Ask Slashdot: Most Useful Browser Extensions? 353
An anonymous reader writes: One of the most powerful features of modern browsers is the ability to install third-party extensions. They allow third-party developers to work on really useful niche functionality, and let users customize their browser with the tools they need. Unfortunately, this environment has the same discover-ability and security problems as standalone software. Thus, my question: what are your most useful (and safe) browser extensions? I can't live without some privacy basics like NoScript, AdBlock, and Ghostery. I also find FoxyProxy helpful for getting around geolocation requirements for media streaming. OneTab works pretty well for saving groups of browser tabs, and Pushbullet keeps getting better at managing my phone while I'm at my PC.
Browser Makers Should Get The Message (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of these addons have millions of downloads. Perhaps browser makers need to get the message and include popular functionality that people want.
Re:Browser Makers Should Get The Message (Score:5, Insightful)
Well think aboout it, why would Google want to have adblock enabled by default, when most of there revenue comes from ads.
Similar with mozilla where a lot of there revenue comes from google (or I guess yahoo now)
Microsoft with bing.
Re:Browser Makers Should Get The Message (Score:5, Informative)
As well, why not have a neutral platform you can build on to your needs instead of introducing bloat that only some people will like/use.
Firefox:
- AdBlock Plus + Element Hiding Helper
- Chatzilla (IRC Chat)
- FireFTP
- SnapLinks Plus (right click multi-link select/copy/open)
- Firebug
- HTTPS Everywhere
- Quickdrag (drag drop links into white space to open in new tab, drag drop images to download them)
- SQLite Manager (manually browse and fix Mozilla's privacy blunders)
- TableTools2 (manage table data when site options don't offer it)
- YouTube HD (forces specific sizes when possible)
- Live HTTP Headers (see what's really being sent)
Exactly! (Score:5, Insightful)
First, having a platform onto which developers can build plugins that users can choose from and enable as needed is far superior to being stuck with the single half-baked implementation that is built in to the browser.
Second, building features directly into browsers eliminates any chance of security-through-obscurity that comes with an ecosystem of security and ad blocking plugins. Two examples: popup blockers (everything is done in javascript now), and the do not track header (arguably, useless even before major browsers implemented it, but even more useless now...)
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I would add a couple of add-ons to the list above:
* Disconnect, and Disconnect Search, respectively, block 3rd-party requests and do an
Re:Browser Makers Should Get The Message (Score:4, Informative)
Add:
FlashControl (To disable automatic running of applets is a must with the constant 0-day exploits and the widespread use of tracking applets.)
Vanilla Cookie Manager (automatic clean up after gorging on cookies.)
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I'll add:
NoScript (stops most of the baddies, just turn on what you need, when you need it)
Ghostery (clean up what AdBlock Plus and NoScript miss)
FireSSH (because FTP's inherently insecure)
Leet Key (great for transforming all sorts of text)
gTranslate (in-context automatic language translation!)
Tree Style Tab (if you use lots of tabs)
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Definitely going to check out some of those, thanks!
web designers (Score:2, Informative)
It's not the browsers fault, it's the web designers. when I have my add-ons on full privacy mode, I cannot use any of my financial sites. Web designers are under the impression that input checking always has to be done on the client side.
And Yahoo!'s web pages are so crappy they don't even render correctly when I have all my add-ons running.
Google does it right - their pages don't require all the bells and whistles to be turned on in order to view the page.
But anyway, non of these add-ons would be required
Re:web designers (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not the web designers' fault! I'm a small time self employed web designer. When it comes to designing a website, we don't do what we want! We don't even do what the customer needs. We end up doing what he asks. Most of the time what they ask for sucks, and that's what they/you get.
Re:web designers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:web designers (Score:5, Informative)
So you're saying that the customer demands cross-site scripting hell, where to look at a simple article I have to have fifteen different sites' javascript enabled, including probably half a dozen ad/tracking sites that have nothing to do with reading text on a screen?
Yes.
Re:web designers (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, that's exactly what they're saying. Was there something you weren't clear about?
Do you think developers just sit around all day looking for tracking scripts to start installing on client's sites?
Since the advent of saving markup in the DB, clients have become empowered on what code runs on their site. They google something, find a script snippet that they don't understand, copy and paste it into their CMS' "additional header scripts" field and save. They don't understand the concept of optimizing image files, let alone be concerned with the number HTTP requests on each load.
Re:web designers (Score:5, Funny)
Obligatory Oatmeal: How a Web Design Goes Straight To Hell [theoatmeal.com].
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
With all third-party resources blocked, that is an almost empty page. If you allow access only to s3.amazonaws.com, you get all the content you'd expect on that page. The page still wants to load from 8 more domains though. I find that amusingly self-referential, but I sincerely doubt it is intentional.
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You're making a flimsy assumption that there is valuable content on the web.
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Browser: Google Chrome
Extension: Tabs to the front!
What it does: Brings newly created tabs to the foreground.
When opening a link in a new tab on my phone and having to take the extra time to then change to it enrages me. Why would anyone long press a link and choose "Open in new tab" and not want to view that tab right away? Why does Chrome toss it in the back?
Re:Browser Makers Should Get The Message (Score:5, Insightful)
I almost always want the new tab to open in the back. I'm usually opening shit that I want to read after I finish whatever I'm currently reading.
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Having a setting for that would be nice, but I much prefer my new tabs to pop to the back. I will usually scan through a page and open the set of links I want to read, then read them after the page I'm on, or switch and dive into one, but a lot of times it is just to build the queue. On my phone, I open them just so I can read them on a real screen later, since I can see my tabs and history from all devices.
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I've you'd used Firefox, you would have a little checkbox that allowed you to choose between the two options sans plugins.
Re:Browser Makers Should Get The Message (Score:5, Insightful)
Having them as addons is the browser makers getting the message. Some people want what an addon does, some people don't. Providing capability for addons to deliver functionality is giving people exactly what they want, and not burdening them with stuff they don't want.
Or would you rather have your browsers provided as bloatware full of functionality you don't want and can't get rid of?
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Hola (Score:5, Interesting)
Hola internet is the most useful plugin. It helps me watch video's from the US, Canada and the UK that are limited to their respective countries. I wonder, I have BBC on my TV, I can rightfully watch any BBC program, but I can't use the service on the bbc web site to watch it a day later. With Hola, I can.
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Same here. I'd check is their website has the download but my job blocks all sites related to proxies.
Adblock (Score:5, Insightful)
Adblock is the 2nd thing I install on a fresh install (right after Chrome)
I had the misfortune of having to use a computer that did not have it installed. The internet pretty much seemed unusable.
Re:Adblock (Score:5, Insightful)
I had the same experience. I actually tried to give no ad blocker a chance but so many of the websites I tried to go to would not load in a reasonable amount of time. At first I just stopped following links, but eventually a case came up where really wanted to know what was said on the other side... so installed the ad blocker. It is very strange behavior to make your page unreadable due to advertisements.
Re:Adblock (Score:5, Informative)
Adblock, Flashblock, uBlock, Ghostery all pick up slightly different items to block which combined do a pretty good job of breaking things like Facebook (whitelisted) and news sites with embedded non-youtube videos. I just don't watch embedded videos anymore, the article is typically better anyways.
Now that Youtube is HTML5 by default for 99.99% of their videos you can safely enable flashblock for 100% of all sites, the only one I have whitelisted anymore is Pandora because they're stuck in 2007.
Re:Adblock (Score:5, Informative)
Adblock and Ghostery work on an opt-out basis, which is semi-adequate for ads and totally inadequate for tracking. Request Policy is my #1 mandatory extension.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Request Policy is my #1 mandatory extension.
For those who are unfamiliar with it, Request Policy works a lot like NoScript... it lists the domains that the page is trying to load *any* content from (not just scripts), and you whitelist which cross-domain loads you want to allow. On slashdot, for instance, I'm allowing requests to fsdn.com, but disallowing them to gstatic.com and scorecardreasearch.com.
I use it myself, but I can't recommend it. Too much of the web breaks. Credit card payments that bounce to a payment processor's website are especia
Re:Adblock (Score:4, Informative)
Adblock and uBlock use the same rules and subscriptions. They pick up exactly the same stuff, you don't need both. Ghostery is worth having, or Privacy Badger. Flashblock seems kind of redundant, since you can just enable click-to-play on plug-ins.
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That's interesting you say they pick up the same stuff, I have both running and Adblock picks up 2 items on this slashdot comment page, while uBlock picks up 3. I made sure I'm blocking everything on both with no whitelisted items.
I am using the Adblock chrome extension from getadblock.com, there are several extensions marketed as "Adblock", maybe we are using different extensions.
Re:Adblock (Score:5, Informative)
uBlock and AdBlock do indeed block the same stuff, but if you're going to pick one, go with uBlock, since it's significantly more efficient [github.com].
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Of course, I run with NoScript and RequestPolicy, so I wouldn't have been seeing much Flash content anyway.
Re:Adblock (Score:4, Funny)
Breaking Facebook is a feature, not a bug, right?
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I'd go a little farther and suggest that AdBlock Edge is the most useful plugin. I highly recommend it.
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When you hear "The Internet" in 2015, do you seriously still think of telnet, gopher, and ftp?
Because almost no one else does.
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When you hear "The Internet" in 2015, do you seriously still think of telnet, gopher, and ftp?
Telnet? Occasionally used to play nethack, or as a replacement for netcat missing on Windows machines
Gopher? Not really.
FTP? Erm, yes? Although I don't like the fact, it is still very relevant.
Because almost no one else does.
Since you decided to hand-pick examples which suit your argument, let me do the same.
When you hear "The Internet" in 2015, do you seriously still think of email, XMPP, bittorrent?
Because almost noone else does.(*)
(*) Oh, wait.
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I use telnet and SFTP, FTPS [not ftp] all the time, but when you say internet I think of a jerk facebooking and playing games on his smart phone constantly, while having a conversation, in the line at the grocery store, while driving, while on the pot... and I think we really screwed that up.
addons (Score:2)
Clearly AdBlock (Score:5, Insightful)
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Google seems to get it just about right. The only complaint I have with Google is that they will whore out just about any AD, regardless of utility.
Do a search for MalwareBytes and take a look at the the ADs. Useful?
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If ads were served through the same channels as the rest of the page, and from the same sources, with the same basic level of trustworthiness, I'd be inclined to be at least slightly conflicted about the poor starving site operator; but that's not how it works anymore. Even relatively 'respectable' ad networks are an architectural nightmare; practically designed to make malicious injection easy. The less respectable ones are no better and don't even bot
My lists (Score:5, Interesting)
FireFox:
noscript
ghostery
noredirect
firebug
flash video downloader
Chrome:
scriptno
ghostery
Re:My lists (Score:4, Interesting)
A couple more for Firefox:
BetterPrivacy - Deals with "super cookies"
HTTPS-Everywhere - Transparently turns HTTP requests into HTTPS requests for sites that support it
TableTools2 - Sort, filter, copy, etc. table data, even if the web site doesn't support it
Vimperator - Not for everybody, but if you use vi as your editor this adds a lot of keyboard goodness to your browsing experience.
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A good list. For Firefox I'd add:
Ant Video Downloader
Cookies Manager+
Flashblock
Web Of Trust
Zoom Page
On Windows 7 where gadgets are broken, I also like Weather Forecast.
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Web of Trust (Score:4, Interesting)
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I came in to recommend WOT as well. I install it on all of my clients computers and it really helps cut down on those malicious links because it puts a big red circle beside untrustworthy links.
FYI - Chrome's Task Manager (Score:3)
.
Remove Google tracking (Score:3)
Adblock is also a plugin I use almost always, but I had to disable it on some ecommerce sites, since it causes the merchant goods to disappear!
Not sure if this is an "extension" (Score:2)
Flash.
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Closely followed by Java.
I mean, seriously -- how *else* are you supposed to transfer control of your browser to a nefarious third party?
Implicit assumption (Score:2)
There is a huge assumption implicit in this question - the browser that you use.
Not all of those plugins are available for all browsers. And any recommended plugin really needs to identify the ecosystem that it works in.
Chrome Apps/Extensions (Score:2)
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big +1 to enhanced steam, adds so many useful features and allows you to remove the cruft
Its a shame steam shafted the dev, they invited him to come talk with them about features, enhancements, etc, and then basically jacked all his ideas and implemented his features 2 years after he did it and refused to offer him a job even when he was struggling to make ends meet
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Chrome Remote Desktop - Access your desktop from another device. Punches through firewalls and routers automatically.
Unfortunately, it does that by making Google a 3rd party(I think that they even handle the authentication) in every connection you make between two of your own computers. They aren't privy to the actual content of the interaction, to the best of my knowledge; but that still creeps me the hell out.
It's unfortunate, really. An architecturally-modern successor to VNC(ie. same platform-agnostic low level approach; but taking advantage of the fact that most devices can, often with dedicated coprocessors, pump
Self-Destructing Cookies (Score:3)
Doesn't cure all the ways they try to track you, but definitely puts a major dent in their efforts:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-... [mozilla.org]
Scrapbook in Firefox (Score:3)
I have over 3,000 webpages and over 2000 links saved and organized in Scrapbook. Scrapbook can recursively safe entire websites. Searching for good information is tedious with search engines. Webpages come and go. Scrapbook lets you build a library, your own personal knowledgeable over years. You can highlight text and save the results, too. All the webpages can be be organized in a tree-like hierarchal manner.
The only issue with it has to do with synchronization and differential backups. It should be rewritten to save Mozilla Archive Format files MAFF's so that synchronization would be quicker from machine to machine.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-... [mozilla.org]
adblock, flashblock, ghostery and noscript (Score:2)
Save As (Score:2)
Tab Tree especially for work (Score:2)
RequestPolicy and NoScript (Score:2)
I use many plugins and my go-to ones are CookieMonster, Ghostery, FlashBlock, NoScript and RefControl. CookieMonster, Ghostery and Flashblock are easy to get used to, but NoScript and RefControl make an interesting pair.
Using these at first is incredibly painful. It is a true education how fragile the construction of some web sites is, with scripts and components coming from all over the place. Because you have to approve every cross site reference, separately to load and to execute scripts, you really g
Extensions? (Score:2)
Not really sure that any extensions that I install are particularly "useful". However, here's a list of tools that I find especially useful that have to do with web browsing.
OK, I snuck an actua
Tab Mix Plus (Score:3, Informative)
I can't understand why "focus last selected tab" isn't default on all browsers. Essentially, I need ctrl-tab to work as well as alt-tab does with applications. I have to have Tab Mix Plus in order to get this as well as other features that let me control how/where tabs pop up.
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Yes, Tab Mix Plus is essential for me. I use it extensively to do things like manage saving and restoring of sessions, change the font and text colour of tabs for instant identification of state, undoing a Close Tab command, closing a tab by double-clicking the tab, and opening a new tab by double clicking the tab bar. When I'm forced to use a browser that doesn't have it I go a little bit crazy and my efficiency drops enormously.
Aside from the usual security and privacy addons, another one I find indispens
No Script, of course. (Score:2)
The only absolutely essential addon for me is NoScript. Everything else is gravy; tasty gravy perhaps, but gravy. HTTPSEverywhere is really high on the gravy list.
Quality (Score:2)
...my question: what are your most useful (and safe) browser extensions?...
The ones that have a level of quality that is on par with the browser. I've found too many extensions that are so buggy that they are useless.
We'd like your feedback... (Score:5, Informative)
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To expand on this is there any plugin which can stop all canvas pop-ups?
It seems we spent years getting to a point where we blocked pop-ups only to now have the damn things re-appear using HTML5.
My list (Score:2)
- Pushbullet for all the reasons given by others here.
- uBlock - ad blocking that is not opted out of by the highest bidder
- Airdroid - okay, technically not an extension/app but still a good app for extending your phone's reach to your desktop.
- Sunrise - nicely done Chrome app that looks and plays just like the mobile version.
- Chrome Remote Desktop - Very handy for making my iMac usable from anywhere and also for doing remote help for mom and dad when they call with computer problems.
Imgur/TinyURL (Score:2)
I love the Imgur Uploader and TinyURL Generator addons. Imgur is my fave pichost, the addon doesn't even make you save the pic to the HDD. A right & left click auto-copies the right code and pastes it...everything's in the pipe 5 x 5, Spunkmeyer.
EHH (Score:2)
I recommend the 'element hiding helper' for adblock plus.
Additionally to the local ads, it allowed me to easily remove sports, games, promotions, donation reminders, religious stuff and other unwanted things from my usual sources.
For Chrome (Score:2)
Mine (Score:3)
Open in Browser: [mozilla.org] Because some sites insist that I should save that PDF to open it.
Session Manager: [mozilla.org] a.k.a. "task freezer". Save and restore any or all of your open windows and tabs along with their histories.
Google [mozilla.org] and TinEye [mozilla.org] Reverse Image search. TinEye's matching engine is more powerful; Google has a much bigger database.
Offline QR code Generator [mozilla.org]: the easiest way to send page/image/link URLs and arbitrary text to my phone: [highlight text if applicable,] right click on page/image/link, "Show QR", aim phone.
Restartless Restart [mozilla.org]: Because it's Firefox and Control-Alt-R is much faster than killing the process.
Context Search X [mozilla.org]: highlight, right click, "Search with", pick any of my engines. Very flexible; allows custom accelerator keys.
Context Highlight [mozilla.org]: highlight multiple words or phrases all over the current page. Not perfect but really useful.
Live HTTP headers [mozilla.org]: Disabled since Fx ships with devtools.
It's All Text! [mozilla.org]: Edit those pesky textareas in your preferred editor. Perfect for HTML boards and wikis.
And obviously Adblock Plus [mozilla.org].
Not shown: custom search engines for Google Images, Wiktionary, Google Translate, Gmail...
Lazarus saves the day, FoxClocks, Netcraft (Score:2)
I work with a lot of web-based tools (bugzilla, Jira, wikis, etc.) that include a lot of writing. Being able to autosave and recover web form input has saved me many hours of effort after the browser crashed, laptop ran out of battery, accidentally closing a tab, etc.
I also work with people all around the world, so Fox Clocks is very helpful by adding clocks for various cities to the Firefox status bar and/or a mouseover popup.
Haven't seen Netcraft Anti-Phishing bar mentioned yet either. It is helpful to d
Is there an extension that...? (Score:2)
...when you visit a clickbait site such as Cracked.com, blocks all the "you may also be interested in" stuff so that you just see what you came to see and don't get distracted into visiting millions of other "10 signs you are a serial procrastinator, number 5 will turn your underwear into a war-zone" links?
So far, after Googling, I have only been able to find "Anti-Upworthy" which de-sensationalises the language of clickbait headlines, but ideally, I'd like to block the display of "you may also be intereste
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You might want to have a look at deslide.clusterfake.net.
It's not a browser extension, but there's a bookmarklet.
If your particular clickbait slideshow/listicle site happens to be supported, it'll reformat the clickbait into a single page and discard everything but the actual content.
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One of my recent pet peeves are the "similar article" links that 1) actually go to other sites, 2) don't seem to be tied to the article I'm reading, and 3) straddle the NSFW line. Specifically, I might be at work looking at an article about some technology-related issue and one of the "similar articles" at the end suddenly has a thumbnail image that I wouldn't want my boss to see if he suddenly appeared behind me. Nothing X-rated, mind you, but nothing I'd purposefully look at at work. I'd love to just b
pentadactyl (Score:2)
adblock* (Score:2)
adblock or adblock plus (for now) or adblock edge.
an extension to neuter Chrome auto-updates? (Score:2)
Is there an extension to prevent Chrome from automatically updating extensions?
(I'm tired of finding something I was depending upon no longer working because I got an "update")
uBlock (Score:3)
uBlock is great because it's a good ad blocker with minimal overhead. it works on firefox and chrome.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBl... [github.com]
LastPass and RetroGmail (Score:2)
retro removes the nasty compose window
aardvark / hack the web (Score:2)
These allow you to edit a web page. Remove the ads, the fluff, anything you don't like. Or simply select the text that interests you and poke CMD-i to isolate it. Print, copy the text, or make a PDF if you want to keep it. Aardvark is legacy, may not work on your newer Firefox. Hack seems to work well.
Give me less. (Score:4, Insightful)
By far the most useful extensions are the ones that reduce my "browsing experience"
Things which prevent things from being pushed at me (NoScript, AdBlock)
Things which allow me watch videos at my pace and choice of quality instead of "streaming". (youtube downloader)
And in general things which reduce the number of features I'm forced to contend with.
Nuke Anything (Score:2)
Cloud to Butt (Score:3)
Here's a few (Score:3)
Here's what I use at present. I consider all of the highly useful.
Status-4-evar because no desktop browser should be without a status bar
Tab Mix Plus for its excellent session handling and handling of unread tabs.
Tree Style Tab for its correct placement of tabs on widescreen monitors (on the left, not at the top) and its absolutely wonderful hierarchical tree of tabs.
One of the many YouTube video downloaders
Flashblock for obvious reasons
Adblock, for when ads get to invasive.
Disable CTRL-Q Shortcut because 'q' is too close to 'w' on my keyboard.
Firefox is important, partly because of add-ons. (Score:4, Informative)
Mozilla Foundation has exhibited a combination of excellent and poor management, in my opinion.
Add-ons are very useful. One of the most important aspects of Firefox is the huge number of Add-ons available. Here are some I've found necessary:
Adblock Edge, ads were yesterday! Attacks sometimes pose as ads. Stop tracking. Advertisers of run annoying ads.
BetterPrivacy, "Super-Cookie Safeguard", eliminate sneaky tracking.
Classic Theme Restorer, required because of Mozilla Foundation's bad management of GUIs.
Close tabs to the left, title says it all. What? Why is that necessary? Why does Firefox have only "Close tabs to the right"?
Cookies Manager+, needed because of poor management of Slashdot by the parent company, Dice Holdings.
FEBE, backup your Firefox data. Restores only to the same profile. Use MozBackup to restore to a different profile, such as when you move to the Pale Moon 64-bit version of Firefox to get away from Mozilla Foundation bad management.
Ghostery, protect your privacy.
iMacros for Firefox, help jump through log-on hoops.
Mozilla Archive Format, save everything you see displayed on a web page.
NoScript, protect against attacks, stop tracking.
Nuke Anything, Enhanced, remove areas of a web page.
Restart-less Restart, Firefox frequently crashes when there are many windows and tabs, because of the memory-hogging bug that Mozilla Foundation hasn't fixed in 9 years.
Session Manager, when Firefox crashes, go back to the Windows and tabs you had before the crash.
Session Manager Export Tool, export windows and tabs of a Firefox session to HTML.
Snap Links Plus, opens multiple links inside a selected area.
SQLite Manager, manage any SQLite database.
Tab Mix Plus, fix Firefox's insufficient GUI design.
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[...] and I know people who swear by Tree Style Tabs
Reporting in.
Re:My favorites (Score:4, Funny)
Blue! No! Yelloooooooooooooooooooooooow!
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Extensions to the browser? This used to be called "programs you install on your computer". Weird.
I'm pretty sure that 'extensions' 'plugins' and the like have been recognized as distinct from full 'programs'(even if, in practice, the line is architecturally somewhat blurry, depending on how elegant the extension mechanism provided by the main program is).
I know that I was using Winamp plugins well before I had a remotely reliable internet connection, and most sufficiently sprawling programs tend to spawn a plugin or extension mechanism sooner or later. In fact, some are barely more than a default se