like, for example, Megatokyo or Angels spring to mind), basically you tell it which bit of the url is changing, and it'll do the navigation work for you. I use it pretty much every time I go back to catch up on a fair number of poorly archived comics.
Does exactly what it says. The new tab button should be on the tab bar, it's where it was on Mozilla and it's where IE puts it, why Fx Puts it elsewhere is beyond me.
Nifty little thing; lets you define what you want to happen when you open a new tab. Best trick is when there's a url in the clipboard.
Basically, takes you to wherever your install of Fx is keeping all the info.
theweaselking linked me to this one ages ago, and it's a lifesaver. You know how EVERY usability guideline in the book says ALWAYS tell people you're linking to a URL, but so many sites don't? Well this one'll detect when there's a pdf file on the way, interrupt and ask you what you want to do, including turning said pdf into html, which is dead useful.Um, yeah. I use this one constantly, and forget that it's not standard. Double click a tab, it'll reload it, great for the friends page, when editing, or simply to look at a random thing again. Not sure why I prefer it to the reload button, but I really really do.
Y'know how sometimes people don't make links to display as links, so you just get a display of text you know is a url but you can't click? Well this one, highlight, right click, open the url anyway! Bargain.
Puts the Google PageRank and the Alexa status into the bottom left of my window. Not as useful for the avarage user, but I find it fun. Fairly useful if you're plotting a Google Bomb.
Like Duplicate Tab, only to a completely new window. For those moments when you're at ?skip=200 on your friends page and you want to keep going further back but have run out of screen space for your tab needs. Doubles up well with the copy all urls above, if there's a post or search with a lot of good content, take it to a new window then open all the links before copying.
Many many little tricks that make tabbed browsing so much nicer. Again, an extension I forget I've got, and get confused when trying to do stuff on someone else's machine.
For the Fx team, for the inevitable crashes (and yes, I know too many extensions can (does) cause crashes).
SO VERY COOL. Sorry. Allows you to actually download streamed videos from sites such as YouTube very easily. Especially useful if you're on a dial-up (I was) or a slightly choppy wireless (I am), but, well, download and watch at your leisure. Combines well with DownThemAll for renaming on Download goodness.
Very very cool developer extension, especially good for people learning html, creates a formatted html chart blocking all the elements into container blocks, so you can see what is in where. Much better than a simple view source.
If you build sites at all, you need this. If you just like to look at what sites are doing, this is cool. If you want to turn of various things, like CSS, with one click, this is good to. Takes up real estate at the top, but who cares, it's good.
ETA: Follow up post with more here.
That's it, there is no more. Except, of course, there is. Notice the complete lack of adblock in the above list; I place adverts on sites, and I like that sites get payments just for me looking at them, so I don't block ads, but many like to. And there are doubtless many (many) extras out there it hasn't occurred to me to even try. All the links, by the way, are to wherever the developer says they're based. If they don't link to a download page, blame them, not me, but you can search Mozdev by name to find em if you want them.
Anyone got any favourites I've missed?
Oh yeah; obligatory what I've been up to bit; drove out to Reading Friday to help
faeriecween with some moving (have car, will drive stuff), and then we all piled to freedrinkdave's local club, good fun. Left Reading to drive Devon wards, got near the outskirts of Exeter and decided to detour, went into town to dudeulike's internet cafe in Exeter, used his kitchen to cook a pizza, went to the Hub (again), saw many many people, draxar turned up and said it was ok to crash at the Circus, so stopped staying sober and had a great evening. Sunday I drove to Torquay, filled the car up, mostly books, then drove back up here. Unloaded car, then collapsed, exhausted. Spent today unpacking boxes, moving stuff around, cooking and updating my CV a bit and making it look much better. Tomorrow into town to do some volunteering at Cowley St. Plus probably some 'register with employment agency' stuff (again).
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no subject
Date: 2007-Feb-06, Tuesday 00:15 (UTC)LJLogin is useful for people with more than one LJ account.
Some things done in GreaseMonkey are better done in Stylish. (Ie, CSS only hacks.)
People on Macs might enjoy these themes; I do.
no subject
Date: 2007-Feb-07, Wednesday 12:33 (UTC)I'll use login if I ever go for an extra account I use regularly, currently all my extras are placeholders. Stylish might be useful, will play at some point.
(also? Comment notification borked again, I missed this one the first time I scrolled past it as well...)
no subject
Date: 2007-Feb-07, Wednesday 12:36 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-Feb-06, Tuesday 01:38 (UTC)I also have a fair number of search engines like LJSeek
no subject
Date: 2007-Feb-07, Wednesday 12:35 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-Feb-06, Tuesday 02:00 (UTC)Forecastfox - nice little weather widget.
no subject
Date: 2007-Feb-07, Wednesday 00:12 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-Feb-06, Tuesday 09:06 (UTC)Copy Plain Text -- to copy text without formatting. Not having this drives me nuts.
Forecastfox -- weather forecast on the status bar. Mainly handy when I want to break American's brains by pointing out how much further north I am than them, and then tell them what the temperature is here.
googlebar -- I find it handy. Other people find it a waste of space. YMMV.
SubmitToTab -- control-click to submit a form to a new tab. Highly useful.
Tab Mix Plus -- I have all my tab browsing extensions tied together into one extension. Let's me configure everything just so.
no subject
Date: 2007-Feb-07, Wednesday 00:16 (UTC)I'm in the 'waste of space' camp for Googlebar; I've got a PR checker, and a built in search bar, and Fx blocks popups already. I tried it at work, and found it pointless. I think I had copy plain text for awhile, not sure why I've not got it, I tend to copy into notepad half the time anyway.
But some nice extra suggestions.
no subject
Date: 2007-Feb-06, Tuesday 09:46 (UTC)And I use Firefox (when I'm on a computer over which I have some degree of control) simply because someone's boyfriend put it on my computer at the same time as removing a virus, and I liked it better than IE. Because it's prettier. And I do like tabs.
no subject
Date: 2007-Feb-07, Wednesday 00:24 (UTC)If you like the pretty though, Opera is also very nice. I reinstalled it yesterday just to remind myself, and it's cool. Different to Fx, but cool. And it was the first browser to use tabs as well. Both are more secure and better than IE.
no subject
Date: 2007-Feb-06, Tuesday 13:44 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-Feb-07, Wednesday 00:28 (UTC)Very useful little site, most of the places I went to worth seeing were from there. Alternately, if he's not in a rush, I plan to be moving on again soon(ish), need to get settled job first though.
no subject
Date: 2007-Feb-06, Tuesday 20:54 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-Feb-07, Wednesday 00:30 (UTC)First weekend of every month is the plan, and the turnout looked to be enough to keep it going.
no subject
Date: 2007-Feb-06, Tuesday 21:56 (UTC)I'm surprised to see no mouse gestures extension installed. I have all-in-one gestures, and I really miss it whenever I have to use IE for something.
no subject
Date: 2007-Feb-07, Wednesday 00:31 (UTC)Mouse gestures I've never tried, I just don't see the point, I tend to be a keyboard shortcut type for the most part anyway. Might give them a go at some point.
no subject
Date: 2007-Feb-07, Wednesday 03:01 (UTC)Copy Link Text basically just lets you copy the link text, link URL or both and then choose a format for pasting. I don't usually need it, but it's convenient for the times that I do need it..
Tool to save and swap out cookies on the fly, but you need to edit the XML file to set up the cookies. So far I've been too lazy to do that, but the idea has potential so I'm waiting for an update with a better interface.
Shows the downloads in a bar at the bottom of the screen instead of in a separate window. Has a mini-mode as well, which shows as an icon with the number of currentdownloads:finisheddownloads beside it.
Adds 41 more items for the menu bar. I only use one or two though.
Focus Last Selected Tab switches to your last selected tab when you click on a currently selected tab. It took me awhile to get used to it, but now it's just there.
Shows the destination of form action when you hover over the post button.
I know you've already mentioned it, but it definitely deserves to be on any list. I have loads of fun with this extension, especially when writing scripts to modify pages so that they're exactly the way I need them to be.
Lets you control your zoom for images on a webpage. I'm still not sure why I have this.
well.
Pops up with a warning when there's something on the page that would cause a memory leak. Nice idea, but it becomes annoying after a while. Still putting it on the list though in the hopes of there eventually becoming an option to tjust log the data.
Stops long titles from cutting off.
no subject
Date: 2007-Feb-07, Wednesday 03:01 (UTC)It does a bunch of interesting things, most related to extension management. My primary use for it is to disable extension compatibility checking because there were certain extensions I didn't want to live without when I switched to FF2.0. I really don't use more than a bit of its capabilities though.
Lets you move to the next/previous page with a hotkey. Detects the links using regex, and the provided one works well most of the time, but you can also tweak it to fit your needs better.
Status bar button which lets you switch quickly between proxies.
Japanese-English dictionary lookup. Turn it on, hover over a word, and a definition pops up. Indispensable for my language-studying needs. There are dictionaries available for several languanges, and you install the dictionaries the same way you do extensions. In fact, they show up in the list.
Again, mentioned before, but deserves another mention. Its GM for CSS, but quicker and simpler. You can choose to apply the CSS to a domain or to a particular site, and it even affects chrome. One interesting use I've found for it is to use it to preview tiny changes to CSS on a page without having to reload the page the way I'd have to if I were using GM. I could use WebDeveloper, but I prefer the interface of Stylish. I don't have to worry about losing the changes I made just because I switched to another tab, and there's a preview button so the changes are applied only when I want them to be (after I'm done typing).
Assign a hotkey to switch tabs, for when ctrl+tab/cmd+tab is too much work. I use ',' and '.' (actually, 'w' and 'v', but the ',' and '.' keys)
You can control the window you're sending a tab to, so I actually use this more for organizing tabs than controlling the number of tabs in each window.
Open new tabs to the right of the current tab. Especially handy for when I'm visiting a community/expanding subthreads. Also, I often have many tabs open at the same time, and when I open a new tab, it's easier to have it be beside the current tab I'm in rather than opening to the faaaaar right where I can't even see it. Only flaw is that it doesn't work with incoming links from external applications.
Couldn't see the sense of this behavior until I tried this, but now I wouldn't have it any other way.
Tracks the time you spend on websites. Not really useful, except to make you feel guilty *g*.
Like Web Developer, but for XML.
Helps generate XPaths. Firebug has similar functionality.
By the way, do you have any problems with Firebug? I love the extension, but it seemed to slow down my browser terribly when I had it on. I eventually started enabling it only for certain websites, but sometimes it would become enabled and popup even when I didn't want it to, so I just enable it only when I'm in the mood for dev work and keep it disabled the rest of the time.
no subject
Date: 2007-Feb-07, Wednesday 12:16 (UTC)I like the look of tabs open relative, very useful.
no subject
Date: 2007-Feb-07, Wednesday 13:01 (UTC)And yeah, despite its flaws, Firebug is an amazing extension.
One extension I forgot to mention was one that let you script your browser's behavior. I uninstalled it because I had no time to play around with it, and I've since forgotten its name, but you might find it interesting if you ever stumble upon it.
no subject
Date: 2007-Feb-07, Wednesday 12:30 (UTC)