What's your Firefox setup?

[1992casey]

I'm curious to see how people have their Firefox browsers set up, and specifically, I'm curious to see what extensions are being used. Here are mine...

 

On the Mac mini:

Last updated: Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:30:35 GMT

 

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120121 Firefox/3.0.5

 

*** Extensions (enabled: 21, disabled: 1; total: 22)

• Aardvark 2.97
• Adblock Plus 1.0
• Add Bookmark Here ¬? 3.1.20081205
• Context Search 0.4.3
• CookieCuller 1.3.1
• CookieSafe 3.0.3
• DOM Inspector 2.0.1
• Extended Copy Menu 1.5
• Greasemonkey 0.8.20080609.0
• InfoLister 0.10
• InspectorWidget 2.11.20080214
• InspectThis 0.9.1
• NoScript 1.8.7.4 [disabled]
• Nuke Anything Enhanced 0.68.1
• Send Tab URLs 2.0
• Source Viewer Tab 0.3.2008120201
• Stylish 0.5.8
• Tabs Open Relative 0.3.3
• text/plain 1.1.9.1
• Undo Closed Tabs Button 3.0.3
• Web Developer 1.1.6
• Yuku 1.0

*** Themes (1)

• Default [selected]

*** Plugins

• Default Plug-in
• Flip4Mac Windows Media Plugin 2.2
• Java Embedding Plugin 0.9.6.4
• MoveNetworks Quantum Media Player
• QuickTime Plug-in 7.5.5
• Shockwave Flash

And on the MacBook Pro:

Last updated: Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:26:06 GMT

 

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120121 Firefox/3.0.5

 

*** Extensions (enabled: 13, disabled: 0; total: 13)

• Adblock Plus 1.0
• Context Search 0.4.3
• CookieCuller 1.3.1
• DOM Inspector 2.0.1
• InfoLister 0.10
• InspectThis 0.9.1
• Source Viewer Tab 0.3.2008120201
• Stylish 0.5.8
• Tabs Open Relative 0.3.3
• text/plain 1.1.9.1
• Undo Closed Tabs Button 3.0.3
• Web Developer 1.1.6
• Yuku 1.0

*** Themes (1)

• Default [selected]

*** Plugins

• Default Plug-in
• Java Embedding Plugin 0.9.6.4
• MoveNetworks Quantum Media Player
• QuickTime Plug-in 7.5.7
• Shockwave Flash

Commenting on a few of them...

• Infolister generated the two lists above. It's handy for bug reporting, when you need to recreate your Firefox profile, or for sharing your list with others. It'll output as plain text, HTML, BBCode, XPI list, XML, XML + XSLT, or via a custom template. I usually choose plain text.
• Context Search lets you select some text, right click, and search for it using any of your installed search engines. It was super-helpful for finding the links in this list. I selected the extension name, right-clicked, and searched Firefox Add-ons at addons.mozilla.org.
• CookieCuller lets you protect specific cookies from deletion. Note that you must toss your cookies via CookieCuller rather than through the regular Firefox interface; the regular interface will still delete all cookies. By the way, the cookie to protect to remain logged into Yuku is "yuku.com ... PHPSESSID."
• Extended Copy Menu lets one copy text as either HTML or plain text. When you're using Firefox and Yuku, the default is to copy and paste HTML. Doing that occasionally makes a mess in posts, so it's nice to have the plain text option.
• Nuke Anything Enhanced lets you right-click to temporarily remove an annoying item, such as a blinky ad, from a web page. It'll appear again the next time you load the page. If you'd like to remove an item permanently, you can use the Remove It Permanently (occasionally known as R.I.P) extension.
• Send Tab URLs will place the URLs of your open tabs into your clipboard or send them directly to your default e-mailer or g-mail. Along with the URLs, the page title is included.
• Stylish is one of my favorites. If you frequently visit a web page that doesn't look quite right to you, you can write your own CSS to change it. (Sometimes, it's ridiculously easy; other times, it's ridiculously complicated.) For those who don't know CSS, we do have members here who can write the code for you. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif Also, there are oodles of styles available for direct download at userstyles.org. (Styles at userstyles.org are also available as scripts that can be loaded into Greasemonkey or Opera.)

• The one change I've made for myself on Brewerfan and LambeauLeap is to include additional "last post" information on the main board page:

  http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a244/casey1992/boardpics/bfnet/last_post.png

  We eliminated that information because members felt it caused too much vertical scrolling. Because I kind of like it, I put it back at the browser level. If anyone wants it, I've made it available at userstyles.org.

• Tabs Open Relative opens new tabs next to the current tab instead of at the far right.
• text/plain easily opens non-clickable links. Select the URL, right-click, and open it in the same window, a new tab, or a new window.
• Undo Closed Tabs Button adds functionality to the built-in Undo Close Tab feature. As is, Undo Close Tabs isn't available when only one tab is open. This allows access to reopen a tab by right-clicking on any white space on a page. It also offers a toolbar button that I don't bother with.
• Yuku adds a status bar icon that blinks when you have new PMs, friend requests, etc., whether you're on a Yuku page or not. (The link for the Yuku extension goes to its Yuku page while other extensions in this list go to addons.mozilla.org. Yuku recommends downloading from its page rather than addons.mozilla.org because updates will appear sooner. Since the extension hasn't been updated since April, that's probably not a factor right now.)

These are the search engines I currently have installed:

 

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a244/casey1992/boardpics/bfnet/firefox_searches.png

These need a bit of hand tweaking. I fixed them once, but the automatic search engine update undid my changes. I'll have to turn that off and redo the tweaks.

 

With Google news, I had replaced the icons so they'd be different for "date" and "relevance." Also, I had "relevance" included in the "Google News" search engine name. There are actually two Baseball Reference searches available. There's one with an icon, but the the search breaks when using Context Search. The one that works somehow "forgot" to include an icon. I'll have to re-add the icon to the functional one.

[bjkrautk]

I've never understood the euphoria over plugins; just give me a good web browser that already does the things I want it to (like, say, browse the web) and I'm perfectly happy. I'm sure I have some of the plugins on your list (flash being the most obvious example), but other than plugins, I run straight vanilla Firefox.

 

(At home; work leaves me stuck with IE.)

[strawbossisevil]

Zotero is a must for anyone who is a college student or has to write papers. It is a great, great ad on. Especially if you use it together with MS Word. It will literally save you hours of time when working on a research paper.

[1992casey]

Zotero looks like one heck of a research tool, and it looks like something that could be very handy for some of the junkies on this board.

 

I used three extensions just now to look at their site. I selected the text in strawboss' post and used Context Search to get to its Firefox Addons page. On the add-ons page, I selected the non-clickable link to Zotero's home page and right-clicked via text/plain to get there. Then, when I was annoyed that the text on the home page ran right into the edge of the window, I used Stylish in preview mode to quickly slap a 7 pixel margin around its content.

[sgtcluels]

bj, you seriously need adblock plus. That alone makes things 10 times better. It's strange when you switch to something like IE and the pages look so different with all the ads.

[adamb100]

http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/3755/ffpg7.jpg

My Firefox setup with addons.

[And That]

I've never understood the euphoria over plugins; just give me a good web browser that already does the things I want it to (like, say, browse the web) and I'm perfectly happy. I'm sure I have some of the plugins on your list (flash being the most obvious example), but other than plugins, I run straight vanilla Firefox.

I'm in the same boat as Ben. I'm fine with the internet as it is. I gloss over ads. I downloaded Firefox as it was, and haven't done anything to it.

[strawbossisevil]

If that's the case AndThat, I think we have to remove that "Hipster" label. Hipness is directly proportional to the number of plugins you have on Firefox.

[Mike Felder]

I love Adblock Plus (goodbye, stupid auto-play video on espn.com). I also like ForecastFox - it gives you the current weather, next day forecast, and alerts down at the bottom of your window.

[1992casey]

strawboss, methinks we should give the Hipster label to adamb100 and his multi-colored theme.

 

Here's my Firefox Toolbar:

 

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a244/casey1992/boardpics/bfnet/fftb.png

 

I've combined the stop and reload buttons like Safari does. That's done with some code in Stylish. The button to the right of reload opens a new tab. The one with the clock opens the traditional history layout in the sidebar. I'm not particularly button-oriented, but that button appears to be the only way to call up history the "old fashioned" way.

 

The magnifying glass comes from InspectorWidget. It helps identify CSS in web pages and within Firefox's chrome. I could put it away because I rarely use it.

 

I'm not sure which extension is causing the these two gizmos to appear at the right end of the tab bar: http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a244/casey1992/boardpics/bfnet/tabbarbuttons.png. One of these days, I'd like to make the close button go away. The button to its left lists all open tabs. If I would remember that it's there, I'd use it when I have a lot of tabs open.

 

The Firefox and Windows menus are required by OS X. The Application menu (Firefox) groups things that were scattered all over the place before OS X. The Windows menu lets one navigate between open windows in an application, and optionally offers other window-related stuff on a per-program basis. I rarely open multiple Firefox windows, but I opened a couple for the sake of the screen capture below.

 

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a244/casey1992/boardpics/bfnet/ffm.png

 

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a244/casey1992/boardpics/bfnet/ffwm.png

 

Adam, I see you have Greasemonkey. What kind of stuff do you do with it?

[strawbossisevil]

Agreed, although I'm not sure if the World of Warcraft running in the background would disqualify him from receiving "hipster" status. Maybe if it were the Sims.

[adamb100]

I agree. Give me the title "Resident Hipster" or something like that. :p

[1992casey]

Well, he does have brewersfandemonium.yuku.com sitting on top of that. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

 

I see adamb100 is using Foxmarks. I'm interested in possibly using that. I don't see a downside. Does anyone know if there are any?

[And That]

http://images.yuku.com/image/jpeg/54625a743f9a9d6c95a20795d61eb50c07bea8a.jpg

The only add-on I need is a lemur.

 

[adamb100]

foxmarks is amazing if you're using multiple pc's. Hasnt failed me yet. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

[1992casey]

I want to sync three computers. I see that besides the backups in the Firefox profiles, Foxmarks also provides backups on its site just in case.

 

My concern is the password thing. I like to avoid storing passwords within my browser, and I can't tell how dependent Foxmarks is on that feature.

 

It can't hurt to try it out, though. I'll just do a manual backup of my bookmarks before I start, just in case.

[adamb100]

As for grease monkey, I popped it open and saw I only had 1 script loaded into it. I guess I'm not putting that addon to good use for what it can do but I dont know where all the good scripts are.

[hawing]

This whole thread intimidates me (a bit). I guess I'm like And That, dorkily content with just plain Firefox.

 

(Sorry, Toby, that probably knocks your hipster quotient down a few notches.)

[1992casey]

Just like you can get pre-made styles at userstyles.org, you can get pre-made scripts at userscripts.org. The sites are run by different people. If you prefer to run just one extension, styles at userstyles can also optionally be installed into Greasemonkey instead of Stylish.

 

I see I have six scripts installed, but I'm betting on all of them being obsolete. There's one that removes trolls from mlb.com message boards that I know is cashed. Last April, I got an e-mail pointing me to a message over there saying the script died with the last site resign.

 

Of course, if you're adept at javascript, you can write your own Greasemonkey scripts. I occasionally see major annoyances on web pages that could be fixed with Greasemonkey--if I knew how to do a bit of javascript. You could rearrange code from top to bottom and add stuff that isn't there to begin with if that's what you'd like to do.

 

On another note, I looked into these two thingers on my tab bar: http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a244/casey1992/boardpics/bfnet/tabbarbuttons.png. The dropdown thing comes standard with Firefox. The close button comes with Undo Closed Tabs Button, and I can't figure out any reasonable way to remove it. I'm considering disabling that extension--I see it also disables "Recently Closed Tabs" in the History menu. But I still like the parts I use. I think the author of that extension might be easy to contact, so I'll try tracking him down first to see what he has to say.

 

hawing, you're not a dork in this instance. The dorks have extensions installed. They also have seven or eight web browsers installed on their systems. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

[greeg35]

Well, thanks to this thread I now use adblock and installed zotero for my wife who is in gradschool.

 

Can anyone tell me how to set firefox so it goes back to the place I was looking at when I go "back" to a site (rather than back to the top)? This is especially annoying at BF.net. IE seemed to do this automatically; but I can't find the setting on firefox.

 

In general, the switch from IE has been unbelievable though.

[1992casey]

Can anyone tell me how to set firefox so it goes back to the place I was looking at when I go "back" to a site (rather than back to the top)?

 

It's a Yuku bug that's been going on for over six months. It affects all Mozilla-based browsers, including Firefox, Flock, Camino, SeaMonkey, K-Meleon, etc. I'm not pleased with the situation either.

[1992casey]

I set up Foxmarks a couple of days ago; it's absolutely great. I have my Firefox bookmarks synced between three installations on three computers.

 

I can't be sure, but it looks like you can do some creative syncing. For example, maybe you'd like to include a copy of your work bookmarks on your home machine, but not include your home bookmarks on your work machine.

 

There's also some good news worth relaying. Versions of Foxmarks for Safari (OS X 10.5) and Internet Explorer (versions 6, 7, & 8-beta2) are in the beta stage. When I created my account, there was a waiting list to join the Safari beta testing group. Since I don't have IE, I didn't check that out.