Extensions

[flexibeast]

This morning i came across an article entitled 20 must-have Firefox extensions. Online media love lists like this, because they tend to provoke debate along the lines of "How could you leave out X? And how on earth could you include Y?", which in turn leads to more people visiting the Web site featuring the list in question.

Personally, i found that there weren't that many extensions of interest to me; and of those that were, two i've already installed (Web Developer and Download Statusbar), one i decided to install on sacred_harlot's computer (Nuke Anything Enhanced), and one i was already aware of but decided that i didn't have a real need for (Greasemonkey). And of course, there are indeed extensions which weren't included in the list that i feel are useful for almost all Firefox users:

• CookieSafe: For privacy reasons, i don't allow sites to set cookies unless i feel there's a compelling need to do so (e.g. logging in to LiveJournal or Yahoo!). CookieSafe makes it easy to specify temporary or permanent exceptions to a default no-cookie policy


• NoScript: JavaScript allows Web sites to create all sorts of cool effects and features - and also allows Web sites to do dodgy things behind one's back. Like CookieSafe, NoScript allows one to set a default no-script policy and define exceptions on a compelling-need basis.


• FlashBlock: Flash is a useful plugin that is greatly abused (e.g. as per this rant of mine). Some people rudely embed e.g. YouTube clips into Web pages that automatically start playing when one opens the page, rather than waiting for one to say "Please play this clip now." Some Web sites insist that you view some dinky-to-annoying "introduction" before you can actually do anything on the site. And other sites use Flash to present you with advertising that blares at you from the sidelines. FlashBlock permits one to prevent Flash content from loading up unless one actually asks for it.


• IDND: One technique using in phishing scams is to make use of international domain names to create a Web site name that looks like a genuine domain name, but which is actually, from the computer's perspective, a domain name different from the apparent one. This allows phishers to lead one to believe that you're actually using, say, one's bank Web site when one is actually using a copy running on a computer controlled by malfeasants with the intent of stealing your identity or resources. The IDND extension allows one to identify, at a glance, whether a site is using international domain names, and can thus assist in determining whether a site is genuine or not.


• Link Alert: Identifies exactly what's at the end of a particular link - is it a Word doc, is it a PDF doc, is it another Web page - by adding a little icon next to one's mouse pointer when one hovers over a link.


• OpenSearchFox: This marvellous extension allows one to add almost any searchable Web site as one of the search engines listed in the Firefox search bar.


• Context Search: Allows one to right-click on a word in a Web page and request a search for that word in any one of the search engines one has installed.

And then there are extensions which are useful to a more limited Firefox user base:

• Resurrect Pages: When a Web page or site is unavailable, either temporarily or permanently, this extension makes it easy to retrieve a copy of the unavailable item (where one exists) from one of a variety of Web caches.


• UnPlug: For those of us not running Windows or Mac systems, and who therefore often have to suffer from media being embedded into Web sites using a plugin not available to us (or technically available to us, but which doesn't actually work properly), UnPlug is invaluable - it finds and presents to the user the likely URL of the embedded media, so that one can then try to download it and play it instead.


• OpenBook: Allows one to modify what information one can provide when adding a bookmark.

So there's my list of recommended Firefox extensions. i actually have many more extensions installed than simply those i've mentioned, but i suspect they're of far more limited interest. :-)
 

Comments

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

Link Alert: Identifies exactly what's at the end of a particular link - is it a Word doc, is it a PDF doc, is it another Web page - by adding a little icon next to one's mouse pointer when one hovers over a link.

How does it do that? HTTP HEAD on the URL?

[flexibeast.livejournal.com]

Er, good question! i haven't looked at the source, but i suspect it just looks at the extension of the file pointed to . . . . it only supports a limited set of filetypes, but i've found that set is basically sufficient for my needs.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

It vaguely bugs me when people assume filetype based on extensions. I should set up a website where all the image/jpeg files are .html and all the text/html files are .pdf, just to play with people's minds.

[flexibeast.livejournal.com]

*chuckle*

In this particular case, though, is it possible to get the MIME type of a link without having to make an actual request for the link target?

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

It depends what you mean by "request": you don't have to do a GET, because a simple HEAD will tell you what you need to know. But you can't generally tell the type without talking to the remote server, because it's not generally stored in the HTML. (It *can* be stored in the TYPE attribute of an A tag, but that's only advisory and nobody uses it anyway.)

[flexibeast.livejournal.com]

*slaps forehead* D'oh! Should have remembered HEAD requests . . . . would making such requests in this context put a tolerable load on networks and servers, do you think?

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

I don't really know-- I can't see why it would be intolerable, especially if there was a short delay between mousing the link and making the request (so that it didn't attempt to do the fetch in the very common case that you just wanted to follow the link.)

[omnifarious.livejournal.com]

Another couple favorites of mine:

• FxIF (http://ted.mielczarek.org/code/mozilla/fxif/): This extension will allow you to look at the Exif data many digital cameras put in pictures. This is mostly just interesting, and not often a must have.
• Customize Google (http://www.customizegoogle.com/): A very useful plugin for customizing many aspects of google's behavior that might be nice to customize. For example, it allows you to add a link to the wayback machine for any search result. It also allows you to force the use of https whenever you use Google Mail.
• Adblock (http://adblock.mozdev.org/): My web browsing experience has gotten so much better after installing this. Of course, to be really useful, you should install Filterset.G updater (http://www.pierceive.com/) after you install Adblock.

[omnifarious.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I forgot one...

• Named Anchors (http://jpeters.no-ip.com/extensions/?page=fx_na): This is quite a dandy extension that lets you find ways to link to a particular section of a website if you want to. It's also useful for web development.

[flexibeast.livejournal.com]

i've installed AdBlock [Plus] on machines for which i haven't set up Privoxy as the proxy server; although i've found that Privoxy tends to noticeably slow down the browsing experience, even when using Squid as a caching proxy.

i'll definitely check out the Customize Google and Named Anchors extensions - thanks!