Some people use keyboard shortcuts for everything, but I like to use the mouse, and only use the keyboard for typing.
I can't even begin to understand this.
Playing with the demo, I discovered that it's actually a trick to get you to look at more sponsored links.
I'm with Becks. Meece are (sometimes necessary) evil.
it's actually a trick to get you to look at more sponsored links
What? I don't see any extraneous links as I use it.
4: oh, no worries ogged. You're allowed to be wrong.
All right-thinking people are with Becks in their hearts and minds. Sadly, I'm with ogged in my hands.
The flash click-to-play firefox extension rocks my world.
The flash click-to-play firefox extension rocks my world.
What is it? What does it do? Details, people!
I'm with Becks. Using the mouse is bad because it takes your fingers away from the keyboard and slows you down.
I'm with ogged in my hands
So that's you, eh? Easy there.
Heavens, ogged:
"Never be annoyed by a Flash animation again! Blocks Flash so it won't get in your way, but if you want to see it, just click on it."
So that's you, eh? Easy there.
Sorry. I'm still getting the hang of your custom gestures.
Thanks, dob. Was that so fucking hard?
I tried that, but it was taking too long.
I hate the idea of that extension because I don't have bandwidth to burn. But if I did, I'd try it.
Mouse gestures are the fucking bomb.
Sorry it's taking so long, I reloaded a lot when I was a kid.
I don't have bandwidth to burn
Prefetch is off by default: the main benefit is that you skip the click, load, back process.
9: Flashblock. Instead of loading up every flash applet on a page, it shows a little clickable logo that you can use to start it up. Very good stuff.
Along those lines I also recommend NoScript, a JavaScript blocker with whitelist. Generally you have way more javascript running than you actually want; it's usually used to do invasive stuff like download ads or tell ogged what external links you're clicking. This way you use the simple interface to turn on JavaScript for the (few) domains that actually use it for good purposes.
I don't want to use up my precious bandwidth just for a little thumbnail, or to accidentally use it by hovering over a link, though. Seriously, when it takes 10+ seconds to load a page, that extension would be more trouble than it's worth. (And forget about 250-comment threads, blarg.)
21: 10+s per page? Have you tried adding an extra piece of string to the can?
Sorry it's taking so long, I reloaded a lot when I was a kid.
It's understandable. In the olden days when the tubes were smaller and less reliable, I would (somewhat superstitiously) try reloading several times in quick succession to "encourage" a pokey connection.
BugMeNot -- which uses the bugmenot.org database of newspaper site accounts to autofill the login boxes -- is one I always install. Errorzilla, which adds the option to search the Internet Archive or attempt to pull up a Google cache whenever you hit a 404, is also very nice.
24: I used that for a while, and then decided to just stop reading the bastards.
No one's giving him hell for Lifehacker? Something inside of me just died. I think it was hope for the future.
SCMT -- better to light a candle than curse -gg-d.
Yeah, neil, did the court take away your bandwidth? Who has metered bandwidth anymore? (And if you say "dial-up," you're banned.)
The place I work only has a 128k link out-of-country, where all the good websites are. I'm loath to suggest that they upgrade since the only advantage would be to allow me to slack off more efficiently.
Extensions I like that I don't think have been mentioned:
Dict. (n.a. for FF 2.0, I think)
Copy as HTML
(I suspect) Table to Clipboard
Google Notebook
#29 comes perilously close to advocating a poll tax.
Thanks for this, Ogged! What with pr0n and art browsing, I'm a google images fiend, and you just saved me a some serious keystrokage.
The power of suggestion: After I installed the plugin, I wanted to test it, so I entered into google the first image search work that came to mind--iris.
Does 31 reveal that Neil works in North Korea?
The only reason Adblock Plus hasn't been mentioned is that everybody knows about it, right? Good.
What's the one that mimics IE? Does it work at IE only sites?
32 -- what is Google Notebook?
35: Does anyone remember if neil loves Michael Jordan?
what is Google Notebook?
We'd know if people described the damn extensions they recommend.
40: Should I click on "Sensual Intelligence", "Midget Pay Per View Movie", or "Lady Sonia Video Clips"?
Glad to hear it, smashman. It is indeed great for google images.
38: The Notebook's a service that lets you clip information from web pages and save it with a link. The extension just makes it easier to use.
Del.ici.o.us is a great helper.
Hey Ogged, is there a way to close the popup preview window without using the mouse? Or is this the Curse of Ogged's Isis?
Adblock Plus
Dict
DictionarySearch
Flashblock and the play-once option for animations set in Firefox. I can ignore anything not moving.
Google Toolbar for Firefox
Image Zoom
Tab Mix Plus
And my mouse has about fifty-seven buttons on it so it's really just an extension of the keyboard.
is there a way to close the popup preview window without using the mouse?
Does Alt + f4 not work for ya?
35: How could you have known that without seeing my snowman cellphone wallpaper?
is there a way to close the popup preview window without using the mouse
I think the only ways are to move the mouse off of the preview or to click the "X" in the preview window.
Biohazard, does Tab Mix Plus have any good features that aren't already integrated into FF? Being able to rearrange tabs and reopen closed tabs are the only features I felt my life was empty without.
Firezilla is a good enough FTP client for my needs (v. basic).
You mean Filezilla? I like it too.
my mouse has about fifty-seven buttons on it so it's really just an extension of the keyboard
This is a good point, my mouse is the same way, so I use it for copy, paste, minimize, etc.
I used Cooliris for about two days before it got annoying.
I assume everybody already knows, but Dowload Statusbar is practically necessary.
View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar - without the download window getting in the way of your web browsing.
Should I be using Firefox and not Safari? To be honest, I prefer Safari merely because it's more handsome; any other (dis)advantages, I can't detect. I get the impression that Firefox is the industry standard (well, among people who know how to use the tubes).
These questions and more brought to you by Waiting for Callbacks, Lacking for Inspiration, and Hungry for Lunch.
A-and how come we're talking about FTP clients on the FireFox extensions thread? Does FileZilla integrate with FireFox somehow?
I agree on the Flashblocker. I use it at home, because my computer is, um, underpowered*. At work, where I have two fancy new computers and a big fat pipetube, I can live with the Flash (not to mention it's how I make my living).
I also swear by BugMeNot. Why would I possibly want an account at the OC Register, for example, which I look at twice a year. If you're a blogger, it's crucial.
And Web Developer is really useful if you develop web sites, to wade through the often-baroque CSS to see how stuff is done.
And my favorite extension of all time, Tabbrowser Extensions, was essentially banned by the Mozilla because it did too much. By about Firefox 4, they'll be close to its usefulness.
*Computer-speak for "old and sucky".
I use [my mouse] for ... minimize
You mean like by clicking on the little button at the top right of the window?
56: FireFTP. Sorry about that.
57 -- I have Tabbrowser extensions running with FireFox 2.0. What gives? It seems to work fine.
Filezilla doesn't integrate with Firefox, although maybe it used the Mozilla FTP code as a starting point.
55 - On Macs, I use Camino, myself (Firefox's rendering engine with a tasty Mac candy coating), but Safari is pretty much just as good if you don't have any specific reasons to pick one browser over the other. Some of the Firefox extensions are really sweet, though.
I also use Foxmarks -- allows one to sync bookmarks across multiple computers. Possibly my favorite extension.
I believe SCMT was referring to FireFTP which does integrate with FF.
These questions and more brought to you by Waiting for Callbacks
Slow network, huh?
Firefox is definitely preferable to Safari. Here are two annoying Safari behaviors:
1. Opening a new tab focuses that tab. Maybe this is controllable by preferences, but the fact that it does the wrong thing out of the box is bad enough.
2. Oftentimes, the following will happen. I open safari, go to gmail, sign in. While I wait for gmail to load, I open a new tab and start typing in a new address. Then when gmail finishes loading, it (a) switches back to gmail's tab (wtf?) and (b) keeps the address bar for the new tab active, so that if I happened to hit RET right when gmail finished loading, I get taken away from gmail in that tab. What?
To be honest, I prefer Safari merely because it's more handsome
There are several Mac skins available for FF 2.0
57 reminds me to plug Firebug, an insanely useful extension for debugging web applications. Not useful for just surfing the web, though.
60: Their page seems to say it's not gonna work and if you install it on FF2, your computer will explode and shower you with treated glass even if you are using an LCD screen and if your children are born with 7 legs and no arms it's not their fault but you shouldn't be surprised.
46 -- is "Google Toolbar for Firefox" different from the search toolbar that comes with FF?
For web developers the Live HTTP Headers extension is really handy. It lets you watch the HTTP request and response headers in real time.
57 and 66 are dead-on: if you develop web pages, you absolutely need the FF Web Developer extension and Firebug (which is arguably even better than the web developer extension). On that note, developers might be interested in CSSVista, which lets you do side-by-side FF/IE comparisons, with live editing of CSS (like in the WDE).
I used to have Greasemonkey and a few other extensions installed, but PowerPC FF was chugging painfully and I ended up stripping them all out. But I'm now about 18 hours into the Macbook-Pro-owning period of my life, and it might be time to reinstall my beloved Greasemonkey. FF seems much zippier, and Gmail isn't nearly so godawful — I think it can take the hit.
As for the Safari/FF debate — my understanding is that most agree that WebKit (Safari's rendering engine) is superior to Gecko (Firefox's) both in terms of speed and standards-compliance. But FF extensions are better and easier to install, and I *really* hate having my form buttons turned into OS X widgets. Aqua's blue jewels are pretty, but I get tired of them quickly. And it takes control of the design out of the CSS author's hands, which I dislike on principle. To me, Camino is the worst of both worlds.
50: Among other options, Tab Mix Plus allows multiple rows of tabs and an option to set the max and min width of a tab. What I really like it for is the way I can make the active tab label and underlined so I know where I am.
68: The Google Toolbar lets me set the built-in search to Wikipedia. That's handy. The GT has lots of customization features (& you can prevent it from sending reports back to the mother ship).
In any event, I try lots of different extensions and get rid of the ones I don't end up liking and using. I haven't had any trouble doing that since the earlier days of FF. It beats working.
71: "active tab label" s/b "active tab label red"
"It's not geeky if everyone does it" works a lot better as a personal motto once you've already redefined "everyone" as "a bunch of geeks."
71: you might want to give bookmark keywords a try, rather than bothering with a whole extension for searching wikipedia. I think I learned about this feature from ogged, actually, and it's now one of the things I like best about firefox. I've got quicksearches set up for wikipedia, google images, commercially-usable flickr photos, merriam webster, php.net...
I'm now about 18 hours into the Macbook-Pro-owning period of my life
You too, Tom?
The one thing that really separates FF and Safari, in my view (other than extensions, and that I work on both Macs and PCs, and I like to use the same browser on both) is FF's Quick Search capability. It's hidden in 2.0, but the ability to type in the address bar "g [search term]" to google it, or "wp [search term]" to wikipedia (is that a verb yet?) it is my favorite thing about Firefox.
or did everyone already know about this?
75: Quit resisting, Ogged. You know Steve Jobs will eat your soul eventually. One of us. One of us. One of us.
DictionarySearch - good when i'm reading french stuff and i don't know what word is
IE view - useful if you've adblocked away all the annoying shit from loading, and then realize that some imbedded video you want isn't loading
openbook - lets you fix some annoying bookmark stuff
scrapbook - just great, you can save bits and pieces of web pages. like bookmarking but you have a permanant copy.
already mentioned
image zoom
Download statusbar
gmail manager
adblock
oh, i also have one of the DictionarySearch slots set to wikipaedia, so i can just highlight a word and go right to the entry off a rightclick
77 -- I usually use the box next to the address box for this. It is not hidden but maybe it normally is? How do you make "g" and "wp" do what you want them to do?
Something I really like about Firefox is the VI-like search in page feature, where you type "/" to invoke the search box, which will dismiss itself once you have not typed in it for a few seconds. This is fantastically handy.
And i super hate that session saver doesn't work in FF2.0.
75: I've been a mac user for nearly a year now, actually -- I work at an all-mac shop. They'd issued me a powerbook when I joined up last December -- it was the last, best PowerPC portable that Apple made. The rest of the tech staff has moved over to the intel-based Apple laptops over the last year; it was finally my turn this week.
But hey, this is actually a return to my roots: I can run Windows on this thing, and I'm looking forward to it (for a few things, anyway).
Tom, I'd be curious as to what little apps you've installed on Day 1 of your Life-Transforming Mac Ownership Experience, but Ogged's brain might explode.
86 should be:
I can run Windows on this thing
Or Linux!
session saver doesn't work in FF2.0
2.0 has its own session saver.
82:
To set up a quick search: Select Bookmarks -> Organize Bookmarks
Click New Bookmark
For the name put (e.g) Google Search.
In the location box, put http://www.google.com/search?q=%s
(that %s represents what else you type, but don't click on the link the stupid commenting software's created)
In the keyword box, put g
Click OK, then close the Organize Bookmarks window.
from then on, anytime you type "g [search term]" you're googling away. You should also eventually put a description in it as well.
85: Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that this was a sudden conversion. Like I said, I've been using OS X for nearly a year now. But my essential apps list probably looks a lot like any web developer's: Firefox, NetNewsWire, Mail.app, iTerm, Photoshop, Illustrator, Quicksilver, Adium, Audacity, TextWrangler, Cyberduck, CocoaMySQL, SSHKeyChain. I should note, though, that the last five of those are listed in order of increasing crappiness — I'm really not happy with them relative to their PC counterparts. Audacity is buggy on OS X; TextWrangler isn't as full-featured as UltraEdit or TextPad; CyberDuck is bloated and crashes a lot; CocoaMySQL is buggy and also crash-prone; and SSHKeyChain has some astoundingly large UI bugs in its settings panels, particularly given how focused its job is.
I also really like the Mac version of VLC, think HandBrake is great and frequently use the Free Ruler utility. TextMate and Navicat go into the "awesome software that I'd use if it was free" category.
To set up a quick search
Usually, there's a much easier way. Go to the page with the search you want to run, right-click in the search box, and select Add a Keyword for this Search. A box will pop up where you can give it a name and assign a keyword.
87: But I'm already running BSD. Isn't that harder-core?
Anyway, I've usually got at least one terminal window open to a Linux machine. That's just as good, right?
89 -- do you like this better than the built-in search box? It seems like it would be pretty similar but with two big advantages: no drop-down selection of search engine, and a keyboard shortcut to highlight the address box -- which I don't think there's a keyboard shortcut to highlight the search box.
Ooh, 91 is pretty fucking awesome.
90 - TextMate is incredible, though, probably the best text editor I've used on any platform. I'm always interested in what people are running, though. (I've found myself using scp in Terminal instead of Cyberduck or Fugu because of the meh-ness you noted, but someday someone will point me to an awesome free FTP client; also, allow me to put in a plug for my own buggy and poorly supported application.)
90: I've played around with it under the free trial. I still think I like UltraEdit better, but maybe I just haven't given it a complete chance.
I have a theory of PC FTP application evolution: as soon as one becomes popular its authors start adding bloat in order to create the perception of progress (and the need to renew licenses). It happened with WS_FTP; it happened with CuteFTP; soon it'll probably happen to FileZilla (hopefully not, since it's OSS). On the Mac they seem to just start out crappy and never get much better. So yeah, I tend to stick with scp whenever I can, too, but sometimes a GUI FTP client is the only viable option.
Sage great, convenient RSS reader.
DownThemAll downloader that starts a free-standing process, many advanced features.
Scrapbook amazingly useful research tool. a must-try.
Tab Clicking Options lets me double-click a tab to close it.
Add Bookmark Here easiest way to bookmark.
fyi: posting links on this comments page is a complete pain in the ass. grazie.
double-click a tab to close it
Least needed feature ever?
Thanks for the links -- Sage looks handy.
Does a FireFox extension exist which will translate PDF to HTML? I'm regularly annoyed by the latency involved in launching the PDF reader. I'm thinking something along the lines of Googles "As HTML" link, but integrated into the browser so it will just happen automatically when you click a PDF link.
snarkout: ncftp is an awesome free ftp client.
Is textmate really better than ... EMACS?
nothing is better than emacs, ben
I love All-In-One gestures... I'm totally addicted to the "close tab" gesture. DownThemAll is incredibly useful, if you're downloading a lot of TOTALLY INNOCENT images.
I don't use Safari because it doesn't seem to have a keyboard shortcut to put me in the search box. (And when I accidentally hit Cmd-K, which is FF's, I turn off popup blocking. Grr.)
I'm regularly annoyed by the latency involved in launching the PDF reader
Use Foxit instead of Adobe; incredibly fast.
98: Yes. A middle (wheel)-click on the tab closes it, or I see a "close tab" and "undo close tab" on the right click context menu.
103 -- I use FoxIt, not Adobe. Seems slow to me. Way faster than Adobe, but still.
98 -- Not only that, but FF 2.0 has little "close" buttons on its tabs.
Clown[etc.]: "Least needed feature ever?"
You might think so, but I use it every day. Super-convenient.
(Maybe the "close" buttons are a feature of Tabbrowser add-on, not of FF 2 -- I don't really know.)
Also: Ctrl + F4 closes the current tab. This is probably my most commonly used method of dismissing tabs.
109: They're an FF2 addition. But you could always middle-click a tab to close it. Doesn't anybody middle-click any more?
106: yeah, i know, that's a big reason i haven't gone with 2.0. i'm very particular about my tabs :-) isn't america great, where we can have an in-depth, passionate discussion of the relative merits of various tab-closing options for a web-browser? geek heaven.
111: no such thing as a middle-click over this way.
after this, i promise no more posts about tab-closing.
"session saver doesn't work in FF2.0
2.0 has its own session saver.
"
yeah, but you can't close multiple windows at once and restore them, or save things permanantly.
99: Yeah, the ability to open pdfs in the browser is the one feature of Safari that I really miss when using Firefox.
100 - I use vi, not emacs. [insert painfully dorky text editor flame] Still, I think TextMate is the shizzle.
ogged,
Can one make Foxit the default reader, such that it opens within FireFox, as Adobe does? How?
I haven't gotten it to do that (not that I've tried, since I like having the separate reader open), but I don't think so.
Foxit is my default reader now, and opens automatically. Maybe because I don't have Acrobat Reader.
Can you set it to default at all, though?
Okay, nevermind. I did it through Windows.
Emacs is best. That is all. Emacs + AucTeX + reftex + ispell + latex is, by far, the best academic writing environment.
Firefox plugins, I use:
NoScript
FlashGot
Linky
FireFTP
Del.icio.us - the Firefox plugin for managing del.icio.us bookmarks.
Sage
Some of the thread above has reminded me of some plugins I used to use but had forgotten about -- the various web development ones -- which is cool.
Doesn't anybody middle-click any more?
I have my middle button set to back. So when I surf, I never have to go up to the back button to get back. Probably because Firefox stores its bookmarks in an html file and I use that has my home page.
It truly drives me nuts when I can't middle click to go back.
So.... you guys don't have your hands on the keyboard by default and move one hand over to the mouse when some kinda mouse action is needed? Because you can go back without moving your hands off the keyboard, by pressing backspace or Alt +
Or rather:
So.... you guys don't have your hands on the keyboard by default and move one hand over to the mouse when some kinda mouse action is needed? Because you can go back without moving your hands off the keyboard, by pressing backspace or Alt + <- -- My main gripe with Firefox at present is, when you drag a link to a tab, the tab bar gets focus and it doesn't recognize those two keyboard shortcuts until you click on the page body -- But I can't picture moving my hand to the mouse every single time I wanted to go back.
93 -- hey whaddaya know, there is a keyboard shortcut to the search box, and it's name is Ctrl + K.
Oh my goodness -- I'm just setting up my new (blindingly fast, lots o' memory & storage, lovely) computer here at work -- I go to the Google accounts page to set up my notebook -- and lo and behold, they link to this thread! Not to /. or something like that. Wow. Has Google Notebook not been getting a lot of attention from the geeks, or is Unfogged sufficiently high-profile to merit this kind of linkage?
Oh wait no, silly me, I'm looking at my own notebook. Nemmine.
Here is a great video demonstration of "All in one gesures" and firefox. "How open many tabs at once with a single gesture"
http://one.revver.com/watch/135913