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Firefox extensions [Sat, 9-Apr-2005 7:59 PM]
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[music |Mira -- In the End]

Some useful Firefox extensions I've found:

  • Link Toolbar:
    This puts a little navigation bar down in the bottom right of the window, with buttons that correspond to the LINK REL tags in the web page, letting you do forward, back, up, & top. This is handy, because it means that (when people use these tags) the "next" link is always in the same place, regardless of who wrote the page or how it is scrolled. Mozilla had this built in (the "Site Navigation Bar") but it was removed from Firefox.

  • EXIF Viewer:
    When you pop up a menu over an image and select "Properties", this extension shows you any EXIF data in that image: shutter speed, etc.

  • Named Anchors:
    This adds a new tab to the "Tools / Page Info" dialog that lists all of the named anchors in the current document.

  • Moving the Search field:
    Not really an "extension", but it took me a while to notice that it's possible to move the "Web search" field up into the menubar area, instead of having it to the right of the URL field. This is nice because it gives you more space to read long URLs. You do this by clicking right on the menubar and selecting "Customize". The UI is pretty clunky, but it lets you get rid of much useless junk and move just about everything around.

  • Other search engines:
    You can change the set of search engines on the menu to the right of the field by selecting "Customize", but that doesn't work very well (you have to be the owner of the /usr/lib/firefox-*/searchplugins/ directory, I think.) I deleted everything in that directory but Google, and added Webster, IMDB, and the Wayback Machine. Annoyingly, you have to re-do this every time you upgrade Firefox.
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Comments:
From: johnreen
Sat, 9-Apr-2005 8:10 PM (UTC)

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My three personal favorites:

  1. User Agent Switcher - Adds a menu option to the Tools menu to easily switch your user agent; this is less necessary these days as Firefox is more supported by sites

  2. Live HTTP Headers - A must if you're doing any sort of web development; amusing if you just like to see how certain sites transfer information across the wire. Allows you to selectively record and ignore the HTTP stream.

  3. FlashBlock - Now, I know you hate Flash, but if you want to view the random "amusing" Flash animations your friends send you, this is invaluable. It replaces all Flash objects with a big button with an "F" on them, which you must click before they play. The best part: some websites do flash detection and serve out either a flash animation or an animated gif based upon the result; this plugin still reports that you have flash, so you get the animation, but it's blocked. Perfection.
[User Picture]From: [info]luserspaz
Sat, 9-Apr-2005 8:33 PM (UTC)

Flashblock

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In Firefox 1.1 (or some recent Mozilla) Flashblock will be slightly better as it won't touch your userContent.css anymore.
[User Picture]From: [info]omnifarious
Sat, 9-Apr-2005 9:06 PM (UTC)

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Flashblock is also one of my favorites. I absolutely despise Flash, except when I don't. Now, if I could find a Flash plugin that worked on x86_64, I'd be all set. :-)

[User Picture]From: [info]naohai
Sat, 9-Apr-2005 8:14 PM (UTC)

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AdBlock is a favorite of mine.
[User Picture]From: [info]jwz
Sat, 9-Apr-2005 8:36 PM (UTC)

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I use Privoxy instead.
[User Picture]From: [info]edm
Sat, 9-Apr-2005 8:29 PM (UTC)

Expanding search box?

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Thanks for the hint on customising the toolbars in Firefox, it definitely improves the space available for viewing URLs.

Now that I've moved the Search box to the menubar area (a far more useful space for it), there's plenty of room to make it bigger than the 10-character or so default. But I can't seem to find any UI/about:config means to specify how big it should be. You don't happen to know how to make the search box bigger? Ideally taking up all the spare space on the menubar.

Thanks,

Ewen
[User Picture]From: [info]jwz
Sat, 9-Apr-2005 8:37 PM (UTC)

Re: Expanding search box?

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I haven't been able to figure out any way to do that either. Let me know if you do...
[User Picture]From: [info]ralesk
Sat, 9-Apr-2005 8:41 PM (UTC)

Re: Expanding search box?

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I just type google find me this here thing in the URL bar and with that got rid of the search bar altogether.  When I’m feeling lucky, I drop the keyword google.

[User Picture]From: [info]topbit
Sun, 10-Apr-2005 2:52 AM (UTC)

Re: Expanding search box?

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Resize Search Box
https://addons.update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=349 - this adds a 'Customise Menu' item to be able to change how big the search box is.
[User Picture]From: [info]luserspaz
Sat, 9-Apr-2005 8:31 PM (UTC)

Wow

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You work quickly. I just finished FxIF yesterday. I guess I should make a webpage for it eventually. I don't know why the install link wouldn't work, the MIME type should be correct on my server.

Also, you can get to toolbar customization via View -> Toolbars -> Customize. I keep my bookmarks toolbar up there by my menubar so I can use bookmarklets without taking up so much space.
[User Picture]From: [info]jwz
Sat, 9-Apr-2005 8:41 PM (UTC)

Re: Wow

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Oh, hi! I just happened to ask about such a thing on #mozilla today (I had looked several months ago and found nothing.)

BTW, I had it wedge Firefox once -- I popped up the "Properties" menu before the image in question had finished loading, and that froze all the Firefox windows. (I haven't tried that again, though.)

I have these bookmarklets on my URL bar (or Bookmark Bar or whatever they're calling it today.)
[User Picture]From: [info]grahams
Sat, 9-Apr-2005 8:42 PM (UTC)

Re: Wow

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Worked for me, once I added the host to the Install Whitelist...
[User Picture]From: [info]romulusnr
Sat, 9-Apr-2005 10:06 PM (UTC)

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it's all about miniT (drag+indicator). \m/ though i still miss "Duplicate this tab" a la Konqueror.

oh, and AdBlock of course.
From: [info]ianbicking
Sat, 9-Apr-2005 10:07 PM (UTC)

Bookmarklet

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You can list the named anchors (inline in the page) with a bookmarklet:

http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/webdevel.html#named_anchors

Though lately people have been using id's for anchors more and more instead, and this bookmark doesn't show those. I imagine that would be easy to add, though. Anyway, I generally find bookmarklets easier to manage than extensions.
[User Picture]From: [info]yodha
Sun, 10-Apr-2005 1:10 AM (UTC)

MAF

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I find the MAF extension useful to save webpages.
The Maf project is an archive extension that allows complete web pages to be saved in a single archive file. MAF stands for Mozilla Archive Format and the extension uses RDF to save page meta-data such as the original URL of the page and the date/time the page was put in the archive.
[User Picture]From: [info]aaronlehmann
Sun, 10-Apr-2005 1:12 AM (UTC)

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Know if there's a plugin that *disables* the stupid history autocompletion dropdown? I *HATE* that and I won't use any browser that forces it on me.
From: [info]node
Sun, 10-Apr-2005 3:10 AM (UTC)

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My Debian box is unreachable right now, but I believe it uses ~/.mozilla/firefox/searchplugins/ or ~/.mozilla/searchplugins/.
[User Picture]From: [info]terryray
Sun, 10-Apr-2005 7:27 AM (UTC)

webdeveloper

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I'm surprised nobody has mentioned webdeveloper.

This adds a bar across the top of the page with dozens of handy little functions to help you when developing web pages. OK, so, I hardly use any of them, but several are kinda cool. And I use "outline table cells" all the time.

[User Picture]From: [info]crazy4cats
Sun, 10-Apr-2005 9:12 AM (UTC)

moving the search field

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Hi, I can't figure out how to move the toolbar. I get as far as right click on the toolbar and click customize. Then I'm shown a box with different icons I can add to the stop, but the search field is not one of them. What else did you do? Thanks.
[User Picture]From: [info]jennae
Sun, 10-Apr-2005 12:14 PM (UTC)

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I personally like FoxyTunes, then I can stay in my browser and control my music. I'm lazy like that.
From: [info]wilecoyote
Sun, 10-Apr-2005 2:12 PM (UTC)

Adding to the list...

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...Scribe.

"Oh noes I've written a huge 50-page post to LJ/random web forum and I closed my window by accident and I lost it all!!" With this extension it will never happen again.

[User Picture]From: [info]spoonyfork
Sun, 10-Apr-2005 8:32 PM (UTC)

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AdBlock - I can't imagine browsing without it
ForecastFox - international weather reporting (useful for those of us in weather-challenged areas)
SpellBound - spell check text boxes and textareas in forms with a right-click, useful for message board sites that don't have a built-in spell checking (e.g. Slashdot)
[User Picture]From: [info]haran
Sun, 10-Apr-2005 9:24 PM (UTC)

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I deleted everything in that directory but Google, and added Webster, IMDB, and the Wayback Machine. Annoyingly, you have to re-do this every time you upgrade Firefox.
Did you know you can right-click on a search box on any web site and get an "Add Keyword for this Search" option? This adds a bookmark instead of a search engine. And I find it easier to just type "amz Foo" in the location bar and get search results instead of going over to the search engine box and scrolling for the search engine you want.
[User Picture]From: [info]thesliver
Mon, 11-Apr-2005 7:15 AM (UTC)

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I've added Stumble Upon, which they should really have called 'I'm bored make me unbored with a button'. You give it your interests and it throws semi-random sites at you when you press the Stumble button, you get to say whether you like it or not and there's some social engineering icing about sharing stuff with friends.

I ignore all that but as a boredom button its fine.

Oh and I still use the google toolbar rather than the search box even if it won't dropdown its history because the tab bar won't let it.
[User Picture]From: [info]jlindquist
Mon, 11-Apr-2005 11:43 AM (UTC)

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I'm not sure if this is an OS X quirk or not, but to remove the search bar entirely, I had to drag it into the window of inactive icons. Just dragging it out of the toolbar wasn't sufficient. (Whee! Long URLs are visible again!)

And thanks to all that list their favorite useful extensions. I've found quite a lot in the last two weeks from people doing that.