Activism | Astrology | Astronomy | Blog | Credit Card Boycott | Firefox Add-Ons | GNU/Linux | How To Guides | Ideas | Languages | Music | Opinions | Pictures | Second Life | Self-Help | Software | Windows

About This Site | Contact Apollia | Disclaimer | Updates

Eryss.Com - Non24.Com

Eryss.Com Forum - Non24.Com Forum

Donations | Services (none available currently)

Request Free/Libre/Open Source Software or Documentation, or Ask Programming Questions (but only if you're very patient)

Or, Donate In Second Life

GitHub

This page contains links to Firefox add-ons I use, a couple Firefox add-ons I modified, and various tips.

You might have the impression that Firefox add-ons are just extra frills you can easily do without - and many are. But NoScript is so extremely useful, since it eliminates so many potential security hazards, that I'm reluctant to browse the web without it (unless I have JavaScript, Flash, Java, etc. all turned off). So, I highly recommend at least getting NoScript.

Addition, Feb. 15, 2018: Someone recently informed me that a lot of old Firefox add-ons don't work anymore since the release of Firefox 57, and suggested that I add this informative link: Firefox Add-On Gone AWOL? Here's The Replacement Dec. 17, 2017 from Digital.com Firefox versions after 45.0.2 refuse to run in my current usual operating system, Lighthouse 64 Puppy Linux 6.02 Beta 2, so I had scarcely noticed this major news about tons of Firefox add-ons no longer working in new versions of Firefox. If I wanted to use a newer version of Firefox, I would have to compile it myself from source code! But I'm not interested in doing that, because I've been increasingly frustrated with Firefox for the past several years because of various needless and annoying changes for the worse, such as slowness compared to other browsers, and even small-seeming but actually extremely annoying problems like newer versions of Firefox wrecking the behavior of the search box. If I recall correctly, that last thing was the final straw for me. So, a few years ago, I finally switched to Pale Moon, an excellent fork of Firefox which I like tremendously more than Firefox itself these days. I even managed to compile Pale Moon 27.4.1 from source code in Lighthouse 64 Puppy Linux 6.02 Beta 2, which was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be! Happily, a lot of old-style Firefox add-ons still work just fine in Pale Moon. And "Pale Moon (as an application) will likely never support WebExtensions", for various reasons which sound quite sensible to me, which you can read at the preceding link. I don't know what other notable Firefox forks such as GNU IceCat and SeaMonkey are going to do, but I hope they won't end up following Firefox's increasingly questionable lead by ditching old-style add-ons and allowing only WebExtensions add-ons.

Note, Sept. 12, 2014: The below page was mostly written in 2011, back when I usually used Firefox 3.6.20 in Windows XP, and Firefox 3.6.13 in the Lucid Puppy 5.2 variety of Puppy Linux*.

Most of this page hasn't been updated since then. However, earlier this month, I finally installed Firefox 32 in addition to Firefox v3.6.13 in Lucid Puppy Linux 5.2.8 version 004, my current usual OS (operating system).

So, I finally updated my modified version of File Title 1.4. The new version is:

It can be installed in Firefox v32, Firefox v3.6.13, and probably other versions.

I welcome requests to build or modify Firefox add-ons, or other software! I can also write documentation, or try to answer technical questions.

I think automatic updates are a deplorable feature when they're on by default. Updates can break things that were working perfectly well before - but even if updates couldn't break anything, it's still very inconsiderate and obnoxious to make someone's computer do something drastic or unexpected without even asking the owner's permission first.

I object to unasked-for automatic updates even if the updates actually improve the software or its security. Just imagine if some obnoxious, presumptuous guest in your home, suddenly and without asking, decided to rearrange and replace your furniture and change the locks on your doors. Maybe, if you're lucky, the new furniture actually is nicer, and the new locks really are more secure. But in any case, I still think it's wrong to just impose that on someone without asking.

In Firefox 32, automatic updates for add-ons (and Firefox itself) are on by default, and I'm not sure there's a built-in way to turn off automatic updates for all add-ons all at once. I found this undated official blog post which says to go to about:config and set extensions.update.enabled to false - but commenters who posted in May 2014 claim those instructions don't work.

So, you might have to turn automatic updates off individually for each add-on you have installed.

To do that: go to the Tools menu, choose Add-ons, click the Extensions item at left, and click the small More link at the end of each add-on's description. Then, in the Automatic Updates section, choose the Off radio box.

Appearance

• NoSquint 2.1.2 - Enables you to set different zoom levels for the entire page (or for text only) on different sites you visit, enables you to change text and background colors, and remembers your settings for each site. (Except your color settings get lost if you try to turn them off temporarily.)

  Home Page: https://urandom.ca/nosquint/

  
  I use this more for the zoom features rather than the text/background color-changing features.

  For the latter, I usually prefer Stylish, since it's more flexible, more effective in universally eliminating abhorrent backgrounds (if you use the right CSS code), quicker to turn on if you have some custom styles already made (or downloaded), and Stylish doesn't lose your settings if you temporarily turn them off.

  
  

• Stylish 1.2.2 - Enables you to extensively customize the appearance of websites, or eliminate minor annoyances, by letting you use whatever custom CSS code you want with any web page or category of web pages (like everything from a certain section of a certain website), online or offline.

  Home Page: http://userstyles.org/   Help Pages: http://userstyles.org/help

  
  The web is blighted with way too many web pages with horrible bright white backgrounds or other excessively bright colors - and thanks to Stylish, I don't have to be annoyed by them.

  
  

  Apollia's Favorite Stylish Style v1.0

  Here's my Stylish style for rescuing my eyes from the annoying brightness of way too many web pages.

  It makes all backgrounds black, removes all background images, and makes all text other than links a shade of yellowish green - #90D500, to be precise.

  Unvisited links are lime green, visited links are grey, links you hover over with your mouse are made sea green, and active links are made purple.

  @namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml); /* Apollia's Favorite Stylish Style v1.0, released 12/15/2011 */ /* The below makes all backgrounds black, removes all background images, and makes all text (other than links) a shade of yellowish green. */ * { background-color: black !important; background-image: none !important; color: #90D500 !important; } /* The below makes links lime green when unvisited, grey when visited, and sea-green when hovered over. */ a { text-decoration: none !important; } a:link { color: limegreen !important; } a:visited { color: grey !important; } a:hover { color: seagreen !important; } a:active { color: purple !important; }

Downloading and Saving

• Use Page Title as Saved File Name, Change Unusual Chars to Dashes, and Add Current Date and Time v1.4 ApMod v3.0 - More details below.

  
  

• Video DownloadHelper - Enables you to easily save YouTube videos, among many other things (which I haven't used it for).

  Home Page: http://www.downloadhelper.net/

  
  Much more convenient than saving videos by scrounging them up from your Firefox cache. When you go to a YouTube video, this add-on makes a couple images appear in the page at the upper left of the video - the Video DownloadHelper logo (which, when clicked, starts a quick download of the video) and, just to the right of that logo, a small, sort of hard to see or click triangle pointing downward, which, when clicked, gives you a menu of options.

  In my experience, this add-on has gotten temporarily broken at least once when something changed on YouTube, and a new version of the add-on had to be released to fix it. So, if you install the add-on and it seems not to work for you, rather than giving up entirely on this add-on, you might want to try a newer version at some point in the future.

Etext Reading

• EPUBReader 1.4.1.0 - Enables you to read ePub files in Firefox.

  Home Page: http://www.epubread.com/en/

  
  Once you get this add-on, a convenient way of opening ePub files is to drag and drop them into your Firefox window (but you can also open them the typical way you'd open any other file - by going to the File menu and choosing Open File).

  You can customize their appearance with the Stylish add-on.

  
  

• CHM Reader 0.23 - Enables you to read Compiled HTML (.chm) files in Firefox.

  Home Page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/chmreader/

  
  With the Stylish add-on, you can even customize the .CHM files' appearance - making this a much nicer way of reading .CHM files than opening them in Microsoft HTML Help in Windows, or going to the trouble of decompiling a CHM file simply so you can add a CSS stylesheet so you don't have to read black text on a horrible white background.

  However, if you want to search a CHM file, you might still have to use Microsoft HTML Help or something, because, at least for me, the search feature in this add-on doesn't work. (It's in the sidebar when you click the Index tab.)

  
  You might be a little confused at first about how to open CHM files with this add-on, since going to the File menu and choosing Open Files or dragging and dropping a CHM file into your web browser won't work as expected. (Doing those things just makes Firefox ask me if I want to save the file, despite the fact that it's already on my hard drive).

  Here are some ways you can open CHM files with this add-on:

  • You can use the File menu item Open CHM Files.

  • You can open the CHM Reader sidebar by going to the View menu, going to the Sidebar menu item and selecting CHM Reader from the sub-menu. (There's a keyboard shortcut, Ctrl-E, but in my Firefox, it opens the Edit CSS feature of the Web Developer plug-in instead, while Ctrl-e highlights the text in my search engine search box.)

    If you don't have a CHM file open already, the sidebar will contain an Open CHM Files button. Otherwise, it will contain a convenient, clickable list of contents for the CHM file you're looking at in the Contents tab. (There's also an Index tab with a search box, but I've never gotten it to work.)

  • You can paste a file path like chm:file://C:\_Library\Book.chm into your address bar. (And yes, in Windows XP, using backslashes (\) in the CHM filepath is required).

  • You can make a Firefox bookmark while browsing a section of a CHM file, and return to it later with that bookmark.

Memory

• Memory Fox - (Note, Feb. 15, 2018: Now missing from the official Firefox add-ons site.)

  Capable not only of controlling Firefox's memory usage, but also the memory usage of all other programs on your computer. (Only for Windows, I believe.)

  Home Page: BrowserMemory.com (Note, Sept. 12, 2014: That site is gone.)

  
  If you don't have much RAM on your computer, you might find this add-on handy. Back in 2011, I found it useful on my 1.8 GHz single-core Windows XP computer with only 512 MB RAM.

  In Windows XP, you can look at the difference in memory usage by opening your Windows Task Manager by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Delete on your keyboard and clicking the Processes tab.

  Once you install Memory Fox in Firefox, it won't start running automatically - you'll need to either go to the Tools menu's new Memory Fox menu item, or click the button that Memory Fox automatically added to your navigation toolbar (a circle containing a black or grey M) to open Memory Fox's menu, which will allow to you configure Memory Fox, activate and deactivate it.

  
  Sometime in late 2011, I ran into an odd glitch while using NoteTab Light at the same time as using Memory Fox to control the memory of all process - but fortunately I found a solution. The glitch was: every minute while I was typing in NoteTab Light, somehow the file path of the document I was typing in got automatically inserted.

  The solution was to go to Memory Fox's menu, open the Blacklist menu item, and put in the full path to NoteTab.exe - "P:\Smithy\NoteTab Light\NoteTab.exe" in my case. (I had to put in the full path because just putting in "NoteTab.exe" made no difference.)

  Other than that, I haven't noticed any obvious problems from using Memory Fox to control all processes' memory. But, given the above, I recommend caution. Maybe it would be best to use Memory Fox to only control Firefox's memory rather than all processes.

Privacy

• Web Developer - Lots of handy tools, most of which aren't privacy-related. For more details, see the Web Development section.

  Home Page: http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/

  
  This add-on's primary purpose is assisting in web development, but, it has some features that might be helpful if you want to protect your privacy.

  I only regularly use one of those features, though - this add-on can block Firefox from providing HTTP referrers to websites you visit.

  In my opinion, that ought to be the default setting in Firefox.

Security

• NoScript - Among other features, blocks JavaScript, Flash, Java, Silverlight and other plug-ins except from sites you allow to run them.

  Home Page: http://noscript.net/

  
  Ever since I learned that JavaScript is way more insecure and potentially dangerous than I originally thought, I've considered this add-on absolutely indispensable. It's why I now use Firefox more frequently than the Opera web browser, even though there are still things about Opera I like more.

  In addition to JavaScript, I don't trust things like Flash, Java, or Silverlight either, so it's nice having those blocked as well until I permit them.

  I also love being able to pick and choose amongst which sites I want to allow to run that stuff, so I'm not stuck with a choice between letting all the JavaScript, etc. on a page run, or none of it.

  And it's nice missing out on a lot of web ads because of usually having JavaScript, Flash, etc. blocked. Not that I really mind ads that much, if they help support websites I like (which is why I don't use any add-ons which are specifically for ad blocking). But, one of my relative's computers got infected by a virus that probably came from an ad - so, I don't mind missing out on ads which could possibly infect my computer with something.

  Another benefit of blocking JavaScript, Flash, Java, etc. is, it seems to make many web pages load faster.

Web Development

• Firebug - Helpful tools to assist you in inspecting web pages' HTML, CSS, and JavaScript source code.

  Home Page: http://getfirebug.com/

  
  I find Firebug kind of complicated, and have scarcely scratched the surface of what it's capable of. I mainly have used it while making custom Stylish styles, just to try to track down the names, class names, or IDs of web page elements.

  I've noticed that Firebug can be rather slow (especially on older computers), and if I recall correctly, it's also slow while I'm using the Lucid Puppy 5.2 variety of Puppy Linux on a Live DVD on my best computer (2.21 GHz with about 1 GB of RAM).

  Though I'm not sure if Firebug slows things down at all while it's not on screen, I prefer to keep the Firebug add-on disabled (not just off-screen) until I really need it to use it. You can disable it or reenable it by going to the Tools menu, choosing Add-ons, clicking Firebug in your list of add-ons, and clicking the Disable or Enable button.

  
  

• Web Developer - Lots of handy tools.

  Home Page: http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/

  
  Another add-on I've scarcely scratched the surface of what it's capable of. It can do a lot of cool, useful things, but I usually just use it for the following three things:

  1. I like the option to stop Firefox from providing HTTP referrers to websites you visit (since I think the fact that web browsers generally, by default, provide HTTP referrers to websites you visit is a privacy violation).

     Referrers can be disabled by right-clicking on a page, going to the Web Developer menu item, going to the Disable menu item, and choosing Disable Referrers.

     
     

  2. Another great feature I can scarcely do without is, being able to view the current source code of the page by right-clicking on a page, going to the Web Developer menu item, going to the View Source submenu, and choosing "View Generated Source".

     (In my opinion, that's the way Firefox's built-in View Source feature ought to work. If I recall correctly, it originally used to work that way, but at some point, maybe in early 2008, Firefox began to uselessly redownload the page, instead of showing you the source code of what's currently actually on your screen.

     That's not as much of a problem with static, unchanging pages (just annoying and a waste of bandwidth, since I'd prefer Firefox to get the source code out of my browser cache rather than redownloading it), but it's terrible while trying to code and debug (for example) PHP scripts.

     That's one reason why I dislike software updates - sometimes updates just ruin things that were working perfectly fine before. But, looking on the bright side, at least that nuisance may have been what inspired me to download the Web Developer add-on in the first place.

     
     

  3. I also sometimes use the View Image Information tool (in the Web Developer menu's Images submenu), which creates a page containing every image on a page (other than background images), along with their width, height, file size, and any text for that image in the ALT attribute of the image's IMG HTML tag.

  I wish I had a way to make keyboard shortcuts to "View Generated Source" and "View Image Information", so I wouldn't have to navigate through as many menus to get to those.

  But at least enabling the Web Developer toolbar (by going to the View menu, going to the Toolbars menu item, and choosing Web Developer Toolbar from the submenu) makes it so I don't have to dig as much to get to those features.

Newest version:

Use Page Title as Saved File Name, Change Unusual Chars to Dashes, and Add Current Date and Time
v1.4 ApMod v3.0 - September 12, 2014

Old version:

Use Page Title As File Name + Change Unusual Chars To Dashes
1.4 ApMod 1.0 - March 20, 2011

These add-ons are modified versions of File Title 1.4. The original File Title 1.4 is by Pavel Cvrcek.

Like the original File Title 1.4, these add-ons make it so when you save a page, the page's title is used as the file name (if possible), similar to the way things work in the Internet Explorer web browser or the Opera web browser.

My versions change any file name characters other than A-Z, a-z, 0-9 and - , _ . ( ) to dashes.

These add-ons will be troublesome for anyone who actually wants other characters than those to be in the file names they save. But if you mostly save things with English titles, it might be useful to you.

The newer version adds the current date/time to the end of the file name in this format:

Though the original File Title 1.4 is quite nice and almost exactly what I need, I made these modified versions because:

• In Linux, the original File Title 1.4 lets me save files with names containing characters that Windows XP (and probably other versions of Windows) can't deal with:

  \ : * ? " < > |

  In Windows XP, it's impossible to do anything with files that contain those characters in their file name.

  
  

• In Linux, I noticed the original File Title 1.4 sometimes creates file names with odd characters like •. Then, when I try to save the file, I get an "Invalid file name" error and can't save until I edit out the character(s) Linux dislikes.

  
  

• Special characters in file names can annoyingly trip up Astroblahhh Desktop, so the fewer files like that I save, the better.

Reasons why I made the newer version:

• Having the current date/time in the file name conveniently and effortlessly guarantees a unique filename.

  
  

• Since many computers I've used have had issues with their file timestamps being wrong for one reason or another (like Windows XP's annoying daylight savings time issues), having the date/time in the file name eliminates ambiguity about whether the file's timestamp is actually correct or not.

  
  

• In Windows XP, I often used to use ShortKeys Lite (which is sadly non-libre software) to insert the date/time in the filename when saving files. Eventually I switched to a libre alternative to ShortKeys Lite - a simple AutoHotkey* script I wrote.

  But, when I switched to Linux, I couldn't use either of those for that anymore. (Even though some AutoHotkey scripts work OK when compiled into .exe files and run with Wine* in Linux.)

  
  

• When I installed Firefox 32, I found my never-released, glitchy version 1.4 ApMod v2.0 add-on refused to install. So, I had to update the add-on to make it possible to install again. Happily, version 1.4 ApMod v3.0 works in not only Firefox 32, but also Firefox 3.6.13, and probably other versions I haven't tried.

Making the add-on installable in Firefox 32 was a simple matter of changing the file install.rdf to have a different maxVersion for Firefox.

It would have worked even if I didn't fix the ancient AM/PM time-related glitch I had tolerated in version 1.4 ApMod v2.0 since September 2012. (The earlier version - v1.4 ApMod v1.0 - wasn't affected by this glitch, since it doesn't add dates/times to file names.)

But, I also finally fixed that glitch, and cleaned up the code a bit to make it better-indented, more readable and understandable.

Because the original File Title 1.4 add-on is under the Mozilla Public License Version 1.1, I have no choice but to release these modified add-ons under the same license.

Like the original add-on, my modified versions are also free, libre, and open source. If you want to look at the source code, just change the file name extension from "xpi" to "zip", and then you can extract the files within using any program that can unzip files.

Both of my modified add-ons each have their own GUID, so that when installed, they won't overwrite each other, nor the original File Title 1.4, if you already have it.

But, since the original and modified add-ons can interfere with each other, you'll have to manually disable the ones you don't want to use by going to the Tools menu, selecting Add-ons, clicking the Extensions tab, highlighting the add-on you want to disable, and clicking the Disable button.

Here are the GUIDs of each add-on, so you can more easily identify them if you ever go digging around in your extensions folder:

How to decompress an .xpi file

.xpi files are simply plain old .zip files renamed to have the extension .xpi. You can open and decompress .xpi files with any software capable of handling .zip files if you rename the .xpi file to end in .zip.

How to make an .xpi file

• To make an .xpi file - create a zip file in whatever software you like to use for that, and rename the file to end in .xpi instead of .zip.

  
  

• Don't zip the exterior folder holding your add-on - zip the files and folders thar are inside that folder. Otherwise, Firefox may get confused and complain that your add-on is "corrupt".

  For Firefox to read the file properly, the install.rdf file, etc. need to be at the root level of the zip file, and zipping the exterior folder containing your add-on would mess that up.

What is a GUID? (Globally Unique IDentifier)

In your Firefox extensions folder - maybe located in /root/.mozilla/firefox/[your Firefox profile name]/extensions if you're using something like Lucid Puppy Linux 5.2.8 version 004 - you might be mystified by the often weirdly-named .xpi files in there. (Or folders, if you're using an old version of Firefox.)

The odd strings of characters like ae945a95-0377-4294-8fb5-cee8a81e6ca5 are GUIDs - "globally unique identifiers".

The GUID is stored in an add-on's install.rdf file. I haven't searched deeply enough to confirm my guess, but, I'm guessing the purpose of Firefox add-on GUIDs is to make it so Firefox can overwrite old versions of an add-on with a new version. I assume that both older and newer versions of an add-on might share the same GUID, making it possible for Firefox to identify which add-on to overwrite.

How to generate a GUID

• The way I always did things was the wrong way, according to this page: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Generating_GUIDs Rather than using a GUID, you're supposed to use a different kind of identifier (explained on that page). But, I'm too lazy to remake my add-on to do things the proper way.

• I used this website: http://www.guidgenerator.com/online-guid-generator.aspx

Making Old, Supposedly Incompatible Add-Ons Work

(There are surely a variety of reasons why an old add-on might not work in Firefox. This little note addresses only one.)

If Firefox claims an old add-on is incompatible with the newest Firefox, it might not be true.

The real problem might be, the add-on's install.rdf file might provide a maxVersion setting which is lower than your current version of Firefox.

You might be able to fix the problem by decompressing the add-on's .xpi file, opening the install.rdf file, going to the <!-- Mozilla Firefox --> section, and changing the value in between the <em:maxVersion></em:maxVersion> tags. Then, remake the .xpi file and try again to install it in Firefox.

Activism | Astrology | Astronomy | Blog | Credit Card Boycott | Firefox Add-Ons | GNU/Linux | How To Guides | Ideas | Languages | Music | Opinions | Pictures | Second Life | Self-Help | Software | Windows

About This Site | Contact Apollia | Disclaimer | Updates

Eryss.Com - Non24.Com

Eryss.Com Forum - Non24.Com Forum

Donations | Services (none available currently)

Request Free/Libre/Open Source Software or Documentation, or Ask Programming Questions (but only if you're very patient)

Or, Donate In Second Life

GitHub