Extensions make Firefox [LWN.net]

Extensions make Firefox

Posted Feb 11, 2004 18:17 UTC (Wed) by pj (subscriber, #4506)
Parent article: A grumpy user's browser review

I've been using Firefox since 0.6 or so and quickly learned that as the 'clothes make the man', the extensions make the (Firefox) browser. Finding the right set of extensions to make it just the way you like it has replaced paging through endless configuration options, and IMHO it's an improvement. The default url of new tabs can be configured via extensions, as can more substantial improvements like the addition of whole new features: RSS readers, browser ID masquerading, quickbutton access, etc etc. To an extent, reviewing Firefox without looking at the extensions available is analagous to reviewing apache without looking at the modules available.

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Privoxy

Posted Feb 11, 2004 19:40 UTC (Wed) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

Another thing that makes the world of difference is Privoxy. Once you start filtering out flash ads, Firefox becomes much more responsive. Now you can open dozens of tabs without causing heavy CPU utilization. Privoxy is part of Debian and Fedora, just use apt-get or yum.

Privoxy

Posted Feb 13, 2004 5:21 UTC (Fri) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

No kidding! Privoxy has become almost indispensable to my browsing. I
have quite a list of personal filters added.

Among other things, I rather dislike the normal dark text on light background
that so many pages have, and long ago set up my browser preferences to
white text on a black background, while still allowing individual pages to
control both so I got other colors if that's what the page author created.

Unfortunately, all to many pages break a cardinal page design rule: If you set
one of text color or background, set the other one as well, because you can't
just assume that the browser won't otherwise render black text (as you set) on
a black background (based on browser prefs because you did NOT set it), or
something similar, making everything invisible!

Thus, a good portion of my own privoxy filters have to do with ensuring that
anything to light as a background gets reset to dark/black, while anything to
dark as a text/foreground gets reset to light/white, all the while attempting to
leave intermediate colors alone, and not deviate TO much, save for ensuring
good contrast and an overall light on dark theme, from what the page author
intended.

BTW, I understand why Konqueror wasn't included in the evaluation, but
that's what I run, as I DO run KDE as my desktop of choice, in no small part
BECAUSE of the stupid GTK/Gnome anti-power-user anti-config attitude.
I've posted b4 and will again.. when Gnome/GTK has an control applet
available to adjust individual interface colors, THEN I might consider it a
serious desktop environment. Even MSWormOS has THAT, as does KDE
(with kcmshell colors), but Gnome forces the user to either change the entire
thing with a theme, or go to the text config files, the latter of which might be
an acceptable method for configuring the Linux core, but is NOT acceptable
for configuring what IS after all, SUPPOSED to be a visually oriented and
colored GUI interface. Gray on pastel is simply to boring and "sick" looking,
for my tastes, and I have yet to see something with decent BOLD color
choices that I'm happy with either, so individual color choices are the only
way to get something I can be reasonably happy working on.

Duncan

No need for Privoxy

Posted Feb 24, 2004 12:06 UTC (Tue) by ressu (subscriber, #14615) [Link]

i would recommend checking out http://www.gozer.org/mozilla/ad_blocking/ which offers plain and simple ad-blocking, without any external application or extension.

This is not something the most people know of, maybe it's a good thing.. that way the people making the ads don't care about it.