Absolutely Essential Firefox Extensions
posted by Tyrantmizar at 11:14 pm EST on November 5, 2005I’ve been using Mozilla Firefox for a little more than a year. If you don’t know, Mozilla Firefox specializes in its ability to support extensions. Extensions are little programs that enhance Firefox. As one may expect, after a year of trying many of the hundreds of extensions, I’ve found a few that I couldn’t live without.
3. - Fasterfox
Fasterfox is an extension that tweaks the rendering engine of Firefox to make Firefox faster. While this may not seem essential, the speed difference is highly noticeable.
It uses a relatively new technology called pipelining. Normally, your browser will send a request to the server (the computer you connect to) and the server will send back whatever you requested. Usually this comes in the form of individual data, such as the general code of the document or an image.
With pipelining, however, Firefox sends several requests at once and the server sends several things back at once.
It is experimental, and if you ask for too many requests at once, the server will think you’re trying to overload it and cut you off. Fasterfox has a setting, “Optimized” that will conform to the standards of the maximum requests at once. It is very easy to set it higher or lower if you wish.
2. - Adblock
Adblock does exactly what its name implies: block advertisements. You could go around the web yourself, blocking every ad you come across, but it is much easier to get the popular filterset.g as save yourself the trouble.
Once you use it past 3 pages, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it. The annoying ads you used to see? You know, the ones that danced around and flashed bright colors to try to get your attention? Gone! Forever!
1. - PasswordMaker
PasswordMaker is the extension that I, almost literally, couldn’t surf the web without. I’m not saying that because I’m a moderator of their forums or because I’m very active in the PasswordMaker community, I’m saying that because it is just that awesome.
Forget everything you know about passwords. Forget using the same password on every site because it is easier. Forget having some kind of password manager (such as RoboForm) to keep track of every single password for every single site. That will all change when you use PasswordMaker.
To know how PasswordMaker works, you have to know about encryption. You remember when you were kids, how you would make up secret codes to tell your friends secrets? (maybe you didn’t. I don’t know) You wouldn’t use 1 for A, 2 for B, 3 for C, etc. That would be too easy to figure out. Instead, you created your own system.
Once you created your system of coding, you would take some text, and translate it to your new code. And the end result would look completely different from the original.
That is, in a very simple view, what PasswordMaker does. It takes your “Master Password,” something you’re supposed to keep secret, and makes a new password that looks completely different that the original.
However, that isn’t all. Far from it. What you end up with depends on what site you’re using (it uses the URL to create your new password), what hash algorithm you’re using (more on this later), whether you’re using a username or a counter (both of these alter the text), what characters you use (you might not want the letter “W” to be in the end result because it will remind you of George W. Bush), how long it is (some sites want a big password, others want a short, dinky one), and much more.
A hash algorithm is a very complex set of math functions that takes your text and completely changes it. With all of the hash algorithms that PasswordMaker supports, there is virtually no way that someone could figure out what your “Master Password” is from the end result.
But, by far, the best thing about PasswordMaker is that it does all of these things and never saves the new password anywhere. There is no way that someone could hack your computer and find the passwords that PasswordMaker made in some text document somewhere. It creates the passwords on the spot, and enters them into the web page in a broad variety of ways (pick and choose).
PasswordMaker is virtually unsurpassed by way of features and functions concerning passwords. If you’ve gotten sick of using the same password for every site (a major security risk), then give PasswordMaker a try.
Seriously! get Firefox, then download PasswordMaker, Adblock, and Fasterfox. You’ll never be able to turn back to Internet Explorer again.
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Diggler is on of my favorites.
Comment by cyber_rigger — November 6, 2005 @ 1:35 am
Greetings from LeonSprings, Texas USofA,
The link to Wikipedia for “hash algorithm” ref sentence, “A hash algorithm is a very complex set of math functions that takes your text and completely changes it.” Has no data at this time, nor anythingy is shown in the ‘delete log’ for Wikipedia.
The write up is very nice.
One point I would like to add, understanding algoithms is not a requirement, may help, as I am not that smart, algorithms are over my head. Just a simple user and I have learnt to use PasswordMaker because of the Forum they have and the great people there to assist and they do a very fine job.
LkonKbd
Comment by LkonKbd/'d' — November 7, 2005 @ 2:00 am
cyber_rigger, I’ve not tried out Diggler. I may, but I probably won’t add it to this list (unless it is really good).
Howdy, LkonKbd! (thanks for pointing out that link problem. Fixed now)
I understand what you’re saying, but I kinda disagree. I don’t really want to ‘dumb down’ PasswordMaker to the point where I’m not really being clear on what exactly PasswordMaker does. I don’t really like to insult people’s intelligence on the web. In a strange twist, I feel more at ease insulting someone to their face than on the web.
Also, much of the purpose of this blog is to help me to learn how to explain things better. You’ve seen me on the PasswordMaker Forums. I suck at explaining things. In all of my feature requests and bug reports, I show things by example. I’m (working on) avoiding that on this blog.
That is why I attempted to explain Hash Algorithms. It is a tricky and complex subject, and I’m rather proud of how far to “layman’s terms” I managed to put it.
Comment by Tyrantmizar — November 7, 2005 @ 7:05 pm
As someone who can’t understand why the computer world can’t play by the rules and we need all of this online “security stuff”, your explanation of PassworkMaker makes sense to me. Thanks too for the explanation of hash algorithms, (I thought I fell asleep in math class a few too many times). Now, can someone explain “wikis”?
Comment by cbee — November 11, 2005 @ 12:04 pm
One Password to Rule Them All
Managing all of your passwords to Internet sites can be a difficult enterprise.
If you use the same password on every web site, you run the risk of somebody trying to access your accounts on other web sites.
If you use different passwords on eve…
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