Mozilla Extensions

For those of you that use Mozilla, what are your favorite extensions?

My favorite is Foxytunes. Lets you control your media player without ever leaving the browser. I've got it set up running my iTunes, and I'm loving it.

I'm also using DictionarySearch. Lets you look up a selected word. Handy, because my high ass can't ever spell, lol.

So....What are you guys using? Anbody got any good ones for Thunderbird?

 

I'm confused about the need for Adblock guys. I've not had any ad problems since I started running Mozilla? Where are you guys getting them from?

But I also don't use any peer to peer software (Get my music through the iTunes store), perhaps that makes a difference.

I'm hooked on that Foxytunes though. One of those little applications that you wonder what you did without it, LOL.

 

By Matthew D. Sarrel \t\t \t\t \t \t \t\t \t\tBy itself, Firefox is a lean and fast browser (see Firefox 1.0 review), but it lacks some of the functions that we've come to take for granted from Microsoft Internet Explorer. It's easy to remedy that situation with small add-on extensions. Extensions can do loads of tasks, from blocking pop-up ads to playing card games-and even viewing a Web page as if it were in IE-so they can make Firefox a versatile and customizable platform for your browsing activities. But where to start? Which extensions are worth downloading and installing? We evaluated dozens of extensions and present the best 15 for your perusal. It's easy to add them; just go to the Tools | Extensions | Get More Extensions menu to get started.

About site 0.1.1 provides a great deal of site information through tabbed windows. Accessed by right-clicking anywhere on a page, this extension shows Alexa traffic information, Google Linked or Google Related information, performs a Whois query, searches Technorati for references, or searches the Internet Archive Wayback Machine for stored copies of pages. This extension is extremely helpful for those who want to learn more about a site or conduct a search based on the information contained on a site.



Adblock 0.5.2 is an ad-blocking extension that uses content filtering and URL blocking to prevent Firefox from displaying unwanted images. From the Tools | Adblock | Preferences screen it is easy to add new terms to block, including wildcards and file types. It's possible to use Regular Expressions (text patterns that can match various text strings) as new terms. You can also right-click on ads and choose to block them from the context-sensitive menu.

Bandwidth Tester 0.4.1 provides a menu option under Tools for testing the bandwidth of your Internet connection. The extension downloads four files of varying size and calculates bandwidth based on average download time.

Cards 0.16.1 offers 27 different solitaire games, from Aces Up to Yukon, accessible via the Tools | Cards menu. Unfortunately, it doesn't explain any of these games, so you won't be learning much about the world of solitaire. All games are played in a new pop-up window that won't interfere with your browsing.

Clusty Toolbar 1.0.2 helps you find information quickly and easily. It's possible to search and cluster results from multiple search engines, as well as obtain encyclopedia information (from Wikipedia), dictionary definitions, and even shopping and gossip, doing it all either by selecting a word or phrase and right-clicking to display the context-sensitive menu, or by typing it in the search box. Mini-Mode saves valuable screen space by eliminating the toolbar and keeping Clusty's functionality on hand.

ColorZilla 0.8.2 provides a color reading from any point in your browser that can easily be pasted into another program. The most helpful feature lets you zoom in on the page you are viewing (though still not as well as the Opera browser does natively) and measure distances between any two points on the page. Once zoomed, you can pan the page using Alt+Shift+Drag. All of this functionality is accessed by right-clicking on the ColorZilla icon at the left side of the browser-status bar and selecting the ColorZilla submenu.

DictionarySearch 0.7 allows you to select a word, right-click on it, and choose Define. A definition provided by Dictionary.com then appears in another tab. This is a very easy way to learn the meaning of new words from within Firefox.

ForecastFox 0.5.8 is a must for weather buffs. This extension provides weather-report icons within the application (you can customize where they should be placed). There's one icon for current conditions, another for today's forecast, and a third for tomorrow's forecast from weather.com. When you mouse over the icons they give you more precise weather information. Setting up profiles for different locations lets you quickly toggle between forecasts and make the most of this extension.

FoxyTunes 1.1 places remote controls for the media player of your choice within Firefox so you can control your music without leaving your browser. The controls appear on the status bar or one of the toolbars, so no space is wasted. You can pause, forward/reverse, play, adjust the volume, and see what's playing. There's also an alarm clock and a sleep timer. This is a must-have extension for users who regularly listen to music while browsing the Web.

GoogleBar 0.9.0.30 brings the popular Google Toolbar to Firefox. Search the Web or the current site, highlight search terms, and get page info, all from a single toolbar.

Google Preview 0.8 shows a small snapshot of each Google result for a search. This can save time when you're deciding where to turn for more information.

MapIt! 0.4 lets you query MapQuest for an address quickly and easily. Simply right-click anywhere in the browser window, choose MapIt! from the context-sensitive menu, and then fill in the form that appears on the top left of your screen. It would be better if MapIt! could search for addresses in highlighted text and map them, but the extension does save you the trouble of leaving the Web page you're on to go to MapQuest. Maps load in the background in a new tab.

ScrapBook 0.12.0 allows you to collect clippings (really whole Web pages) from the Web sites you visit. It organizes the clippings and saves them to disk along with your own comments and annotations. The original URL of the clipping is also stored so you can revisit the site for more information. You can search notes and clippings. An indispensable tool for conducting research using Firefox.

Tabbrowser Preferences 1.1.1 gives you greater control over Firefox's tabbed window interface through the Tools | Options | Tabbed Browsing menu. Tabs can appear at the top or bottom of the browsing window and can be locked so that all clicked links open in a new tab. New tabs let you open URLs from the URL bar and searches from the search bar. It can even force every new tab to load your homepage.

xMirror 0.1.1 adds a selection menu for alternate extension-download sites to the Extensions Manager. No need to restrict yourself to just the one.


Link to article: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1758849,00.asp

 

Works pretty well, nice tip. network.http.proxy.maxrequests is letting you tell it to make 30 requests at once. Combining that with the nglayout.intialpain.delay which is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives, and you've got yourself a speedy little hack. Though Initial Paint Delay actually slows down the rendering of the whole page but since users tend to start reading before the entire page is rendered, setting this to a low value gives the impression that the page loads faster.

Here's some more info on that too from over at Tweakfactor:

Performance Settings

One of the limitations of pretty much all computer applications is the need to target for a general audience because of the wide array of computer components and varied network infrastructure. This is where tweaking comes in. Firefox by default is aimed at a general audience too and hopefully we can tune it more to the needs of the individual. The majority of the information comes from this excellent thread over at the MozillaZine Forum. The first post in particular goes through in great detail what each of the settings do. The thread however gets fairly long and convoluted and we attempt to summarize the contents of this thread along with a couple other sources into something that is easier to digest. As with the settings on the previous page, the contents are copied into the user.js file. We do not go into major detail about the setting as the thread goes into detailed explanations of what the settings mean in the first post. Instead, the configurations are culled from the thread of what people have reported to have worked for them along with some modifications on our end.



Quick and Dirty Settings

user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.firstrequest", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.maxrequests", 8);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);


These were some settings I ran across sometime ago. Pipelining does multiple data requests at once and should speed things up. I believe IE did this before and this was partially attributable to the speed advantage that IE had over older versions of Mozilla/Netscape. Initial Paint Delay actually slows down the rendering of the ENTIRE page but since users tend to start reading before the entire page is rendered, setting this to a low value gives the impression that the page loads faster.

The following configurations are based off of recommendations off of the Mozillazine thread with some editing on points that I do not agree with

Common to all configurations

These are the settings that seem to be common to all configuration files regardless of connection speed or computer speed with a couple of additions - plugin paths can be found with about: plugins and the bookmark menu delay is turned off.

user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.proxy.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.maxrequests", 8);
user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", 5);
user_pref("plugin.expose_full_path", true);
user_pref("ui.submenuDelay", 0);




Fast Computer Fast Connection

user_pref("content.interrupt.parsing", true);
user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 2250000);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 750000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 48);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capacity", 65536);


A couple settings of note - Firefox is allocated 4096 KB of memory by default and in this configuration we give it roughly 65MB as denoted by the last line. This can be changed according to what is used.



Fast Computer, Slower Connection

This configuration is more suited to people without ultra fast connections. We are not talking about dial up connections but slower DSL / Cable connections.

user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 2250000);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 750000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 48);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);
user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capacity", 65536);




Fast Computer, Slow Connection

user_pref("browser.xul.error_pages.enabled", true);
user_pref("content.interrupt.parsing", true);
user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 3000000);
user_pref("content.maxtextrun", 8191);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 750000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 32);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 8);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 4);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);
user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capacity", 65536);


Slow Computer, Fast Connection

user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 3000000);
user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", 5);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 1000000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 1000000);
user_pref("content.maxtextrun", 4095);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 1000);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 48);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("dom.disable_window_status_change", true);
One of the changes made for this particular configuration is the final line where the status bar is disabled for changing web pages to save processor time.



Slow Computer, Slow Connection

We have entered the doldrums of the dial-up user

user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 2250000);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 750000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 750);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 32);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 8);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 4);
user_pref("dom.disable_window_status_change", true);


Some of the options we chose not to include as opposed to suggestions on the Mozillazine threads included the suggestion of catching SSL pages. Regardless of computer speed, one of the common trends is that pipelining is a good thing. Those with faster computers and gobs of memory may want to up the amount of memory available to Firefox while those with slower computers can still increase the default 4MB to something higher. This was not done in our configuration files however. Powerusers are also welcome to disable the status bar to eek out that extra CPU cycle or two.