Firefox extensions


This is as much a note for me to be able to repeat things at work as
anything, but I figured I might as well post public to get input on
other neat things.

Upgraded to Firefox
0.9.3
from Firebird 0.7 last night. It continues to let me use
screen fonts so I remain pleased. Of course, the great part about
Firefox is the extensions. Mine, in order of can’t-live-without status:

  • Mozex – spawn external
    commands for all sorts of things; specifically, this lets me use mutt
    for mailto:, and lets me fill out forms and view source in vi

  • Live HTTP
    Headers
    – lets you capture, read, modify, and replay an HTTP
    conversation

  • SwitchProxy
    Tool
    – lets you configure multiple proxy settings and switch
    between them. Handy to turn on and off privoxy and my ssh-forwarded
    intranet proxy at work

  • Web
    Developer
    – toolbar and context menu with dozens of
    web-developer-ish debugging tools

  • Download
    Statusbar
    – shows downloads as progress bars at the bottom
    of the browser

  • Mini-T – lets you
    drag tabs around on the tab bar

  • Plain Text
    Links
    – right-click on non-linky links follows the link

  • Related – adds sidebar
    which shows results of a Google “Related Pages” search for the current
    page

Any extensions you love that I missed?

Had an embarrassing hardware incident the other night, too: I’d been
hearing odd noises coming from my workstation lately which made me think
a fan was dying. Turns out I was right—the CPU fan is loose on its
axle, and when it runs it pushes itself away from the CPU and into the
fan casing, which acts like a brake and slows it to somewhere around
120 rpm, which is a bit too slow to be of any use. Luckily it’s cool
enough here for my unoverclocked 800MHz Athlon to survive.
Unfortunately, when I was trying to pull out the CPU daughterboard to
get the fan, I managed to tear one of the towers that hold it in place
out of the motherboard, shearing off the clips that held the tower on.
Everything seems to sit together fine with only one tower, but still,
woops!


7 responses to “Firefox extensions”

  1. Others I’ve liked:

    • NukeAnything – Will remove any HTML element from a page. Re-renders the page nicely, too.
    • DownloadWith – Configure your browser to download using multiple tools. I particularly like being able to rate-limit my downloads using wget, because it doesn’t take much to overwhelm our little modem.
    • AdBlock – I like being able to use wildcards – but you’re probably doing this at the firewall level, too. 8^)
    • TabX – Adds a ‘close window’ x to each tab, just like Galeon always did. Surprising increase in intuitivity [sic].
    • TinyURL – TinyURL!
    • FireSomething – Just fun. Randomly changes the browser name, à la Dead Dog Café Comedy Hour Indian Name Bingo.
    • DeepestSender – Not really ‘must have’, but if I had time to spare for development, I’d probably spend it integrating this LJ post tool less obtrusively into Firefox.
    • AdBlock – I like being able to use wildcards – but you’re probably doing this at the firewall level, too. 8^)

      I’m using Privoxy for ad-blocking. It’s the descendant of the venerable Internet Junkbuster and it works pretty darn well—you might like it. (You can run one instance for a bunch of computers, too.)

    • I am a big fan of User Agent Switcher as it lets me get into sites that require IE. I have also wanted to try out the BugMeNot extension but just haven’t made the time yet.