Talkings of a Tyrant

Cookies are little pieces of information that sites give to your browser for a variety of reasons. They are usually used to track you through the site (find out if a large enough number of people who like pancakes also like berries, etc.) or to keep you logged in. My habits tend to be that of: “I want to stay logged in to Gmail, but I want all the other cookies to go when I quit Firefox.”

If this is what you want, then CookieCuller is the extension for you!

CookieCuller allows you to “Protect” specific cookies. These cookies won’t be deleted unless you do it manually from Firefox’s built-in cookie manager, or unprotect it. Under the extension’s options, you can tell it to delete any unprotected cookies at Firefox’s start up. Strangely, that is the only option, but it still has its own menu. It would probably be simpler to put the option in the main CookieCuller dialogue rather than on its own. Maybe there is a real reason for it. I don’t know…

Keep in mind that Firefox’s built-in cookie manager takes priority over CookieCuller. This means that if you’ve set your cookies to expire at the end of Firefox’s session, then any cookies placed will expire at the end of the session, regardless of whether or not the cookies are protected.

Make sure your options look something like this:

CookieCuller is a great extension for control freaks like me and power users in general. It is easy to learn and easy to use, though sometimes figuring out what exactly a cookie does is confusing. However, that isn’t really the extension’s fault, as cookies are generally confusing. If you would like more information about your browser cookies, I would suggest “Are Cookies Dangerous?” by Dave Child.

Download CookieCuller
CookieCuller website
Get Firefox 1.5

Greasemonkey is one of the top Mozilla Firefox extensions for the web. It is the ultimate in customization.

Greasemonkey allows users to customize websites (yes, other people’s websites) to your likings. Don’t like the ads? Get rid of them. Hate the colors? Change them. Redirects wasting your time? Remove them. Simply install a userscript and Greasemonkey gets to work.

However, it isn’t quite that simple. If you’re not a skill javascript programmer (which I’m not), you and I have to rely on other people’s userscripts. Luckily, there is a large directory of user scripts over at, guess what, http://www.userscripts.org/.

Let’s take one example

If you use Gmail (Google Mail for UK users) and you don’t have a mail client on your computer (such as Thunderbird), then you probably get annoyed every time you see a mailto: link that opens up crappy Microsoft Outlook/doesn’t do anything.

However, there is a userscript that will automatically rewrite mailto: links into Gmail links.

First, go to Mailto Compose In GMail’s Userscript.org site.

Then you need to click in the box at the upper right, and click “Install this Script”.

The link should bring you to the direct code. Greasemonkey 0.6.4 is kind enough to pop up with a nice bar at the top instructing to simply click “Install”.

Then you go to any site with a mailto: link. One of my favorite sites is Lifehacker, so we’ll go there.

In the sidebar there should be this contact information.

Where before, “Email” under Gina Trapani’s name led you to “mailto:tips@lifehacker.com”, now with the magic of Greasemonkey, the URL is “https://mail.google.com/mail?view=cm&tf=0&to=tips@lifehacker.com” Now your browser is truly set for the web!

Analysis

This is but one example of what Greasemonkey can do. It is a very powerful extension, and can give the right users almost complete control over what they view in their browser.

Greasemonkey is one of the ultimate extensions when it comes to customizability power. Seeing as I’m a control freak when it comes to web surfing, this is an excellent extension!

Download Greasemonkey
Greasemonkey Website
Dive Into Greasemonkey, a guide for beginning Greasemonkey programmers.
Download Firefox 1.5

SearchPluginHacks is a Firefox extension by the same extension developer as previously reviewed FoxyTunes. As such, the quality of this extension is about as good as FoxyTunes (and that’s a good thing).

SearchPluginHacks is, by far, the simplest extension I’ve reviewed, but it is still very useful. It takes much of the hassle of Firefox’s search box out of the picture.

What SearchPluginHacks does is allow you to delete one of your search engines from inside the browser itself. That’s it. No other features, no flashy lights, nothing except simplicity. It is only 4 kilobytes too!

While this extension comes with about no documentation, it doesn’t really need any. All you do is right-click on the search engine you don’t want, then delete it. That is it.

While Mozilla is trying to (and succeeding at) minimizing what features get installed with Firefox (for good reasons), this feature really should be part of Firefox by default. For most users (anyone who doesn’t want to take a trip to their profile folder), this extension is extremely useful.

Download SearchPluginHacks
Closest thing to an Official Website
Get Firefox 1.5

All-In-One Gestures is a powerful and flexible extension for Firefox. It enables mouse gestures, rocker navigation, and some other features.

For me, the most important feature of this extension is mouse gesturing. Mouse gestures are pretty self-explanatory. You right-click, and drag in a pattern of directions and you get a result. Seems pretty boring, when I put it like that.

However, mouse gestures are so much more than that. Mouse gestures are highly customizable. There are over 80 different actions you can do with mouse gestures, and you can easily set the mouse gesture you want to each action. You don’t have to, though. Only about 35 of the actions are set to a gesture for me, and I use an even smaller number of gestures than that.

Another useful feature is rocker navigation. This is where you press the right mouse button, then the left mouse button to go back, and vice-versa to go forward. Simple, easy to remember, and quick.

There are several other features in All-In-One Gestures, but I don’t really use them. I don’t like autoscroll, so nearly all of them are pointless. They would be useful if you liked autoscoll though, so don’t let me hold you back.

However, there is one more feature I like. That is grab-and-drag.

I’ve previously reviewed Grab and Drag, but it has some bugs. For some reason (I can’t find out why) it doesn’t work on certain sites (like mine). It isn’t a extension incompatibility (I’m pretty sure) because disabling all but the Grab and Drag extension doesn’t help, and the bug is still there on a new profile.

So I’m discontinuing my recommendation of the Grab and Drag extension, and instead recommending that you enable a similar feature in All-In-One Gestures.

Update: Grab and Drag 0.9.6 fixed this bug. I hereby recontinue my recommendation.

To do so, go to: Extensions > All-In-One-Gestures > Options (or, if you took my advice to get All-In-One Sidebar, then Extension panel > AIOG > Options).

Go to these options, which are found near the bottom right of AIOG’s main options page. Set it up like so.

Under the “Advanced Prefs #2″ Tab, click the “Grab and Drag Acrobat Reader Mode” option (do what you want with the rest).

Now you’ve just set up the functionality of the Grab and Drag extension, without the bugs! However, instead of left-clicking, like Grab and Drag does, you have to use middle clicking. Just thought you should know.

Analysis

All-In-One gestures has many features, but the main one is mouse gestures. Technically, there is an extension called “Mouse Gestures” that is primarily mouse gestures, but it actually is a bigger installation. Why not choose All-In-One Gestures, and get more functionality for less bloat?

As All-In-One Gestures’ main feature, mouse gestures make navigating the web much easier and faster. I’ve almost completely gotten rid of Firefox’s interface. I don’t need any of the buttons anymore, as I can do them easier and quicker through simply gesturing. All I have left is a Compact Menu, a Location Bar and a search bar. I’ve also got the All-In-One Sidebar, and a status bar, but those are still useful. And I probably will never leave my precious tab bar.

The implementation of Acrobat Reader-style grab and drag is much better than the Grab and Drag extension. It is comparatively bug-free (so far). It is also slightly more useful having the feature use the middle mouse button rather than the left mouse button, as it frees up the left mouse button.

There are many, many features in All-In-One Gestures, and it would be infeasible to discuss all of them in one post. The features discussed here are the most important and useful, but there is no reason to discredit or ignore the others.

All-In-One Gestures is one of those unique extensions that I would recommend specifically to both minimalists and power users. While it has a slight learning curve (there is little documentation on what the mouse gesture actions can do), it is easy to become dependent on it after a few days of use. After you learn the basic commands (close tab, open tab, back, forward, reload, etc.), you can effectively get rid of much of the navigation bar.

However, it doesn’t matter who you are, All-In-One Gestures is a very useful extension that will streamline your browsing experience.

Download All-In-One Gestures
All-In-One Gestures official site
Get Firefox!

Finally, after just over a year, Mozilla Firefox has fully made the transition from 1.0 to 1.5.

Firefox 1.0

Firefox 1.0 was released on November 9, 2004. In the year since, it has been met with broad acclaim, and many awards. There is now a cult following/fan base around the browser (which I’m proud to be a part of). It is almost certainly the most successful open-source software in the world.

Firefox 1.0 is an excellent browser. It’s purpose is to be small, lean, and incredibly extensible, and it meets those goals well. It is a small download, it is quick, and it supports themes and extensions.

Themes and extensions add functionality to Firefox in any number of ways. Much of this blog has been focused on reviewing the extensions I like best. You can either see the reviews from the links on the top left, or from the “extension” category. With extensions, themes, and Firefox’s inherent open-source status, a user has, effectively, complete control over how they view the web.

I think the idea of being in complete control of how I customize my browsing experience is what drew me into Firefox. Being able to choose what I wanted, and what I didn’t want; to block both advertisements and arbitrary toolbar installations; that was fascinatingly entertaining and interesting. Firefox actually made it… well… fun to surf the web.

Before Firefox, there were two main browsers I knew about: Internet Explorer, a horribly bloated and rigid software which I’ve always hated, and Netscape, which was a bloated, but slightly customizable, software which I could stand. I had no clue that Firefox, Mozilla, or Opera existed until after I got into the Firefox craze. (how ironic)

Since discovering Firefox, and thus losing my fear of navigating unknown parts of the web, I’ve learned much about Internet technologies and upcoming memes. Firefox essentially opened up the Internet to me.

As well as an excellent browser, Mozilla Firefox was also a battle of business models. Ever since Linux created the concept of open-source, there has been a war of business practices between open-source zealots and Microsoft. Mozilla Firefox also was to show that open-source could be mainstream. Honestly, I believe that Mozilla proved that open-source did, in fact, have a very good chance against multi-billion dollar corporations with pretty much endless money (*cough* Microsoft).

Several times in Firefox 1.0’s lifespan security flaws were found and publicized. Unfortunately, the mainstream media (curse them!) jumped on this fact to go “Ha! Firefox isn’t that much better!” Like much of what mainstream media does these days, however, those stories omitted crucial facts.

Often they reported on bugs that were already fixed. They overhyped the unfortunate fact that Firefox has had more security flaws revealed in that year than did most other browsers. What the didn’t often tell people, though (bless those that did), was the incredible speed and efficiency that the Firefox team fixed those security bugs.

Mozilla’s ability to fix and and release a fix for security holes within a few weeks (sometimes in a few days) was possibly the biggest triumph against Microsoft. Currently Internet Explorer has incredibly severe security holes that have been public for a few years. Some of those holes, Microsoft has said that they’re never going to fix.

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 set the stage for the next-generation browser battle.

Mozilla Firefox 1.5

The unfortunate frequency of the security holes (which caused them to go through 8 releases of Firefox) also put in the spotlight Firefox’s need for a decent updating system. The new updating system is the highlight of Firefox 1.5

Firefox 1.5 was originally 1.1 However, many more features got added in this release than previously intended, and they decided to rename it to 1.5

Firefox 1.5 comes with several new features. Mostly it is behind-the-sciences tweaking and modifying, but there are a few features that will stand out to users of Firefox 1.0:

1. The updating system has been streamlined. In Firefox 1.0, you had to download the whole 4.7 megabyte package to update versions. Now it comes in the form of patches.
2. Much better caching. Caching is better organized and going backwards and forwards is lightning fast.
3. A “Clear Private Data” feature. This allows you to delete a whole bunch of stuff like history, cache, cookies, etc. quickly and easily.
4. Bunches of other stuff. There is more support for several more web standards (notably Scalable Vector Graphics, or SVG). There are some general, all-around usability tweaks, like useful error pages and a revamped Options Menu. And a whole bunch of other stuff.

Along with Firefox 1.5’s release, Mozilla brought online Mozilla.com, which is the new site for Firefox and Thunderbird. Also, Addons.Mozilla.org got a new theme and is revamped to be much easier to navigate.

From the Ashes…

From the ashes of the previous browser battle between Internet Explorer, the next browser battle between IE, Firefox, and Opera is created.

This is a highly exciting time for technology geeks. Firefox 1.5 is released, web 2.0 is kicking off, and being geek is starting to become mainstream (emphasis on “starting”). The next-generation of everything is showing up. From the next generation of gaming consoles, to a new way in which media is done, everything is changing.

We are moving away from the “survival of the fittest” model to a “competition between collaboration.” Companies are no longer the only competitors. Everyday people are starting to find new and better ways to call upon the general public and use collaboration to create stuff that is far better, more sophisticated, and easier to use than anything a corporation can create. Firefox is only the first example. Firefox threw open the doors.

This is a highly exciting time for Firefox fans. Our beloved browser has grown a year older. It is better, quicker, faster, more user-friendly, and more ready to fight Internet Explorer. Firefox 1.0 drew concern from Microsoft. Firefox 1.5 is going to be Internet Explorer’s biggest threat.

Download Firefox 1.5!