how do you make a web browser that pleases everyone without pleasing no one? make it extensible. the only downside is that there are so many extensions available for firefox that it’s hard to know where to start. these are the ones i think are particularly interesting and useful.
last tab
hallelujah. makes ctrl+tab in firefox behave like alt+tab in windows (switches to recently opened tab). note: this indispensible xpi file must be downloaded and then opened with firefox to install.
user agent switcher
“user agent” is what the cool kids call their web browser. this extension allows you to trick web servers into thinking you are internet explorer to get around “this site only works in IE” racism.
web developer toolbar
cool functions: outline table cells, outline block level elements, and disable styles. this toolbar is really too cool for school.
live http headers
firefox musthave for web developers. see what is being sent to the web server and vice versa, in real time.
x (paranoia)
this is similar to a tool i’ve been thinking about creating that would allow you to flip a switch to prevent the browser from recording any history/cookies/cache until you flip the switch again. apparently in some circles this has been known as porn mode, but i think it would provide some serious privacy benefits. x (paranoia) is more like permanent amnesia.
it occurred to me that when i need to go back a page, i hit backspace. so why not just chuck the navigation buttons out the window and move the search and location bars up to the menubar.
savings: one toolbar
having already loaded up the search bar with most of my frequently used and useful search engine plug-ins, i decided those less frequently used could live in the handy bookmarks menu rather than on the bookmarks toolbar that I claimed to have loved so much.
savings: two toolbars
it does help to know a few keyboard commands for basic navigation:
mozilla firefox has an incredibly simple toolbar interface for custom search engine plug-ins. there are literally hundreds of plug-ins contributed by the mozilla community for all variety of special purpose search engines.
i use a handful of web reference tools. these are the plug-ins i’ve collected so far:
(if i was a reference librarian, i’d be drooling right now)
update: i just created two three search plug-ins for UNC’s library catalog, campus directory, and google in the unc.edu domain. want ’em? unzip uncsearchplugins.zip and save the files in Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins and restart Firefox.
update: i should mention that the campus directory plugin only queries last names. i’m told AIS is planning to implement full name searching in the near future.
update: now you can install the unc search plugins instantly!
i know i had an AOL account during high school (1994-1998), but I don’t remember when I started doing much web browsing.
i wanted to build the computer i brought to college (i’m not sure where i got that idea–i seem to remember maybe talking about it with jeff and ryan rodgers during our year long calculus class). by late spring/early summer of 1998 i must have been familiar enough with the web because i did all my research and ordering online. according to the netscape navigator version history I was probably using v4.0, presumably over a dial-up connection to AOL.
in august 1998 i left texas and traveled to north carolina to attend UNC. i didn’t get ethernet in my dorm until that november, but i remember it transforming my computer from a word processor i used infrequently to a dynamic communications device i used constantly.
i have faint memories of prefering the standalone version of navigator 4 to the bloated netscape communicator suite, but eventually i did switch to communicator as i became more interested in figuring out how to author html pages. otherwise my web browser memories during the first three years of college involve only netscape 4.7x. what’s amazing to me is that the browser wars were essentially over by the end of my first semester.
roughly parallel to the four years of my undergraduate education, netscape developers rebuilt mozilla from the ground up as an internet application platform, releasing the long-awaited v1.0 in June 2002, during the summer between my undergrad and grad school years. a year later AOL axed its netscape browser division and the Mozilla Foundation has since risen out of the ashes as an independent entity.
i told someone on the plane that i was going to a conference for people who really love web browsers.
back in the netscape 4.7 days, the web browsing experience was getting pretty crappy. so i remember playing with internet explorer for a while, considering with some gravity whether it was time to switch browsers. IE 5 rendered webpages better and quicker, but the folders on their links toolbar wouldn’t allow me to arrange the bookmarks in any order other than alphabetical.
and that turned out to be the deal breaker. i sucked it up and stuck with netscape 4.7 until i got wind of the mozilla project (the open source project based on the netscape communicator source code), and begin playing with their browser around version 0.8. not before long, i was a mozilla convert.
how do you make a web browser that pleases everyone without pleasing no one? make it extensible. the only downside is that there are so many extensions available for firefox that it’s hard to know where to start. these are the ones i think are particularly interesting and useful.
