Useful Addons

Avatar von Alex Aulbach

Every Mozilla/Thunderbird-user knows addons.mozilla.org. But good extensions are rare. And only SOME of the addons are useful. And for our daily work we need only good and useful extensions.

In the winter holidays I’ve had time to look at many addons. And found some things, which might be useful for our daily work. Maybe you will have a look at them.

Reasons for writing

As my colleague just said: Not another page with firefox extensions. That’s right, but my aim was to make those extensions searchable. When you surf on addons.mozilla.org, you will not find the listed extensions so fast.

I searched in particular for every currently unknown extensions. You can do this yourself by using this link. This searches for all Firefox extensions from version 3.0 onwards.

Extension List Dumper

The first addon is one of those, which is makes it easy to write articles like this. :) The extension list dumper prints simply all your installed addons in different formats. I used it to generate this list of addons. It’s also very practical to exchange your list of addons with those of your friends or colleagues.

Hint: I mention this, because I searched for some minutes: The button to start this addon is in the addon-window at the bottom!

http://sogame.awardspace.com/

Dictionary Switcher

Simple and it does exactly what the name suggest: It switches the inbuilt dictionary. I have to write in English and German and this addons saves me time.

Hint: This addon is also available for Thunderbird! (You have to install some dictionaries beforehand, of course)

http://design-noir.de/mozilla/dictionary-switcher/

Lazarus: Form Recovery

Have you ever entered a form, and when you submitted, the session has run out? This is one of those tools that can safe your day! It’s also useful for developing, if you have to fill out long forms over and over. Two clicks and your form is completely filled up!

VERY USEFUL!

http://lazarus.interclue.com/

iMacros

I use that extension for repeating tasks. For example when I want to logout in my test application, I have to click three times. With iMacros this saves me much time and possible errors.

Don’t mix this up with the Selenium extension! Selenium is for professional testing of websites, iMarcos is for practical daily work. This may cover also testing.

http://www.iopus.com/imacros/firefox

Fission

Fission combines address bar and progress bar – Safari style. I like to see the progress on top of window and not on bottom and it helps to notice errors in the URL.

Hint: A web-developer should always look at the URL first. :)

http://mozilla.zeniko.ch/fission.html

Interclue

Some will say: This is awful. Others will say: Wow, this is what I needed. In my eyes, Interclue is useful, if you are surfing on sites, which have typical article structures, like „headline“ -> „article“. I use it for example on Golem or tvtv.

Interclue saves you clicks and tabs and it presents the article in a context that is not crowed with sidebars etc. Use this for your daily lecture.

You can turn interclue off site wise and you should do, because it can be annoying on some pages. It needs some time to get used to that. It’s not very useful for developing, it’s just a tool for faster surfing.

http://interclue.com/

Other stuff

Just to present a complete list, besides these I use the following well-known and useful extensions: Adblock Plus, Ctrl-Tab, Firebug, GooglePreview, Html Validator, Live HTTP Headers, Locationbar², NoScript (a must!), Screen grab, Selenium, Speed Dial, Taboo and many other stuff. Just for completeness.

Avatar von Alex Aulbach

Kommentare

4 Antworten zu „Useful Addons“

  1. Avatar von SonicHedgehog
    SonicHedgehog

    As I know, „Lazarus: Form Recovery“ is integrated in Firefox. When I click back and on the site was a form, it automatically remembers the data, that I’ve entered.

    The other add-ons might be useful, I didn’t know many of them, so I will try them out.

    But I definitely cannot understand why you think, that NoScript is a must. I don’t know sites where JS is „bad“ ;)

  2. Avatar von Alex Aulbach
    Alex Aulbach

    Lazarus is different. It remembers the form, _before_ it’s stored.
    There are many web-form, which actively prevents the browser to „click back“. Serenpidity is the best example: If you lost the session (a client called, while you typed) and then relogin and click back, the form is lost. Just one example of many. Automatic fillout of forms is also not very secure.

    NoScript is a must, because it prevents you to be linked to a website you don’t trust. There are so many ways to install a virus or spy or something else just by clicking on a URL. You definitly need a minimum shield to prevent the simplest attacks.
    Or think to the anyoing popups. And finally: There is no reason, why you should allow _anyone_ to execute any code on your computer. You need to trust them _before_ you allow it. If the site doesn’t work without JS (of course not fully functional), _they_ have a problem, not you, because they force you to trust them without knowing, which is obviously wrong.

  3. Avatar von Jon Orton
    Jon Orton

    noscript, addblock plus and flashblock are all really useful (imo). It is an extra line of defense and stops unknown and unwanted things easy access to your computer.

  4. Didn’t know half of them plugs. Will check them out soon.

Schreibe einen Kommentar

Deine E-Mail-Adresse wird nicht veröffentlicht. Erforderliche Felder sind mit * markiert


Für das Handling unseres Newsletters nutzen wir den Dienst HubSpot. Mehr Informationen, insbesondere auch zu Deinem Widerrufsrecht, kannst Du jederzeit unserer Datenschutzerklärung entnehmen.