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Yet More Firefox Extensions
Saturday, May 12th, 2007 06:20 pmDuring the brief period when Firefox wasn't playing nice with my operating system and I had to use Opera or Konqueror, the thing I missed most was my lovely Firefox extensions. Compared to Internet Explorer or the old Mozilla Suite (though not, perhaps, Opera) Firefox is what they call "lightweight" or "streamlined". This is normally presented as a selling point, and there are indeed people out there who complain about programs being "bloatware", even though these same people are often running computers that have 64-bit processors, several gigabytes of RAM and enough space on their hard disks to store MGM's film archives. Personally, I prefer a browser that does everything I need and plenty of things I don't, which is where those wonderful extensions come in. The great thing is that anyone can write a Firefox extension, thanks to XUL, a programming language so simple that anyone who is familiar with HTML, Javascript, C++, Prolog and Fortran can master it in a few months.
After formatting my hard disk and installing a new operating system (which is something I do whenever I'm bored and there's nothing good on TV) my first task was, of course, to reinstall my must-have extensions: Foxmarks, Forecast Fox, Tabmix+, Copy Plain Text, Table Tools, Faster Fox, Down Them All, Web Developer and so forth. Now comes the enjoyable part: cruising for odd extensions. One I installed for no real reason was Chinup, which gives you a Pinyin romanisation and translation of Chinese characters. This would have been very useful when I was studying Chinese (except that the Internet didn't exist then) and is something I have virtually no use for now, given that the only Chinese sentences I can remember are Dao ke dao fei chang dao (The Way that can be spoken of is not the eternal Way) and women duo hen dao duanlian (We all do physical training very early). Still, it's so cool, I just had to have it.
Another extension in that enticing "Miscellaneous" category is President Ahmadinejad Countdown, which tells you how many days are left before the Iranian people have the chance to come to their senses and elect someone who isn't stark raving mad. I didn't bother installing that, but it might appeal to my Iranian friends. Another one with strictly local appeal is tv-guide, which explains painstakingly: "Tv-guide for swedish tv channels. This exstension is mainly targeted for a swedish audience. menu items are in swedish." OK, OK, I get the message. What I would like is a Swedish chef TV guide, where a voice tells me what TV programs I'm missing in a silly Swedish accent: "Hoorry up, Lust is sterteeng in tee meenootes. Um gesh dee bork, bork!"
Remove Links is one that seems to counteract the whole point of the World Wide Web, since it strips all the links out of the page you are viewing. However, it could be useful for students who want to plagiarise their essays off the web. Surprisingly few students realise that words that are in blue and underlined raise suspicions in even the least technologically savvy teacher, and fewer notice that even after you change the font, the link still appears if you hover your mouse over it. Someone should also write an extension that changes the style to ENG 101 (e.g. by randomising the punctuation and adding "Have you ever thought ...?" at the beginning and "Think about it" at the end).
Then, as if there weren't enough text on the Internet already, there are extensions that pop up text for you. Defunk gives you motivational messages to help you through things like "Windows crashing thirty times a day" ("Install Linux now" is the message you need there, folks). Goodbye Cruel World is by someone who was annoyed at the overly optimistic tone of all those "Hello World" programming examples. Finally, there's I Must Not Fear,which pops up the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear. I wonder what kind of job the person who wrote that had. Maybe whatever it was that he was afraid of got him in the end, since this extension is sadly not available for Firefox 2.0.
After formatting my hard disk and installing a new operating system (which is something I do whenever I'm bored and there's nothing good on TV) my first task was, of course, to reinstall my must-have extensions: Foxmarks, Forecast Fox, Tabmix+, Copy Plain Text, Table Tools, Faster Fox, Down Them All, Web Developer and so forth. Now comes the enjoyable part: cruising for odd extensions. One I installed for no real reason was Chinup, which gives you a Pinyin romanisation and translation of Chinese characters. This would have been very useful when I was studying Chinese (except that the Internet didn't exist then) and is something I have virtually no use for now, given that the only Chinese sentences I can remember are Dao ke dao fei chang dao (The Way that can be spoken of is not the eternal Way) and women duo hen dao duanlian (We all do physical training very early). Still, it's so cool, I just had to have it.
Another extension in that enticing "Miscellaneous" category is President Ahmadinejad Countdown, which tells you how many days are left before the Iranian people have the chance to come to their senses and elect someone who isn't stark raving mad. I didn't bother installing that, but it might appeal to my Iranian friends. Another one with strictly local appeal is tv-guide, which explains painstakingly: "Tv-guide for swedish tv channels. This exstension is mainly targeted for a swedish audience. menu items are in swedish." OK, OK, I get the message. What I would like is a Swedish chef TV guide, where a voice tells me what TV programs I'm missing in a silly Swedish accent: "Hoorry up, Lust is sterteeng in tee meenootes. Um gesh dee bork, bork!"
Remove Links is one that seems to counteract the whole point of the World Wide Web, since it strips all the links out of the page you are viewing. However, it could be useful for students who want to plagiarise their essays off the web. Surprisingly few students realise that words that are in blue and underlined raise suspicions in even the least technologically savvy teacher, and fewer notice that even after you change the font, the link still appears if you hover your mouse over it. Someone should also write an extension that changes the style to ENG 101 (e.g. by randomising the punctuation and adding "Have you ever thought ...?" at the beginning and "Think about it" at the end).
Then, as if there weren't enough text on the Internet already, there are extensions that pop up text for you. Defunk gives you motivational messages to help you through things like "Windows crashing thirty times a day" ("Install Linux now" is the message you need there, folks). Goodbye Cruel World is by someone who was annoyed at the overly optimistic tone of all those "Hello World" programming examples. Finally, there's I Must Not Fear,which pops up the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear. I wonder what kind of job the person who wrote that had. Maybe whatever it was that he was afraid of got him in the end, since this extension is sadly not available for Firefox 2.0.
