Since some time, the video downloadhelper addon of Firefox did not work well for me. Now I’ve found the Epic Browser.
Firebug is a Firefox addon which is essential for all people creating web pages in one or another way. It helps you so much in debugging and creating HTML and CSS.
Just try it.
I have a problem. I’m a junkie. A news junkie.
Which means I can spent hours reading news pages and their user comments.
It is totally annoying. Especially, because in real terms, there are about only three different types of user comments. And if you have read one example of each type, reading any of those 9487 other comments is a pure waste of time.
Not enough, I also read the same news on different news sites. And again the same user comments. I hate it.
Now I’ve stumbled across LeechBlock. It is a plugin for Firefox with which you can block sites to your liking.
Installing it is done in seconds, and my first block set was set up in a minute or so. I’ve only read the blocking examples to set up my block set.
Now I’m self-restricted to 20 minutes of news sites per day.
Leechblock already saved me more time than I needed to install it and set it up. And I’ve installed it just today.
It is truly relieving.
The only problem is, it does not block as long as I only click on further user comments. Probably it cannot intercept JavaScript or so. I hope this will be fixed in a further version.
Until then, I’ve added the LeechBlock timer to my toolbar, so that I can see how much time I’ve left for news. I hope this timer will help me to discipline myself.
My dear friend Sabrina called and complained about a lot of popup windows and stuff when surfing the web. These are my recommendations for some essential plugins and settings in Firefox. Especially for you, Sabrina.
April 16th 2018, Update: I can no longer recommend using Firefox as they have kicked millions of users and thousands of add-on developers in the a** by disabling many important APIs in FF, which makes it impossible for the add-on developers to adapt. Many of the add-ons recommended below do not work anymore with FF Quantum. I am using Waterfox now. It is a FF fork which wants to keep the old APIs – and all my recommended add-ons work.
An adblocker the essential add-on. I couldn’t use the web without one. It stops most of all those annoying blinking ads which try to distract you from your work in intrusive and flashy ways.
May 5th 2017, Update: I can no longer recommend Adblock Plus, as it lately often lead to complete hangs of Firefox. I do use now uBlock Origin.
To install, select the given link and there click Add to Firefox. Follow further instructions there.
The second add-on which is a couldn’t live without it is Flashblock. It replaces all the Flash stuff that tries to capture your attention in disturbing ways with a nice and silent f icon
. If you really want to see the video or hear the music behind the f, just click the f.
To install it, click here and there Add to Firefox. Follow further instructions there.
First check out this site. Are there a lot of smilies winking, blinking, smiling, jumping around and even vomiting? So that you would get crazy if you looked at it for more than ten seconds? Yes? These are animated gifs. Not that I dislike them. No. I hate them.
Thank god, they’ve built something into Firefox to switch them off. It may seem a bit complicated for everyday users, but it is worth it.
about:config into the address bar of firefox.
image.animation_mode into the search bar at the top so that the list will be reduced to one entry. The page then will look like this:
normal in the line. In the upcoming dialog, type in none and press ok. Close the about:config tab.13 Nov 2017 Update Some time ago, those FF developers thought it would be a good idea to turn on a spell checker by default. It is not. You can turn it off via Preferences/Advanced/Check my spelling as I type.
Did I miss an essential add-on or setting? What are your favourites? I’d love to read about your opinions in the comments.