• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Mozilla FireFox Add-ons and Settings

Minadin

Master Poster
Minadin
Joined
Oct 24, 2006
Messages
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Location
St. Louis
So, I just installed a fresh clean copy of Windows XP on a brand new hard drive for my home computer. The old copy was getting all broken down and I needed the extra space anyway. It took a while but I think I have everything running smoothly now with all the latest service packs and security updates and etc.

Now, I'm getting around to loading up some of the old programs that I had set up (and liked) on my old installation, and one of these is Firefox.

Now, it's been a good long while since I had installed it last and I don't recall all the settings changes and add-ons and other modifications I had to make to make it work the way that I wanted it to work. One thing I seem to recall was that I had upped the number (?) of queries (?) it made when loading a page to 20 or so, to make things load faster. But I'm not even sure how to do that anymore, I'll have to poke around a bit.

I know a lot of more tech-savvy people swear by Firefox (I tend to use it and IE alternatingly) , so, my questions are these:

What sort of settings changes do you recommend?
Are there any real must-have sort of add-ons that you have found / enjoy, and which?

Any other helpful hints and advice about enhancing the Mozilla web-browsing experience? I would ask the same for IE but as my grandpa used to say, "You can't polish a turd."
 
Some of the Firefox Add-ons I use;

Adblock Plus with Filterset G.
Flashblock
bbCode Xtra
Googlebar Lite (that means I can leave the included search box on Wiki or similar)
IE tab
Tab Mix Plus
Colorful tabs.

Also backing up all of your settings or transferring to a new computer is a doddle in Firefox. Just go to "C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles" and backup that folder to a safe location.
If you ever need to restore it just put the folder back to the same place, go back up to the Firefox folder and open profiles.ini and change the Path=profiles/abcdefg.default to Path=profiles/myoldfolder.default
 
I have more or less the same ones as others here have said. It should be noted, though, that many people blame AdBlockPlus for memory bloat in Firefox, and indeed FF is currently taking up the better part of a gig on my machine, though I don't know how it would be without ABP.

You people who recommend dictionaries: are you seriously telling me you sit at your machine without a Proper Dictionary within arm's reach?
 
Rat said:
You people who recommend dictionaries: are you seriously telling me you sit at your machine without a Proper Dictionary within arm's reach?
Click to expand...

Gene Amole was a staple of the Denver radio and Rocky Mountain News as an announcer and columnist; unfortunately, he died about ten years ago. One of his favorite remarks was that it always paid a newsman to sit next to a nice Catholic girl in the newsroom; it helped his spelling out immensely.
 
I've tried TabMix Plus but I can't find the option to duplicate a Tab if I middle click on a link.
With the "Duplicate Tab" AddOn, if I click on a link, it opens in a new tab along with the history of the previous tab.

Any ideas?
 
..............

Would any of this be relevant to my still-prevailing problem of not being able to load youtube videos?
 
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Not being able to load YouTube videos would be a flash player issue, wouldn't it?

Anyway, thanks everyone for the helpful suggestions, I'm going to have to try them out.
 
Coinkidinkily, I just installed FF for the first time ever yesterday (GASP, the horror!), specifically because I wanted to use the Flash Tracer add-on. So far, Tracer seems too buggy to be useful and there are a few things I really like in IE that I can't do in FF, but I'm going to give it a whirl for a while anyway just to see what all the fuss is about.

Anywho...Mindadin, if you're using IE7 sometimes and you don't already have the IE7Pro add-on, it's a must have. A few of my faves:

Super Drag and Drop (not in FF)
Inline search (same as FF)
Enhanced Tab Management (a bit better than FF's, even with Tabs Mix)
Mouse Gestures
Crash Recovery (unfortunately a necessity with IE7)

And if you already have it, then ummm...nevermind.
 
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addons.mozilla.org noscript
noscript.net/

There's a browser safer than Firefox...
...it is Firefox, with NoScript!

The NoScript Firefox extension provides extra protection for Firefox, Flock, Seamonkey and others mozilla-based browsers: this free, open source add-on allows JavaScript, Java, Flash and other plugins to be executed only by trusted web sites of your choice (e.g. your online bank), and provides the most powerful Anti-XSS protection available in a browser.
Click to expand...
 
Rat said:
I have more or less the same ones as others here have said. It should be noted, though, that many people blame AdBlockPlus for memory bloat in Firefox, and indeed FF is currently taking up the better part of a gig on my machine, though I don't know how it would be without ABP.
Click to expand...
Now that's just strange. I'm running ABP too, and FF is using less than 150 megs at the moment.
 
Well, I have Firefox running for many days at a time, so it could well just be a good old memory leak, either in FF or in one of the extensions. I suppose I should shut it and reopen it every couple of days, but when it's using that much memory, it doesn't half take a while for the process to stop.
 
I run FF for days at a time, too. Mind you, I seldom have more than 2 windows and 10 tabs open. Now, with one window (4 tabs) open, it's taking 73MB.

Yeah, I'm going to have to agree with the hypothesis that it's one of the extensions/addons you're running.
 
I couldn't do without Firebug. But if you don't write your own HTML and CSS, it's probably not in your list of essentials.
 
Rat said:
You people who recommend dictionaries: are you seriously telling me you sit at your machine without a Proper Dictionary within arm's reach?
Click to expand...
It's for spell-check.

Extensions I use that haven't been mentioned:
Greasemonkey - very good for tweaking popular sites with irritating layouts (ex: fark.com)
Download Statusbar
Image Zoom (great for big images (like APOD) - click to flip between displaying images full resolution or fit-to-screen)
Webdeveloper, but it's not terribly useful for the layman.
 
I use Scrapbook, but I'm a bit of a packrat. If it seems stable, or you want to check on content you expect to change, bookmarking is fine, but if you think something may disappear, or you might have trouble finding it later, I either scrapbook it or Google Notebook it.

I've run across Greasemonkey, but never installed it. I have installed Firebug, but find I don't use it as much as I expected.
 
aerosolben said:
It's for spell-check.

Extensions I use that haven't been mentioned:
Greasemonkey - very good for tweaking popular sites with irritating layouts (ex: fark.com)
Download Statusbar
Image Zoom (great for big images (like APOD) - click to flip between displaying images full resolution or fit-to-screen)
Webdeveloper, but it's not terribly useful for the layman.
Click to expand...
A couple other now that I'm on my primary machine:

Better Gmail, better GReader (from lifehacker.com) and CustomizeGoogle
BugMeNot - saves a trip to the site
FoxyProxy - easy proxy switching
All-in-One sidebar - Opera-style config bar
and last and most importantly, StumbleUpon for content discovery. Everyone should at least try this one.
 
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