W.F.M.H.'s blog

To continue Mozilla ’s applications plugins review started with "Useful Thunderbird plugins " post, here’s the time to take a closer look a the popular web browser Firefox ‘s plugins . As per usual, I’ve just checked most of these available and here’s the list of which of them I personally found useful.

Some extensions I consider a mandatory must-have while browsing the Web and using Firefox (version 2):

• Colorful Tabs [website ] – colors every tab in a different color and makes them easy to distinguish while beautifying the overall appearance of the interface [screenshot ].
• Speed Dial [website ] – with Speed Dial, you can easily access your most used websites. To show the Speed Dial tab, use the Speed Dial button (which can be added to the tool bar) [screenshot ]. Speed Dial will be automatically loaded in blank new windows. It can also load in blank new tabs.
• Close Button [website ] – Adds a Close Tab (or Window, or Browser) button to the tool bar. Thing I definitely missed from SeaMonkey.
• Locationbar² [website ] – an URL text box extension. Puts emphasis on the domain (reduces spoofing risk), decodes URLs for better readability (e.g. http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D1….), linkifies URL segments (on Ctrl/Meta/Shift press) [screenshot] , hides http://, https://, ftp:// and file:// For Firefox 2.* compatible version see "An older version may work" below download button).
• Flashblock [website ] – no more flashing and buzzing (in the middle of the night) crappy flash ads and stuff, until requested. This extension blocks all the Flash content from loading but it leaves placeholders on the web page that allow you to click to download and then view the Flash content.
• No Go Buttons [website ] – removes Go buttons from the Location and Search bars in Firefox. You can choose to remove both or either.
• No Script [website ] – provides extra protection for Firefox, Flock, SeaMonkey and others mozilla-based browsers: this free, open source add-on allows JavaScript, Java, Flash and other plugins to be executed only by trusted web sites of your choice (e.g. your online bank), and provides the most powerful Anti-XSS protection available in a browser.
• Stop Or Reload Button [website ] – Stop and Reload buttons are always visible, even there’s no option both are active at the same time (as you can’t reload while you actually transferring, and you can’t stop while you do not transfer) – displaying them both at the same time makes no much sense and wastes the screen space. This extension is a cure.
• User Agent Switcher [website ] – adds a menu and a tool bar button to switch the user agent of the browser.
• FlagFox [website ] – shows a flag icon in the status bar indicating the current website’s server geo-location. It uses relatively little resources, and works by accessing an IP address database contained within the extension rather than relying on top-level-domain roots
• HeaderSpy [website ] – shows HTTP headers on status bar. Not really mandatory, but I find it interesting
• Download Statusbar [website ] – view and manage downloads from a tidy status bar – without the download window getting in the way of your web browsing. Despite its compact size, Download Statusbar packs in more useful features than the standard download window.
• Customize Google [website ] – enhances Google search results by adding extra information (like links to Yahoo, Ask.com, MSN etc) and removing unwanted information (like ads and spam). All features are optional and easily configured.
• Dictionary Search [website ] – looks up a user selected word in an online dictionary
• Rich Scroller [websit ] – adds to scrollbars some buttons to simplify common scrolling operations, actually only one button is present allowing scrolling to the top/bottom of the page (also present in main browser pages, text areas and list boxes).
• FireShot [website ] – extension that creates screenshots of web pages. It’s possible to choose whether entire web page or only visible part of this page should be captured. Screenshots can be uploaded to server, saved to disk (PNG, JPEG, BMP), copied to clipboard, e-mailed and sent to external editor for further processing.
• FireFTP [website ] – it’s a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers. Along with transferring your files quickly and efficiently, FireFTP also includes more advanced features such as: directory comparison, syncing directories while navigating, SSL encryption, search/filtering, integrity checks, remote editing, drag & drop, file hashing, and much more. For Firefox 2.* compatible version see "An older version may work" below download button).
• Foxmark Bookmarks Synchronized [website ] – if you use Firefox on more than one computer, you’ll want Foxmarks. Install Foxmarks on each computer, and it will work silently in the background to keep your bookmarks synchronized. You can also log in to my.foxmarks.com to manage your bookmarks from any computer. Note, it keeps your bookmarks on remote server to rethink your privacy concerns prior using this plugin…
• Tab Mix Plus [website ] – enhances Firefox’s tab browsing capabilities. It includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more. It also includes a full-featured session manager. A neat feature of Tab Mix Plus is multirow tab bar, which helps with navigation if you like to have many tabs opened at once.
• FaviconizeTab [website ] – this extension adds a new "FaviconizeTab" option to the context menu of the tab, which lets you "roll down" the tab to its icon only, reducing space it occupies [screenshot ]…
• RefControl [website ] – controls what gets sent as the HTTP Referrer on a per-site basis, which helps protecting your privacy and anonymity…
• LocalRodeo [website ] – protects against attacks which lately have been summarized under the term JavaScript Malware: Intranet Exploration (i.e. JavaScript port scanning and fingerprinting) and Anti DNS-Pinning. As Mozilla page requires you to sign in to download this extension, here’s alternative link .
• Split Browser [website ] – splits the content area of the browser window as you like. It will help you in various cases. For example, to compare multiple webpages, to show a calendar always, and so on.

Web developers may find these useful:

• Web Developer [website ] – adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools helping debugging your websites. Pretty a swiss army knife type-o-app.
• Show IP [website ] – show the IP address of the current page in the status bar. It also allows querying custom services by IP and Hostname like whois, netcraft. Additionally you can copy the IP address to the clipboard.
• Measure It [website ] – draw out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a web page.
• Live HTTP Headers [website ] – view HTTP headers of a page and while browsing.
• ColorZilla [website ] – advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies. With ColorZilla you can get a color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program.
• Load Time Analyzer [website ] – allows developers to measure and graph how long web pages take to load in Firefox. Load Time Analyzer produces graphs that show the occurrence of events such as requests for the page, images, stylesheets and scripts, along with events like the execution of an onload() script.
• View Source Chart [website ] – Draws a color-coded chart of a web page’s source. Graphically displays HTML tag boundaries, graphically defines tag nesting order, structure and hierarchy, adds a simple but powerful user interface to source code.
• Window Resizer [website ] – Resizes your browser to various standard resolution sizes – useful for testing different screen sizes. It accurately resizes your browser so you can test to see what a web page looks like in all of the standard resolution sizes. Supports the 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1600×1200 resolutions.
• IE Tab [website ] – great tool for web developers, since you can easily see how your web page displayed in IE with just one click and then switch back to Firefox. Windows only extension.
• HTML Validator [website ] – adds HTML validation inside Firefox and Mozilla. The number of errors of a HTML page is seen on the form of an icon in the status bar when browsing. The extension can validate the HTML sent by the server or the HTML in the memory (after Ajax execution). Windows only extension.
• Firebug [website ] – integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

I also got these plugins installed, still did not recall using it to often. But they qualified the other day for installation so it may be you find it at least sometimes usable. Here they are:

• Image Zoom [website ] – easily zoom in, zoom out, fit image to screen or set custom zoom on individual images within a web page. All this can be done by using the context menu or a combination of mouse buttons and scroll wheel. Handy to see the finer details of smaller pics or to make very large pics fit within your screen
• JSView [website ] – helps viewing any external js/css files of given website. Each individual file can be viewed by clicking on the filename. With the latest version you can now view the embedded css and JS as well.
• AdBlock Plus [website ] – does what its name says. Block all the banners and other ads. But… frankly speaking I do not mind ads. I got AdBlock installed but it’s not configured and in fact it blocks nothing. Since I got rid with all this flash crap (incl. flash ads – true) with Flashblock, I do not see much use for AdBlock here.
• PermaTabs [website ] – adds the ability to turn tabs of your choice into permanent tabs. PermaTabs can’t be closed accidentally (even when closing multiple tabs at once), and will stick around between sessions.
• Menu Editor [website ] – Let’s you rearrange or remove menu items from the main context menu (right-click menu) and main menu bar.
• Aadvark [website ] – utility for selecting elements and doing various actions on them. It can be used for cleaning up a page prior to printing it (by removing and isolating elements), for making the page more readable, and (most appreciated by web developers), for analyzing the structure of a page.
• Tab Scope [website ] – shows a popup on tabs and enables you to preview and navigate tab contents through popup. Major features are: real-time preview of tab contents, navigate (Back/Forward/Reload/Stop) through popup, scroll pages or frames in preview with mouse wheel, click links or buttons directly in preview.
• SafeCache [website ] – segments the cache on the basis of the originating document, defending against web privacy attacks that remote sites can use to determine your browser history at other sites. For example, a b.com image appearing on an a.com page would have a separate cache entry from the same image appearing on a b.com page, so a.com cannot use timing techniques to determine if you have visited b.com before. Checks cookie settings (allow, originating site only, deny) to determine your desired privacy level (segmented cache, cache originating site only, or never cache).
• FoxTorrent [website ] – extension that lets you stream torrents as they download, from your web browser, with zero configuration needed.

Firefox 3 users may find these useful too:

• Bookmarks Preview [website ] – along with an album view (like cover flow) and a thumbnail view (with drag and drop), this extension also adds previews to the tooltips in the bookmarks sidebar. Just hover over a bookmark in the sidebar to see the previews.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 24th, 2007 at 10:39 and is filed under Applications, Internet, Linux, Windows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.