Download embedded- Downloads all or selected embedded objects on a webpage.
FEBE and CLEO are the best for having to install Firefox on a new computer. FEBE backs up everything on a schedule (or ad hoc if you prefer) into one neat little folder. Add ons, skins, bookmarks, cookies, browser history, passwords, preferences, the lot. All you need is that one folder–install Firefox, install FEBE, and everything else takes about five minutes, tops. It’s the poo! CLEO is specifically for bundling add ons into easily transferred files so if someone really loves the way you have FF configured you can set them up with the identical layout in one swat.
PDF Download gets used a LOT at work–it lets you decide what you want to do with a PDF file BEFORE it takes a month to download itself!
QuickRestart–adds a one touch restart button to the Tools menu.
LinkAlert tells you what kind of page a link goes to by changing the cursor, very nice for identifying PDFs and non secure sites which SHOULD be secure.
Google Preview is nice–gives a little thumbnail of the page in Google results, very nice for identifying a page by the look, especially if you’ve been there before.
Addictive Typing Lessons is very cool, just a simple little typing tutor–it’s great for those who don’t touch type because it’s easy to access and can be used in a second.
ColorZilla gives the numeric color values of any spot you rest the cursor on. Very handy for trying to match colors on my smartphone home screen to the wallpaper colors.
Hearty endorsements for Adblock, Flashblock, ForecastFox, Colorful Tabs, GmailSpace, and CoolIris, although I don’t like the newest version of CoolIris and steadfastly refuse to upgrade again.
Oh, and my favorite theme is Noia Extreme–it looks great with my PurpleTaz Winbloze theme…
Cookie Button in the status bar lets you quickly change your cookie settings for a site. It’s very convenient if your default is set to refuse all cookies.
I also consider Adblock Plus, IE Tab, and Tab Mix Plus to be essential.
I like Long Titles, but I’ve noticed an odd problem with it on SDMB. Most thead title boxes come up fine, but once in a while one will pop up for a fraction of a second and then disappear. If I mouse over it again the same thing happens. Anyone know of a workaround for this?
I’ve seen that and similar add-ons, but I’ve never bothered to investigate what “short urls” are. Can you tell us what they are and why they’re useful?
I’ve given up on FEBE because on my computers, for some reason it takes hours to do it’s business. Another reason is that at times, even after spending hours, I’ve looked in its output folder and found it empty! Do you see these problems, or am I pretty much alone?
Others in this thread have mentioned Gmail-related add-ons, but I don’t get it.
Open question for all: Please help me understand why anyone uses Gmail. Who wouldn’t mind a mega-corp reading all their emails? Especially when there are other free email providers that don’t read your email?
I recently started using Fotofox
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3945
(there’s also a Kodak version - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4441 )
You can use this to upload photos to different photo websites. I like this better than any of Flickr’s tools, for example.
What makes you think Gmail reads them any more that the other free email providers? Because they have targeted ads? That’s just software “reading” your email, no different that the virus scanners all the other email providers have “reading” the mail.
You know it’s funny, but now that I think on it the first time I used it I had it set to backup the full profile instead of selected items and it did fail. I changed it to selective because there are a few things I have no interest in backing up and it works perfectly. I have it set to backup on Sunday mornings at 0200 so I don’t really have any idea how long it’s taking, but it definitely backs up perfectly, on all my computers.
No person at Google is reading my email, any more than the Google ads at the bottom of this page are a result of “someone” reading the posts. I use Gmail because it works, gives me a gigantic amount of space to keep my stuff (which the GmailSpace add on allows me to use for file transfer) and has hands down the best method for archiving and retrieving email around. So a bot takes note of some keywords in my email, who cares?
As for email security, it’s a chimera (Ask Media Defender what they think of email security! Heh heh…) You have absolutely ZERO assurance that your email isn’t being read by some IT dork in the cellar of your particular ISP or mail host, or any random stranger out sifting the bitstreams for that matter–you just assume, as do most of us, that our email isn’t especially worthy of note or interesting enough to draw attention. Quite frankly, most people’s systems are ridiculously easy to hack–but not interesting enough for most hackers to bother with. Never say anything in email you wouldn’t commit to paper, use euphemisms and weasel words to talk around anything nefarious you might be involved in and don’t try to fuck the underaged and you’re pretty much good to go, seems to me! PGP it if you’re really paranoid…
Huh? Security-minded people all over the world have been screaming about the invasion of privacy inherent in Google’s scanning of all your Gmail! Have you been living under a cup? Why would anyone want a giant corporation scanning and storing ALL of your private Gmail and your identification associated with it decades (at least)? It’s bad enough that Google keeps every single Google search coupled to your identity for decades, but your private correspondence, too?
As for Google search, at least you can use the supremely great Firefox add-on TrackMeNot to help drown them with bullshit so as to interfere with their obsessive tracking, but why essentially publish all your private correspondence for all time with GoogleMegaCorp, too?
WTF? I don’t get it!
As far as I know, most if not all other free email services do NOT store copies of your private correspondence for all time. Why not use one of them, instead?
Is your problem with them the scanning, or the data retention? These are two different issues.
Scanning, as I said, is just software reading it. If you have a problem with that, then you are simply out of luck with email in general. There’s no way you will even be able to read your email without some some software reading it, even if it’s just the POP server that sends the mail to your client or the server software that sends it to the web app. If people are concerned because a program is reading their mail, they’re pretty much screwed.
As far as them storing “copies of your private correspondence for all time”, I thought that was a misunderstanding that was cleared up a long time ago.
Here is their email data retention policy from
Is there reason to believe this is different from other providers, or that this text is inaccurate or deceptive?
In an attempt to get this thread back on track, I’ll submit my absolute favorite plugin, which no one’s mentioned yet: EasyGestures. This replaces the standard drop-down menu on right-click with a fully-customizable radial menu. It takes a little getting used to, but once mastered it makes other forms of navigation seem downright silly. Navigate by feel, not by visuals. I find it so useful, I got rid of most of the navigation buttons in my toolbar since they were just taking up space.
In the non-plugin realm, LifeHacker recently compiled a great list of Top 10 Firefox features that don’t require extensions. I find tip 3: Keyboard Navigation especially useful.
Yeah, my apologies on the hijack. ambushed, if you wish to discuss Gmail and privacy any further, you should probably start another thread and post a link here.
I use NextPlease so often that I tend to forget it’s an extension and not automatically available on every machine that runs FireFox. NextPlease detects Next/Previous links either in the web page header or, in many cases, inside the body of a web page. You can then flip from page to page of a multi-page document using the left and right arrow keys.
They’re something that used to be more useful than it is now. Back when it was either impossible, or a royal pain, to embed URLs in text in various online media, making a tinyurl was a handy thing to be able to do. It didn’t make a clickable link, but at least it didn’t run off the page, or get broken when going to the next line, or some such.
But nowadays, almost anywhere you can post something online, you can embed a url with either HTML or vB code or some such. I can think of exactly three places where you can’t: Washington Post reader comments, TIME magazine’s blog (Swampland, where Joe Klein, Ana Marie Cox, etc. blog), and Brad DeLong’s blog. Those are the only three places I know where a tinyurl would have any use.
I used to have an add-on like this for Opera. I’ve been looking for one for Firefox for years. Thanks!