Fun with Firefox.

[Dozer]

With the release of Firefox 1.0, the amount of extensions on the mozilla website has really expanded. I thought I would share some of them that I have found really useful, to perhaps sway IE users, or just let you in on the convienence. :)

Chatzilla

An OK IRC client, use it to drop in on the lurkerlounge IRC channel. ;) Not as good as mIRC, of course, but it gets the job done.


ColorZilla

This thing has a handful of features, but the one I find incredible is the little eyedropper thing it puts in the bottom status bar that lets you pick up the RGB color values of anything in the browser window (this text box you're reading is 32 25 9 :ph34r: ). INCREDIBLY useful.


fireFTP

Pretty self-explanatory, an FTP client. It's not the best one out there, but it certainly is the best free one I've seen.


AutoFill

Like the IE Google Toolbar, this will autofill the majority of online forms with a single click. This extension was the one that made me switch to Firefox. :D


Bandwidth Tester

Another one that's pretty much just convienence, but it tests your downstream (only) bandwidth pretty accurately (I've noticed if you have a connection of >3 Mbps, you should use the "T1" setting, though)


IE View

Simply adds a button in the Right-click menu that opens the page you are on in IE. Good for those pages and applets that are still IE-only (cough, fileplanet, cough)


Image Zoom

Allows you to zoom in (and out) on any image on the page you're on. This was in that IE5.0 Extra Features pack, so I was happy to learn I could use it again :P


I hope this has been edumacational :shuriken: Anyone else got some good ones I passed over?

[DeeBye]

ColorZilla

Bandwidth Tester
[right][snapback]62378[/snapback][/right]

Those are both pretty useful.

One I really can't browse without is Text Links.
http://ted.mielczarek.org/code/mozilla/

When you right click on an unparsed URL, you can jump directly to the target instead of having to copy/paste it into your browser.

[Walkiry]

Those are both pretty useful.

One I really can't browse without is Text Links.
http://ted.mielczarek.org/code/mozilla/

When you right click on an unparsed URL, you can jump directly to the target instead of having to copy/paste it into your browser.
[right][snapback]62407[/snapback][/right]

You don't have to cut & paste, merely highlight the url and drag it to the Tab bar :)

The best extension EVER: AdBlock.

[DeeBye]

The best extension EVER: AdBlock.
[right][snapback]62482[/snapback][/right]

Agreed.

[JustAGuy]

Agreed.
[right][snapback]62495[/snapback][/right]

These extensions just might make me abandon Opera! Fantastical!

[pakman]

Is there an extension out there that allows you to view IE pages within Firefox? Even those are few and far between, I still run across it occasionally. The extension you linked opens up an IE window. I misread the description thinking it would somehow convert the page to how it is "supposed" to look.

[Chaerophon]

Is there an extension out there that allows you to view IE pages within Firefox?  Even those are few and far between, I still run across it occasionally. The extension you linked opens up an IE window. I misread the description thinking it would somehow convert the page to how it is "supposed" to look.
[right][snapback]62663[/snapback][/right]

Yes there is. Here you go:

http://ieview.mozdev.org/

[Mithrandir]

Another fun thing I got off another forum for Firefox:

Here's something for broadband people that will really speed Firefox up:

1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining
network.http.proxy.pipelining
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once. ( I set mine to 100 )

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves.

If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages MUCH faster now!

It works amazingly well. Firefox was already fast, but now it's *blistering*.

[LochnarITB]

It works amazingly well. Firefox was already fast, but now it's *blistering*.
[right][snapback]63173[/snapback][/right]

Wow! Thanks.

[Chaerophon]

Another fun thing I got off another forum for Firefox:
It works amazingly well. Firefox was already fast, but now it's *blistering*.
[right][snapback]63173[/snapback][/right]

That is awesome, Mith. Thanks a lot!

[DeeBye]

Another fun thing I got off another forum for Firefox:
It works amazingly well. Firefox was already fast, but now it's *blistering*.
[right][snapback]63173[/snapback][/right]

DO NOT DO THIS!

These settings violate the HTTP protocol, and give you a speed boost by flooding the web server with 20-something connections for every single image and page request. There's a reason that they're not the default.

These settings will not only cause many web servers to have problems, but they can also make your web browser be mistaken for a flood attack, which will make the server add your IP to an "ignore" list. Stay away from these "optimized" settings, unless you know exactly what they do and how they work.

[LochnarITB]

Could you please point me to something that verifies this? I tried using my best Google-fu to duplicate your warning. The vast majority of what I found was other postings of these and other settings to consider and people who had used them without problems. The biggest problem I can find is that there might be rare rendering problems when requests come back out of order or the connection closes prematurely, especially with things such as table layouts. One point that I did see mentioned contradicts what you said. It does not make the same request multiple times, it takes the requests it needs for the page and sends them together, in the same packet if possible. Mozilla even has a FAQ on pipelining here. Another item of note is that some of what I found indicates that maxrequest won't go higher than 8 because it depends on another setting which I did not mess with. I also wonder if maybe you have got caught up in spreading a myth. (on the internet, nah! ;) ) While Googling (http pipelining flooding) I came on the discussion here. The last post there is this:

Giblet Plus!
is this true? I read it on SA

a: These settings violate the HTTP protocol, and give you a speed boost by flooding the web server with 20-something connections for every single image and page request. There's a reason that they're not the default.

These settings will not only cause many web servers to have problems, but they can also make your web browser be mistaken for a flood attack, which will make the server add your IP to an "ignore" list. Stay away from these "optimized" settings, unless you know exactly what they do and how they work.

?

Does it look familiar? I don't know what SA is so I couldn't find what the person referred to but it does make me wonder.

[DeeBye]

Does it look familiar?  I don't know what SA is so I couldn't find what the person referred to but it does make me wonder.
[right][snapback]63230[/snapback][/right]

SA is Something Awful, and that's where I copied the information from (I guess I should have attributed the source). I don't claim to understand HTTP protocol, but the guy who wrote it does and I trust his knowledge.

[LochnarITB]

I tried going to the Something Awful forums to search for it but it refused since I'm not a registered user.

For anyone else interested in this, here are 2 more discussions you may want to take a look at:
http://www.tweakfactor.com/articles/tweaks...foxtweak/4.html
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.ph...page=15&start=0
I've only made the changes mentioned here. It seems to have sped up Firefox even further and I have not seen any problems. If the Internet KGB suddenly busts down my door and smashes my computer saying "Maxrequest that speed freak!" then I will know I shouldn't have done it.

[Moldran]

As far as my understanding goes, you have to differentiate between pipelining and the maximum number of open HTTP connections per server.
Mithrandir's post only mentioned pipelining settings. Changing these is perfectly ok. HTTP 1.1 servers are supposed to support pipelining. What DeeBye had read about were the settings that control the maximum number of simultaneous connections per server. These are another matter. Increasing them is considered evil by some.
Pipelinig is controlled by the settings Mithrandir mentioned. The 'evil' maximum connections are controlled by the settings named 'network.http.max-*' in 'about:config'

According to RFC 2616, you are not supposed to open any more than 2 simultaneous connections to any HTTP 1.1 server. The RFC says 'SHOULD NOT', not 'MUST NOT', so there is some room for interpretation. Personally, I would recommend not increasing the network.http.max settings. If you increase them, you are basically improving your performance at the cost of those clients that act in compliance with the RFC recommendation. That does not seem like a nice idea to me. Also, web servers usually spawn a new child process for every new connection. This means that if alot of clients ignore the RFC recommendation, this can potentially put web servers under very heavy load. This is what the original poster in the MozillaZine thread Lochnar mentioned warned about:

These options control the number of opened HTTP connections. If you raise them, do it reasonably. Changes like these are at least partly responsible for the infamous /. effect.

So *if* you decide to fool with the max connection settings, set them to something like 4 or maybe 8, not to 100.

BTW: Either FF 1.0 uses the 'evil' settings by default, or it is my Linux distribution that does. I just decreased the max connections per server/proxy down to 2 :)

[DeeBye]

Thanks for the clarification Moldran. That surely helps my understanding about this.

[Leshy]

The best extension EVER: AdBlock.
[right][snapback]62482[/snapback][/right]

I disagree.

The only ads that one should ever block are Flash ones that come layering in over your screen, or big popup windows smashed in your face. There is absolutely no excuse for this kind of advertising.

Regular ads, however, are what keeps many websites running. Just like TV stations and magazines, advertising is what generates revenue to keep the cost down. Blocking ads on a large scale will lead to the Internet ad market breaking down even further than the way it already did in 2001 or so. The only outcome is that less and less stuff will be available for free. There's a good number of programs out there that rely on advertising to be used for free as well, for example.

Not to mention that those intrusive ads I mentioned above are the direct effect of people using ad blockers. The more you try to block them, the worse they will become in an attempt to circumvent your blocking them.

As said, stuff that actually intrudes upon browsing around is fair game, but blocking regular advertising is only shooting yourself in the foot in the long run.

[Fragbait]

I disagree.

The only ads that one should ever block are Flash ones that come layering in over your screen, or big popup windows smashed in your face. There is absolutely no excuse for this kind of advertising.

Regular ads, however, are what keeps many websites running. Just like TV stations and magazines, advertising is what generates revenue to keep the cost down. Blocking ads on a large scale will lead to the Internet ad market breaking down even further than the way it already did in 2001 or so. The only outcome is that less and less stuff will be available for free. There's a good number of programs out there that rely on advertising to be used for free as well, for example.

Not to mention that those intrusive ads I mentioned above are the direct effect of people using ad blockers. The more you try to block them, the worse they will become in an attempt to circumvent your blocking them.

As said, stuff that actually intrudes upon browsing around is fair game, but blocking regular advertising is only shooting yourself in the foot in the long run.
[right][snapback]63302[/snapback][/right]

I disagree completely. The internet user should have the right to block everything he doesn't want to watch. This of course strictly includes advertisement. Naturally there's always the more annoying ad than normal, but that differs from person to person, based on personal opinions. For example: a player of pc games might fully accept an ad for a game of the resident evil series, while a mother of young children might want to block it at all costs.

In my opinion, very rarely is there a case out there when ads are justified. Many websites only exist to serve as carrier of advertisement. In fact they may be of greater numbers than the legit web pages out there, often manipulating google search and then showing only crap. I endorse blocking everything that annoys one. If a website can't manage to keep its costs down without excessive advertising, this is more due to failed managing than due to not advertising on it.

I don't think that much useful free content is lost if most ads are blocked by the users. And even if some things are lost, I don't care about many of them. Who needs yet another animated gif gallery or this and that mp3 search engine? Crap.
Programs that rely on advertising to be free (generally known as adware) I can't support neither. In many cases you don't know the horse you bought with these programs, either they advertise something you really don't want to see, show very aggressive advertising habits or bring malware on your pc. If that is some of the stuff that won't be available anymore, I really only endorse that development.

Your last point that such intrusive ads are a direct consequence of people adblocking ads is a sheer falsehood. Such aggressive ads were there way before ad-block, and will persist whether there is some method of blocking them or not. Today, way less than 10% of all internet users do not use Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which doesn't support ad-blocking as far as I know. In fact, the average internet user knows next to nothing of how to block or avoid these ads, they are just annoying, and costing the user time and money, plain and simple.

Besides, if you are referring to ad-block, I don't understand why you mention 'big pop-ups' as annoying, since Mozilla and Mozilla Firefox have built in popup-blockers, and there are others out there. As a matter of fact, I interpret every unwanted ad as 'stuff that actually intrudes upon browsing around', since it takes time to load up, and not everybody on this planet has a broadband connection yet.

Nevertheless interesting to read a completely different opinion.

Greetings, Fragbait

[DeeBye]

I disagree.
[right][snapback]63302[/snapback][/right]

I don't read ads in magazines. I skip commercials on TV. I throw out the junk mail that gets in my mailbox. No one can tell me I MUST pay attention to advertising.

That being said, it's pretty rare that I'll actively block an ad. When I do, it's because it's a flash ad or an animated gif that distracts me while I'm trying to read a page's content.

I block all popups though. I haven't seen one in years.

[Walkiry]

Regular ads, however, are what keeps many websites running.
[right][snapback]63302[/snapback][/right]

I disagree with your disagreement :P

The only real important thing to keep a website running is good content, not ads. With good content you can find ways to fund yourself if ads aren't working out. More importantly, ads shouldn't be an annoyance that the user has to put up with to get to your content. If there's an annoyance, people will try to get rid of it.

Why do you think google ads are so successful? Because it's just a little bit of text with a handful of rather small links, instead of a big chunk of my screen that will open a new window or redirect me to another page if I click anywhere in it. They're unintrusive, and they're (usually) somewhat related to what you're reading.

The more you try to block them, the worse they will become in an attempt to circumvent your blocking them.

If it's an arms race what the advertisers want, an arms race is what they'll get. There is wisdom, however, in not trying to fight and piss off what could be considered your target audience. I'm not about to give up the control of how things work in my own box, for anyone. If it becomes too much of a burden you simply will start losing readers.

I also don't buy the cataclysmic vision of the great Internet falldown if ads stop working. People (in general) are much more creative than that.