More Extensions for Mozilla
Reporters who cover technology joke that the easiest way to provoke reader reaction is to describe Macs as underpowered and overpriced, or virus writers as hackers. Do either and your inbox is guaranteed to get flooded with e-mail.
We can now add another response-rouser to that list: Write a story about Mozilla and Firefox extensions and fail to mention a few of the add-ons that people evidently find essential to their life and pursuit of happiness on the Web.
Reader response to the previous story ranged from polite messages pointing out an extension that we really should test to snarky notes suggesting that Wired News was deliberately ignoring some extensions in order to keep our advertisers happy.
Of all the extensions -- little programs that you can add to Mozilla or Firefox to customize or add features to the browsers -- that we didn't mention in the original story, the No. 1 "must have," according to Wired News readers, is AdBlock, which allows users to filter out unwanted content from websites.
"My absolute favorite (extension) is AdBlock," wrote Alec Berry in an e-mail. "It gives you very fine-grained control of images, iframes, scripts and embedded content (like) Java and Flash. You can use wildcards to block just the parts of pages you don't want. I have been using it for months now, Mozilla and Firefox, Mac and PC. Works great!"
"I find it shocking that you did not mention AdBlock, perhaps the most useful of all the Firefox extensions I have seen," wrote Andrew Bonham.
Shocking indeed. And to those who suspect that AdBlock wasn't included in the story because Wired News' overlords wouldn't allow us to feature an extension that blocked advertising -- the real reason is that we'd recently done a story specifically on ad-blocking extensions and didn't want to repeat the information.
It should be noted, though, that AdBlock, described by its developers as a work in progress when the original ad-blocking story ran, is now an outstanding extension that gives users complete control over advertising when browsing the Web.
Our previous story on ad-blocking tools also mentioned Flashblock, another very popular extension among Wired News readers. Flashblock prevents ads created with Macromedia Flash from loading, and adds a button where the ad would have been. Users can click on the button if they want to see the blocked ad.
Time-saving tools were almost as popular as ad blockers among Wired News readers, with many people recommending tab extensions. Mozilla and Firefox allow users to open new pages in "tabs," so that users can switch back and forth between several pages in just one browser window. To do this on Internet Explorer, users would have to open several instances of IE.
"You missed one very important Firefox plug-in, tab extensions," chided an anonymous e-mailer. "This plug-in ads a Tab link beside Tools, giving you dozens of options to customize Firefox's tab system. You can double-click on a tab to reload a page, undo if you mistakenly closed a page, drag tabs around to rearrange them, and a lot more."
Dragging data around seems to be a favorite activity among Firefox users, or at least those users who read Wired News. Another highly recommended extension is Super Drag&Go.
"Super Drag&Go brings lazy browsing to a whole new level," wrote Ken Cunell. "Grab a link on any page, drag it to a blank spot on that page, and it opens as a separate tab. Works great on plain-text URLs that you sometimes find in non-HTML-formatted e-zines and newsgroups posts too."
Super Drag&Go also allows you to select a bit of text and drag it anywhere on the Web page you're currently browsing to run a search for the selected text in a new tab. You can also drag an image to download it in a new tab.
SOLOEnterprises is your one stop shop for computer consulting in Orange County, web site design and web site hosting.
Remember our motto "We Speak YOUR Language"
Computer Service Orange County
Web Design Orange County
Web Hosting Orange County
We can now add another response-rouser to that list: Write a story about Mozilla and Firefox extensions and fail to mention a few of the add-ons that people evidently find essential to their life and pursuit of happiness on the Web.
Reader response to the previous story ranged from polite messages pointing out an extension that we really should test to snarky notes suggesting that Wired News was deliberately ignoring some extensions in order to keep our advertisers happy.
Of all the extensions -- little programs that you can add to Mozilla or Firefox to customize or add features to the browsers -- that we didn't mention in the original story, the No. 1 "must have," according to Wired News readers, is AdBlock, which allows users to filter out unwanted content from websites.
"My absolute favorite (extension) is AdBlock," wrote Alec Berry in an e-mail. "It gives you very fine-grained control of images, iframes, scripts and embedded content (like) Java and Flash. You can use wildcards to block just the parts of pages you don't want. I have been using it for months now, Mozilla and Firefox, Mac and PC. Works great!"
"I find it shocking that you did not mention AdBlock, perhaps the most useful of all the Firefox extensions I have seen," wrote Andrew Bonham.
Shocking indeed. And to those who suspect that AdBlock wasn't included in the story because Wired News' overlords wouldn't allow us to feature an extension that blocked advertising -- the real reason is that we'd recently done a story specifically on ad-blocking extensions and didn't want to repeat the information.
It should be noted, though, that AdBlock, described by its developers as a work in progress when the original ad-blocking story ran, is now an outstanding extension that gives users complete control over advertising when browsing the Web.
Our previous story on ad-blocking tools also mentioned Flashblock, another very popular extension among Wired News readers. Flashblock prevents ads created with Macromedia Flash from loading, and adds a button where the ad would have been. Users can click on the button if they want to see the blocked ad.
Time-saving tools were almost as popular as ad blockers among Wired News readers, with many people recommending tab extensions. Mozilla and Firefox allow users to open new pages in "tabs," so that users can switch back and forth between several pages in just one browser window. To do this on Internet Explorer, users would have to open several instances of IE.
"You missed one very important Firefox plug-in, tab extensions," chided an anonymous e-mailer. "This plug-in ads a Tab link beside Tools, giving you dozens of options to customize Firefox's tab system. You can double-click on a tab to reload a page, undo if you mistakenly closed a page, drag tabs around to rearrange them, and a lot more."
Dragging data around seems to be a favorite activity among Firefox users, or at least those users who read Wired News. Another highly recommended extension is Super Drag&Go.
"Super Drag&Go brings lazy browsing to a whole new level," wrote Ken Cunell. "Grab a link on any page, drag it to a blank spot on that page, and it opens as a separate tab. Works great on plain-text URLs that you sometimes find in non-HTML-formatted e-zines and newsgroups posts too."
Super Drag&Go also allows you to select a bit of text and drag it anywhere on the Web page you're currently browsing to run a search for the selected text in a new tab. You can also drag an image to download it in a new tab.
SOLOEnterprises is your one stop shop for computer consulting in Orange County, web site design and web site hosting.
Remember our motto "We Speak YOUR Language"
Computer Service Orange County
Web Design Orange County
Web Hosting Orange County
