Firefox extensions

[gilana]

OK, a few more of my favorites:

Firefox extensions:

Sessionsaver - Restores all browser-windows + tabs after shutdown or a crash (install)

GooglePreview - inserts preview images (thumbnails) of web sites and Amazon products into the Google and Yahoo search results pages. (install)

Greasemonkey extensions:

Mailto compose in Gmail - makes mailto: links start a new Gmail message (install)

LJ New Comments - Shows which LJ entries have new comments since you've last read. (install

Comments

[tcb.livejournal.com]

Sessionsaver - Restores all browser-windows + tabs after shutdown or a crash

oh, I so just installed that one. that's one thing I missed about opera..

[cos]

yes! that's the one thing I miss in Safari, that I loved about Opera on Windows. Unfortunately both Opera and Firefox on OS X are too buggy to use, and there's no way to do this in Safari that I know of :(

[gilana]

Buggy how? I'm using Firefox on OS X and not having any problems.

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

My big problem is that Safari Bookmarks Extractor doesn't work with the latest OS, so there's no way for me to export my bookmarks into any other browser. And I just don't feel like copying them all by hand. Seriously, that's the only thing keeping me from switching to Firefox.

[gilana]

Hmmm. Did a quick google -- try this.

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

Wow, that was easy.

Once upon a time, *I* was a customized third-party extension queen. I guess I've lost the knack.

Curse you for giving me another toy to play with when I have papers to write!

(When I click on a link with the mouse wheel button in Safari, it opens in a tab, which is extremely convenient. It's not doing that in Firefox. Any advice?)

[(Anonymous)]

Never mind, I fixed the mouse wheel thing. Now I'm confounded by the fact that it seems you can only close a tab when you're in it.

As I said CURSE you.

Er, thank you.

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

Uhh... that was me. Apparently I'm not signed in to LJ on Firefox.

Sorry for the spam!!!

[gilana]

You can right-click on a tab to close it. Or you can get extensions that will put a close button on each tab.

And I'm sorry, or you're welcome! :)

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

Turns out I didn't need an extension -- just as middle-clicking on a link opens a tab, middle-clicking a tab (whether it's active or not) closes it. How simple and easy! Yay!

buggy firefox

[cos]

1.5 is reasonably stable, which is a big improvement, but it still has some serious leaks. If I leave it running for a week, it can get very unweildy and sluggish and I need to quit it. I'm used to leaving browsers running for a long time.

It's got user interface problems. The biggest one is that I can't consistently scroll web pages up and down with the arrow keys. Once I click inside a page, arrow keys just move a cursor in it. PgUp and PgDn also mostly don't work. This lack of comfortable keyboard scolling alone is a big enough problem to make Firefox effectively not usable for me. But there are lots of smaller usability problems, like having to use a click-drag-unclick to close a tab, instead of a simple click. Very annoying. And data entry into web forms is getting better, but is still poorly designed. For example, if I'm typing text in one field, and I click the mouse on another text field, I want a cursor active in that other field right away. Firefox takes it as a generic click outside current field, and merely ends data entry on the current field without switching to the one I clicked on.

Then there's a host of little bugs. For example:
- When I first start Firefox, it often doesn't fully work - most menus are missing, and the URL bar doesn't accept keyboard input - until I switch to some other app or to Finder and then back to Firefox.
- Sometimes when I look at a pulldown menu, either from Firefox's bookmarks or from a web form, after I close the menu, the space it occupied on the screen goes blank (white), and stays that way even if I load a new page, move the Firefox window, or close Firefox entirely. I need to re-open the same menu and re-close it 1, 2, or 3 more times, until it properly replaces the blank area with what was supposed to be there.

[macthud]

Saft. It's not freeware, but I consider it essential for Safari. It does *far* more than session saving, but that's the largest reason I got it.

There's at least one other comparable Safari add-on, also not freeware, but they're mutually exclusive, so I don't have it, and I don't recall its name at the moment...

Saft

[cos]

Thank you! This is wonderful!

It doesn't have real session-saving like Opera did. That part is just a little hack that remembers the URLs you had open, and automatically re-opens them all. I suppose it's probably really hard to have real session-saving in an extension, if it's not built in to the browser. Still, this is a lot better than nothing at all! And some of the other features are really nice too.

P.S.

[cos]

why is this entry friendslocked? *puzzled*

Re: P.S.

[gilana]

What, you don't consider what extensions you use private information? (OK, I didn't mean it to be. Fixed.)

[breadd.livejournal.com]

Flashblock and Adblock. Essential. Absolutely essential, and the
main reason I keep using FireFox instead of Camino or Safari or
Omniweb.

Omni's got the session-saving and, actually, lets you keep set of
sessions. But no flashblock. My kingdom for a 2x4 with which to
beat folks who build flash-only websites and/or put flash with *sound*
on sites.

I'm getting SessionSaver now.

Oh, and Ask.com searches have the little previews built-in. Mouse over
the little binoculars.