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On our latest podcast, Tony said he’d give Firefox another try if I posted a list of the extensions I used. Here’s instructions on how to install the goods to get

The Full Firefox Experience

The first thing you have to do (obviously) is get Firefox 1.5.

Download it, install it and fire it up.

Tabbed Browsing

We both know browsing with tabs rocks.

To open a link in a new tab, click the link using the middle mouse button. If you want to create a new tab, hit CTRL+T and the cursor will magically jump to the address text box you can enter the address of the site you want to open in that tab.

Extensions

Here are some extensions you should grab to further enhance your Firefox experience:

• AdBlock lets you block irritating ads. I try to not block everything, but if someone thinks I’m going to tolerate a gigantic blinking flash ad, they have another thing coming.
• IE View adds some items to your right-click menu to help you open links and the current page in Internet Explorer if that site hates Firefox.
• BugMeNot helps you bypass web registration with the right-click context menu. Great for reading news on sites that require you to have an account to view the articles.
• FLST is short for Focus Last Selected Tab. If you’re like me, you’ll open a lot of tabs when you’re reading an article. This extension puts focus on the last tab you were looking at instead of the most recently opened tab on a page so you can get back to whatever page you were reading when you opened that tab. A must-have.
• Customize Google enhances your Google experience.
• SessionSaver magically restores all the tabs you had open when you last closed Firefox. I hate to admit it, but it’s also great for picking up where you left off in the unlikely event of a Firefox meltdown.
• Greasemonkey lets you run custom Javascripts that modify sites on your browser. Very neat stuff.

Greasemonkey Scripts

If you want to try out Greasemonkey, there are some really neat scripts out there. You have to have obviously installed Greasemonkey which is listed in the Extensions List above.

Greasemonkey scripts are usually very specialized. If you go to UserScripts.org you’ll find a whole bunch of scripts that have been collected from all over the internet.

For an example of a Greasemonkey script, open up my Blockbuster Links In IMDb Script. When you click on that link, you’ll see a yellow bar across the top of the screen with an Install button that lets you install that script. Install it, then go to IMDb.

When you get to IMDb, you’ll notice little BB icons next to all the movie titles. Those were added by Greasemonkey. To see what the page looks like without Greasemonkey doing its thing, left-click on the monkey icon in your Firefox status bar (which should gray it out). Now refresh the page and you can see what Greasemonkey and my script did to modify the page.

Pretty neat, huh?

If you don’t use IMDb and/or Blockbuster.com, the script is basically worthless to you, but there are tons of scripts out there that target sites all over the internet. Maybe this one doesn’t float your boat, but head over to UserScripts.org and search for ones that do. Heck, someday maybe you’ll get up the gumption to write your own.

Here are some of the scripts I run:

• Ebay Search Pictures adds pictures in search where no preview picture exists
• eBay Hacks - Show only negative feedback adds two new tabs to eBay feedback profile pages that shows only the negative and neutral comments an eBay member has received and left for others
• GameTab Frame Remove gets rid of the annoying frame on Gametab links
• Book Burro adds a neat toolbar to Amazon.com book listings that lets you comparison shop without leaving the page you’re viewing.

Firefox 1.5 and Greasemonkey 0.6.4 are pretty new and have been radically changed since their last versions. Quite a few scripts haven’t been updated to work with the new stuff yet so they’re broken. Book Burro seems to be one of the scripts affected unfortunately, so until there’s a fix you’ll just have to wait on it.

That’s It!

That’s all the info I have. Hopefully this will turn Tony (and a few others) into happy Firefox people.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 15th, 2005 at 1:00 am and is filed under articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.