What is your Favorite Firefox Extension

I hardly ever use Adblock (although I've installed it on the recommendation of several of my friends). For me, ads on websites are ignorable. Sure, I get a little annoyed at popups, but they're intrusive, and Firefox usually blocks them anyway.

Put it this way. When you drive down the highway, do you deface the billboard ads you see? Do you rip ads out of newspapers and magazines? Do you turn your TV off when an ad comes on? If not, then why are internet ads any different?

It's less effort to ignore an ad than it is to block it. Usually I only block the ones that come with sound.

Frog, anyone?
 
arthwollipot said:

Put it this way. When you drive down the highway, do you deface the billboard ads you see? Do you rip ads out of newspapers and magazines? Do you turn your TV off when an ad comes on? If not, then why are internet ads any different?
Click to expand...

Let me extend that somewhat:
You're driving from London to Glasgow. Every time you change lanes you have to drive a hundred yards over a road surface covered with seemingly random moving colours and text.

If my car windscreen was an LCD, with a heads-up-display of speed, time, etc, and I could get a free plugin for your car computer which removed ads from my view of the world, I'd do it.

Silly comparison.

Do I prefer watching movies on a TV channel with or without adverts? Let's see, in order of preference: BBC (no ads), ITV (ads approx every 15 minutes, some news), Satellite (ads approx every 8 minutes), US TV (ads approx every 17 seconds).

Do I rip ads out of newspapers? Well... the medium is completely different, isn't it? That's one point of this:
The medium is different, people want a service with no ads, and it's possible to remove them with little or no hassle.

With adblock, for instance, once I've given it a good ruleset (or borrowed someone else's) I don't have to worry about 99% of the web. My girlfriend's PC has an 800x600 monitor, and she uses Yahoo! mail and MSN. Using IE, she has to scroll to see if she has new mail, past the adverts. Using firefox with adblock, she doesn't.

It's a no-brainer. Really :)
 
Speaking of no-brainers.

Hello World?

What are these extensions of which you enlightened ones speak and where does one seek 'em?

Next- I tried the link Donks gave and reset my network settings. I now find JREF is slower than before. It doesn't seem to have affected anything else, so I'll assume it's JREF at fault and leave it for a while.
 
Soapy Sam said:
What are these extensions of which you enlightened ones speak and where does one seek 'em?
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I'm just an end user, and I don't know the nuts and bolts of how they work. I view them as "widgets and gadgets" that add particular features to Firefox.

Where to get them? Try http://extensionroom.mozdev.org
 
Here goes:

Sage
Web developer
Bookmarks synchronizer
Adblock
Forecastfox
ShowIP
Disable targets for downloads
ReloadEvery
Single window
Tab clicking options
LGet
 
arthwollipot said:
It's less effort to ignore an ad than it is to block it. Usually I only block the ones that come with sound.
Click to expand...

You're not using adblock effectively. Once you block an adserver you don't see ads from that adserver ever again.

each adserver serves thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of different web pages.

Well, well worth the effort.

The problem is that adblock plugins are catching on and so the market will adapt and the adservers will catch on as well and change their stratagy to make it harder for the user to get a fix on source of the ad. I'm already seeing this (ads that are served by URL's composed completely of random charactors).
 
Rob Lister said:
Donks,

Thanks. I just did the fix and I'll let you know in a few days if it is faster or not. It does appear faster but the server load could be less.

Heath,

Thanks. I'll look into that. I'll let you know if it fixes the problem.
Click to expand...

Donks. Your fix appears to have greatly increased the speed of firefox (which was already faster than IE) and mostly fixed the problem I have with JREF. I think the rest of the problem is on their side but I'm still not sure.

Heath. No joy.
 
Rob Lister said:
The problem is that adblock plugins are catching on and so the market will adapt and the adservers will catch on as well and change their stratagy to make it harder for the user to get a fix on source of the ad. I'm already seeing this (ads that are served by URL's composed completely of random charactors).
Click to expand...

Aggressive bottom-feeders aren't that much of a hassle to block, actually, if you have a decent firewall and are willing to get your hands a little dirty.

Open a console window. Type "ping blahblah.com" and note the IP address.

If you're using ZoneAlarm, add that IP to the "Forbidden Zone" (I think ZA calls it), or better yet, add the entire IP's range (if the IP is 1.2.3.4, a good range to block is 1.2.3.0 - 1.2.3.255). Other firewalls (good ones, anyway) are likely to offer you the capability of blocking specific external networks by range.

If a site is buying up a large number of random-character domains, they're likely to have a whole C-class so you can't conveniently block them with a single IP. The firewall will simply block their whole network. The browser will simply note the ad is inaccessible and work around it. Problem solved.
 
Rob Lister said:
Donks. Your fix appears to have greatly increased the speed of firefox (which was already faster than IE) and mostly fixed the problem I have with JREF. I think the rest of the problem is on their side but I'm still not sure.
Click to expand...
Glad to hear. Worked for you, didn't work so well for Soapy Sam. Oh well, 1 for 2.
 
Some of these extensions sound interesting. But as a new user of Firefox, what are the dangers of installing something malicious? Granted it's probably far less than anything with IE.
 
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