A new day, a new Firefox

Firefox 4 was released to much fanfare the other day, and I decided to give it a shot. Since I only use the Portable versions of Firefox (more on that later), it's an easy enough thing to give new versions a try and if I don't like them I can wait until they get better. So, I hit the Portable Apps site and sure enough there was the release version of FF4.

On first launch, performance seemed to be noticeably faster than 3.6.13, the previous version I was using. Opening Gmail was near-instantaneous and other sites just popped into view as soon as I finished typing the URL. It only took a few minutes before I decided this was worth checking out further, so on to the next most important step: are my extensions available?

One of the main reasons I use Firefox is the customization through extensions. If the extension author hasn't updated it, that usually restricts if I'm going to move to a new version of the browser or not. This isn't true of all of them, but I do have a suite of "core" extensions I require at all times:

The "Musts"

Adblock Plus

I'm an American. I want everything, and I want it for free, dammit! :) I get it, sites use ads to generate revenue. Some generate a lot of revenue from them, but those sites typically have so many ads on them their content is almost unusable. Adblock Plus does a great job of preventing any ads getting through to my eyeballs. I believe it also helps a bit with security, as it blocks those popups that people click on that install malware...

CommentBlocker

A recent addition. The Internet has often been described as a morass of lies and misinformation. Personally, I think that's a bit overboard. It's not the whole Internet, it's just the comments on most sites. The comments sections of science sites are overrun by anti-science right-wingers hell bent on setting fire to the planet. Those on IT sites are full of ignoramuses who delight in their ignorance of "off" and "on". I always TRIED to not get pulled in to the comment madness that exists at the bottom of every article. But like looking through some kind of Lovecraftian portal, just glimpsing them sucks any sanity right out of my head.

CommentBlocker is your defense against the babbling of the Old One's minions. It literally eliminates the comments section from practically every site I've been on since I started using it. The Internet is a quieter, saner place because of this fantastic extension. If there's a site where you want to see comments, though, it allows you to whitelist them (you can also temporarily whitelist a site while you're looking at it by hitting a button in the address bar). Interestingly, if you run a Wordpress site, it'll actually block the comments administration pages on the back end, something that left me scratching my head for a few minutes when I first encountered it.

FF Rocker

A lifetime ago, I was a fierce Internet Explorer user. In fact, it wasn't until deep into the Firefox 2.x life cycle that I finally switched away (because of the extensions). I didn't use IE by default, though. I used a "skin" called AvantBrowser that added many useful features to my then-beloved browser. Most notably was tabs. Opera Browser was the first to fully implement them, but I found their initial offering clunky and annoying. Avant's implementation seemed to work a lot smoother and wasn't a huge deviation from my current browsing habits.

But, one of the features Avant had that still influences my choice of browser to this day: rocker gestures. In fact, I would say that if I couldn't add this feature to a browser, it would be a showstopper above all others. Once you use it, and get used to it, you just can't live without it. This feature allow you to do away with the Forward and Back buttons. Normally, if you want to go back, you have to move the mouse up to the top of the screen and hit the back button. A minor gesture, yes, but they add up. With rocker gestures, if you want to go back, hold down the right-button on your mouse and hit the left one. If you want to move forward, hold down the left button and hit the right. The mouse is the primary browsing interface and being able to navigate without extra effort just makes things easier.

Trust me, I know how silly it sounds, but if you've got FF, install FF Rocker and try it. After a month, see if you can use a browser without it. :)

The "Shoulds"

Those are the big three. Without them, there's no point in my moving to a new version or browser. They're so ingrained into my browsing habits that without them the web is an annoying, slow to navigate, flashy place with no purpose. This next set represents those that I COULD live without, but would prefer not to. They make browsing more pleasant and safer.

Greasemonkey

The techie's favorite extension. Greasemonkey exists on the premise that regardless of how a web jockey wants to present information to you, how it's ultimately viewed should be up to you. Using small scripts, a trove of which can be found at Userscripts, Greasemonkey will modify how a particular page will act or display in your browser. For example, a lot of people hate the new layout used by Gawker sites like Lifehacker and io9. There exist Greasemonkey scripts that will modify how those sites look to conform more to what is the norm on the web. Nothing changes at Gawker's end, they still think you're seeing their site as they intended. Everything happens at your end.

Beyond visual tweaks, Greasemonkey scripts can add new features or make some sites more usable. For example, there are scripts that can automate the playing of games on Facebook or allow you to download videos from Youtube. One of my faves blocks Flash animations on sites from auto-starting until I tell them to. Another converts any URLs found on a page that haven't been made links by the site's author into clickable links. No cutting and pasting these anomalies. If you like everything "just so", Greasemonkey might be one for you.

IE Tab 2

My workplace pretty much supports IE only. Our internal intranet is fairly biased toward that browser, and no amount of fiddling will get some of them to work at all in Firefox. I could launch IE every time I need to go into one, but I usually have a browser open, so why bother? IE Tab embeds an IE instance in a Firefox tab when you need it. You can setup rules so that any time you go to a particular site or domain, it'll automatically load that page in an IE tab rather than a Firefox one. It's a great little hack to work around those who don't grok the web is supposed to be cross-platform.

Note: there are a number of variations of IE Tab in the extension database. I've found IE Tab 2 to be the only one that consistently works well. Others I've found will lock up the browser on certain sites, others just won't load at all.

HTTPS-Everywhere

A recent addition, and one that will probably move up to the "Musts" category eventually, this extension is from the Electronic Freedom Foundation. There are a number of sites, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, etc, that contain a large portion of our personal information, yet all of that information is sent back and forth from site to browser over the Internet in clear text. Anyone can intercept your communications and snoop on what you're doing. Some sites have started forcing encrypted communications in recent years (like Gmail), but others have not. A recent exploit, Firesheep, would allow a hacker to sit in his local Starbucks and capture the logins of the other patrons quickly and easily.

Ironically, most of these sites already have the ability to encrypt all communications, but it's not turned on by default. What HTTPS-Everywhere does is force the browser to only use encrypted communications with the sites it knows supports it. The hope is that all sites will someday encrypt every bit of communication. Until that time, this extension will protect you on quite a number of sites.

LastPass

Another recent addtion. I have to confess, that even as an IT pro I'm terrible when it comes to password management. I have a suite of 5 or 6 different passwords I use for different things, and then end up using them everywhere. I've tried this tool and that software, but nothing was ubiquitous, cross-platform and seamless enough for me.

LastPass is a univeral password manager. It integrates into your browser, and on Firefox even replaces the built-in password management system. There are apps for every portable and desktop platform, or you can simply go to the website if you need to get a password when away from your own equipment.

After reading so many articles about LastPass on Lifehacker, I finally decided to weigh the odds...after all, in order to use LastPass, you have to hand over all of your usernames and passwords to someone else to secure for you. That's a huge risk! But, I weighed that against the infinitely less secure method of failing to maintain good password management myself and decided it's the lesser of two evils.

So far, I've been very happy with the service and how it works. It even has a password generator, so when I sign up for a new service I generate a completely new password for it. LastPass stores it and I never know what it is. Easy-peasy!

The next category I'm going to cover are some minor additions I like to have, but also the significant tweaks I make to the appearance and configuration of Firefox itself to meet my needs. But, I'm sure you're as tired reading this as I am writing it. :) Hopefully I'll be better about the follow-up than I have been with others!