# Fun with Firefox **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 23, 2008, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-firefox/469207 "2008-10-23T13:57:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2008, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-firefox/469207/1 "2008-10-23T13:57:31Z")
I’ve finally gotten with the program and switched over to Firefox. (The fact that IE went totally nonfunctional on me and I spent five days without internet at home while we worked through the whole “no it’s not the modem” thing made my arrival on the path of righteousness all the more triumphant.) To start with – saving my tabs, how fucking helpful is that? And I’m sure it will do many other things to make my life more delightful. So what are they? ---
**Author:** ![Spezza](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a698b9/32.png) [@Spezza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spezza)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2008, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-firefox/469207/2 "2008-10-23T14:07:07Z")
[Mouse gestures](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search?q=mouse+gestures&cat=all). Once you get used to them you’ll never go back. I only delay my switching over to Google’s Chrome because this feature isn’t there yet. ---
**Author:** ![A.I.Wintermute](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7bcc69/32.png) [@A.I.Wintermute](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A.I.Wintermute)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2008, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-firefox/469207/3 "2008-10-23T14:19:22Z")
> [@Spezza](#): > > [Mouse gestures](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search?q=mouse+gestures&cat=all). Once you get used to them you’ll never go back. I only delay my switching over to Google’s Chrome because this feature isn’t there yet. 100% agree. I use All-in-One Gestures and it’s the only extension I _must_ have. In the 5 months since I got this new computer I actually haven’t even bothered to reinstall any of my other old extensions, but I got gestures back on the first day. As for non-extension Firefox goodies, “undo close tab” is right up there. Can’t live without it. ---
**Author:** ![GusNSpot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gusnspot/32/436_2.png) [@GusNSpot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GusNSpot)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2008, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-firefox/469207/4 "2008-10-23T16:09:39Z")
Just got it. Think I’ll keep it… Thanks… ---
**Author:** ![SlowMindThinking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@SlowMindThinking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlowMindThinking)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2008, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-firefox/469207/5 "2008-10-23T19:30:29Z")
I have ColorZilla: color picker, page zoomer, etc. Custom Download Manger: oddly enough, it makes downloads easier Dowload Statusbar: I really like this Graphing Calculator Toolbar: I’ve got kids. They’ve got homework. hideBad: removes history, and related things. Very helpful at work, if say, you come here PDF Download: seems to spin off PDF downloads into a separate thread, so your browser doesn’t appear to lock up. Sage: A RSS and Atom feeder Stealther: Allows you to surf without leaving a trace in Firefox. Veeeery handly here at work. Tab Kit and Taboo: Tab managers. I’m not sure which one I’m using, but for example, my tabs are now in a color coded tree on the right side of my browser. User Agent Switcher: let’s you spoof IE when sites ask. (MS updates used to do this. Since I almost exclusively use Linux, I’m not sure now. It does not implement .NET, though, so I was still screwed for the Olympics.) ---
**Author:** ![Wakinyan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wakinyan/32/352_2.png) [@Wakinyan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wakinyan)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2008, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-firefox/469207/6 "2008-10-23T21:52:06Z")
Adblock. That’s the “killer app” for me. (Sorry, can’t create hyperlinks since they made the … what ever it was, earlier this year. A few months ago, “adblock” would have been a hyperlink you could klick and everything.) ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2008, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-firefox/469207/7 "2008-10-23T22:22:52Z")
[Adblock Plus](http://adblockplus.org/en/) is an absolute must-have. It’s better than Adblock because it automatically updates its blacklist so it stays on top of things better. [NoScript makes your browser fairly secure by default.](http://noscript.net/) It does this by disabling Javascript and plugins (Flash, Java, Silverlight (who uses that?)) in a somewhat esoteric way (the attacks are esoteric, so the defenses must be as well). The downside is that it can cause sites to just stop working until you configure it to be a bit less totalitarian. The plus side is that configuration is very fine-grained and fairly intuitive (point-and-click): You can allow all of the good scripts (from the site itself) while still blocking all of the bad ones (from known advertisers and unknown miscreants). I suggest installing it because I think the added security worth the hassle of configuring it, especially if you’re on Windows. [Tab Mix Plus](http://tmp.garyr.net/) enhances tabbed browsing far beyond what Firefox offers, even now with all the improvements of Firefox 3. The feature list is fairly long and exploring all the options would be an adventure but it has good default behavior. [Forecastfox](http://forecastfox.mozdev.org/) brings the weather to your status bar, both current and forecast. It can even show you an animated radar map. [The Wizz RSS News Reader](http://www.wizzrss.com/) is the easy path to RSS junkie-hood. You can easily monitor hundreds of different feeds, which is nice because it comes with about that many pre-loaded, all nicely categorized for your obsessive convenience. [Greasemonkey is in a class by itself: an extension that lets you extend it, quickly and easily (no reloading the browser!).](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748) Greasemonkey extensions are called User Scripts, and there are a whole lot of them, many of them site-specific. If you get Greasemonkey, grab [Platypus](http://platypus.mozdev.org/) as well so you can create your own User Scripts just by pointing and clicking. Greasemonkey and Platypus let you rewrite your view of the Web. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 10:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-firefox/469207/8 "2008-10-24T10:54:08Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > [Adblock Plus](http://adblockplus.org/en/) is an absolute must-have. It’s better than Adblock because it automatically updates its blacklist so it stays on top of things better. That’s not even its _best_ feature! Watch a video on _The Daily Show_’s site, or many others and it _cuts out the commercials automatically!_ Depending upon your connection speed at the moment, there might be a slight “blip,” but most of the time, you won’t even notice there was supposed to be a commercial. I use Opera for 99% of my surfing, but when it comes to watching videos, I _luuurrrrrrrve_ Firefox with Adblock Plus. For a good laugh type “about:robots” (minus the quotes) into the address bar and enjoy! ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-firefox/469207/9 "2008-10-24T12:05:02Z")
Thanks for the info, all. Once I catch up on all the email, etc. that accumulated during my forced vacation from the Internet, I’ll check some of these out. ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-firefox/469207/10 "2008-10-24T12:18:13Z")
Could someone explain to me what a “tab” is and why I would like to use it? I’d like to be like all the cool kids. Chocolate-coated cherry to anyone who explains it in English. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-firefox/469207/11 "2008-10-24T12:28:22Z")
[Flashblock](http://flashblock.mozdev.org/) stops all your tabs chewing up CPU while Flash stuff runs in the background. ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-firefox/469207/12 "2008-10-24T12:29:34Z")
Yanno how you can have different windows open? Well, instead of having each page you’re looking at in a different window, you can have them each in a different tab in the same window. Makes it faster/easier to go back and forth among them. Hit “control-T” and it should open a new tab – call up the web page you want there. Hit “control-T” again and you’ll get a third tab. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-firefox/469207/13 "2008-10-24T12:30:34Z")
> [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > Could someone explain to me what a “tab” is and why I would like to use it? I’d like to be like all the cool kids. > > Chocolate-coated cherry to anyone who explains it in English. A tab is a browser window inside the browser program. I got hooked on them back when I had dial up. What you can do with a tabbed browser, for example, is when it launches, you can have _multiple homepages_ appear at the same time. So, if you’re a big fan of the Dope, when you launch your browser, you can have each of the forums load up in its own tab. You can then skim one of the forums, click on a link that you find interesting, while its loading, click on the tab of another forum, scan that, and so on. Its really handy for me as one of the forums I routinely visit _doesn’t_ send out email notifications when someone responds to a thread. I keep one tab set on that forum, surf around the web in another tab, and then periodically click back over to that forum’s tab and hit reload to see if anyone’s posted anything new. Most people discover that once they start using tabs, they never want to go back to non-tabbed browsing. Firefox does **not** however, have a handy “new tab” button in the window by default, but you can add one using the “add on” feature. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-firefox/469207/14 "2008-10-24T12:56:13Z")
> [@SlowMindThinking](#): > > hideBad: removes history, and related things. Very helpful at work, if say, you come here Note that workplaces generally track web usage not from the individual web browser, but from calls to the site’s proxy or gateway, so nothing you run on your browser will hide your browsing history from your employers. ---
**Author:** ![SlowMindThinking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@SlowMindThinking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlowMindThinking)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-firefox/469207/15 "2008-10-24T14:01:42Z")
> [@Revtim](#): > > Note that workplaces generally track web usage not from the individual web browser, but from calls to the site’s proxy or gateway, so nothing you run on your browser will hide your browsing history from your employers. That is correct. However, I’m not in that situation. Still, what it is useful for is quickly resetting the computer when the boss walks in while I’m here, or checking the sports scores, or xkcd. I believe the default behavior is one keyboard command or mouse click, and all your tabs are closed, your homepage(s) restored, and your history, etc. cleared. I suppose the biggest users are teenage kids looking at porn at home, but I’m not in that situation, either. I also forgot to mention Adblock Plus. The only problem is that I never get the references to ads in threads at this board. ---
**Author:** ![SlowMindThinking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@SlowMindThinking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlowMindThinking)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-firefox/469207/16 "2008-10-24T14:05:29Z")
I should have mentioned that Taboo lets you save web pages within the browser. This is only useful for sites that do not time out. For example, I have saved the results of a survey of the AGU and AMS on global warming, so I can read it later, but there is no point to saving an itinerary bought through a site you log into. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-firefox/469207/17 "2008-10-24T14:23:12Z")
> [@Tuckerfan](#): > > For a good laugh type “about:robots” (minus the quotes) into the address bar and enjoy! “And they have a plan.” That’s gold, Jerry. Gold! ---
**Author:** ![NinjaChick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71c47a/32.png) [@NinjaChick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinjaChick)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-firefox/469207/18 "2008-10-24T14:41:22Z")
NukeAnything. It adds an option to any context menu within a tab to ‘remove this object’. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-firefox/469207/19 "2008-10-24T16:40:44Z")
Filterset.g updates Adblock. Deskcut lets you create shortcuts on your desktop. Imagezoom is handy for making itsy pictures bigger… or big pictures smaller. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-firefox/469207/20 "2008-10-24T17:04:06Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#): > > Deskcut lets you create shortcuts on your desktop. In a way that’s easier than drag-and-drop? 😕 [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-firefox/469207.md?page=2)