Moving to FireFox, some questions

[VJ]

Hello,

I'm seriously considering the move to FireFox (from Opera), but have some questions. I have installed the tabbed browser plugin and the session saver (so that it starts with the tabs I finished with). However, I still seem to be missing some features of Opera that I'd like to keep. The first is: the ability to move the tabs on the tab-bar (in Opera, you can drag the tab-buttons); the second is overall page scaling.

Any idea if there are plugins to get this functionality?

Any other plugins that might be worth taking a look at?

Thanks!



Jörg

[Nowhere]

You know, before asking such question, I'd make sure that az can't view the thread

[az]

To each his own, Nowhere - you use the browser you like, I use the browser that is better

Honestly: If you're happy with FF: Great! I am very happy with Opera, though, and I like to help people who have problems with it and promote this not-well-enough-known piece of very good software

AZ

[UtwigMU]

For tab get Tab Mix, I've seen it as well as TBE and miniT cause crashes on both of my boxes with some pages that use jscript, it may work for you.

Not as heavy as TBE and allows you to rearrange tabs. miniT will just allow you to rearrange tabs, while FLST will allow to focus on last selected tab instead of left tab when closing active tab.

Other extensions i use:
spiderzilla (for downloading entire sites)
ieview (adds view this link or page in IE to context menu)
bugmenot (adds usernames and passwords for mandatory free subscription sites)
spellbound (adds spellchecking for web forms, you can install aditional languages separately, this is based on Open Office spellchecker - like this post)
FLST (Focus last selected tab)


Potentially useful:
Tab mix - causes Firefox to crash, otherwise I'd use this and not use FLST, I'll probably have to wait untill Firefox 1.1 and new version of extension. TBE (Tab browser extensions) is huge piece of complex code that alters some of browser behaviour and slows it down. For instance I've seen popups that were blocked when this extension was not present.
Adblock - allows for blocking ads - this is good with those annoying pages that have audio adds or huge flash adds overlayed across page. Just click on add, chose block. You have option to also load and hide adds so that websites that you'd like to support don't end up without add revenue. Personally I just stopped visiting too annoying pages.

Firefox itself is stable, but 3d party extensions are not as polished and compatible as I'd like them to be.

For Thunderbird:
spellcheckers (English UK, US, German, Slovenian)
minimize to tray (doesn't work with Matrox desktop management, no matter which app specific settings I disable, works with nV cards)
Thundertray is a separate tiny app that allows minimizing of tbird to tray and works fine with Matrox desktop management

[RichL]

Any other plugins that might be worth taking a look at?

Thanks!
Jörg

IMHO :

Resize Search Box (MUST HAVE to get the inbuilt google/search bar to a decent size)
Image Zoom (Zoom images usign RightClick+Mousewheel, may have to get this from its own homepage)
IEView (Right click option to open pages in IE, handy for those IE Biased pages)
Download Manager Tweak (several handy bits)
Forecast Fox (Weather forcast on the statusbar)
SwitchProxy (swap between proxies from the statusbar)

[Nowhere]

Actually, oh all-knowing-az, I'm under Opera right know tseeee, tseeee

(usually I don't use what I just like; I use what's best given current circumstances; and on this computer Opera is best choice)

[Nowhere]

And to stay a little ontopic...

extensions:
BugMeNot (automates using http://bugmenot.com/)
Flashblock (puts "play" button in place of flash animations)

[VJ]

Wow, I'm amazed how fast this thread grew...
(next time, I'll give all my questions the word 'firefox' in the table )

Thanks for the tips, here's where I am so far:

spiderzilla: couldn't find it... (dunno if I need it, I'm very happy with WinHTTrack)
spellbound: couldn't find it... (but I don't have Open Office installed...?)
bugmenot: not sure if I need it...

I've installed the others that looked interesting.

Is there a way of having more of a multi document interface (i.e. to display 2 tabs next to each other)?


Jörg

[VJ]

To each his own, Nowhere - you use the browser you like, I use the browser that is better

Honestly: If you're happy with FF: Great! I am very happy with Opera, though, and I like to help people who have problems with it and promote this not-well-enough-known piece of very good software

I was using Opera, but am willing to give FireFox a proper try; I don't often use advanced browser features, I just want one that displays things properly (and how I want it), is stable and has a decent download manager.


Jörg

[VJ]

oh, one more thing: what does the 'lock tab' button do ?


Jörg

[isochar]

ListZilla is your friend when using Firefox:
Enabled Extensions: (15)

All-in-One Gestures 0.12.4 - This extension allows you to execute common commands using mouse gestures, rocker navigation, scroll wheel navigation and page scrolling.
Ars Bar 0.1 - Jump to ArsTechnica forums quickly.
DictionarySearch 0.7 - Looks up selected word in an online dictionary
Disable Targets For Downloads 0.8 - Prevents download links opening a blank window.
Download Statusbar 0.9.2 - View downloads in an auto-hide statusbar.
FlashGot 0.5.7.6 - Enables Mozilla and Firefox to handle single and massive ("all" and "selection") downloads using the most popular external download managers for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD (19 currently supported, see Extension's Home Page for details). FlashGot offers also a Build Gallery functionality which helps to synthetize full media galleries in one page, from serial contents originally scattered on several pages, for easy and fast "download all".
Gcache 0.2.1 - Displays a google cached version of the webpage.
Google Images Re-Linker 0.1.2 - Jumps directly to the full-size image on images.google.com.
GooglePreview 0.8 - Inserts web site previews in google and yahoo search results.
ListZilla 0.5.1 - Outputs an alphabetical list of either extensions or themes to a text, vB code, or HTML file.
Permit Cookies 0.2.1 - Use alt+c to set cookie permissions for the site you are viewing
Print It! 0.3.1 - Adds optionally a print and print preview option to the context menu and provides a button for printpreview.
SecurePassword Generator 0.5.1 - Creates a toolbar icon and dialog which helps to create secure passwords.
Sort Bookmarks 0.6.0 - This extension enhances bookmark sorting functionalities.
SpoofStick 1.05 - A simple way to detect spoofed websites.

[VJ]

Also, is there a way of quickly turning the loading of images on/off ?


Jörg

[VJ]

Linkification is also cool...
It allows you to click plain text hyper links



Jörg

[UtwigMU]

If you have HTTtrack, spiderzilla is not neccessary, as it's just a htttrack wrapper.

Spellbound - you don't need Office, you just download dictionaries made for Open Office from mozdev.org or spellbound page.

http://spellbound.sourceforge.net/

You can usually find extensions by typing "extension name firefox" in location bar, eg "spellbound firefox" (I'm feeling lucky google search - this is what I miss in Opera - you can set a keyword for it.)

Also the default theme is somewhat less pleasing esthetically as the old Qute theme that is still default theme for Thunderbird.

I personally use Qute:

https://addons.update.mozilla.org/themes/moreinfo.php?id=7

[VJ]

Not to smash FireFox here, but in Opera you can set a character in front of it (and you can program the meaning of this character: different search engine, ...).

I just checked the extensions from the menu item 'extensions' in FireFox.

Any suggestions for my other questions:
1. multi-document interface (i.e. to put tabs next to one another)
2. turning the loading of images on/off quickly
3. what does the 'lock' tab item do?


Jörg