Besides blazing fast JavaScript benchmarks, privacy mode is the big new feature in modern browsers. The latest version of Firefox includes many privacy enhancements that can keep others from seeing what you've been up to while online. But what if a friend, family member, or boss wants to borrow and/or look at something on your computer? How do you play it cool and hide tabs you don't want them to see?
Developer Diego Ruiz has come up with a solution called HideTab that does just that. You can very quickly hide one or all open tabs with a keyboard shortcut or right-click contextual menu. This means the tabs can't be seen both along the top of your browser, and in the list of open sites. Instead, you can only see what you've hidden in a small, and subtle pop-up menu that sits in the bottom-right-hand corner of your browser. There's also a keyboard shortcut that restores all of the tabs you've hidden.
HideTab lets you hide certain tabs one at a time, or all at once in case someone comes by when you're looking at something you don't want them to see.
(Credit: CNET)One thing to keep in mind is that hidden tabs still continue to run in the background, which means if you're watching a video or listening to music it's going to keep playing. Hopefully a future version will provide the option to mute the audio from any tabs that are hidden.
Beyond privacy, this add-on can be a useful tool for leaning down the number of tabs you want to see. I regularly do tasks in my browser that involve hopping around to a few specific tabs, and sometimes it's nice to hone down to just those few without transferring them to a new window or doing a lot of reorganizing.
HideTab is an experimental extension, which means there may be a few bugs that have not been worked out prior to its review by the Mozilla community.
Related: How to hide your tracks at work
Being safe while you surf the Web is extremely important, yet safe surfing sometimes seems like an oxymoron. For users of the Firefox browser, downloading security extensions can help increase your level of protection from worms, hackers, phishers, and the like.
I should note that even with these extensions installed, you won't be perfectly safe. Visit sites only of trusted sources, and don't download unknown files.
Safer browsing ahead
BetterPrivacy BetterPrivacy protects against long-term tracking cookies that can't be deleted. The extension makes you aware of those objects and deletes them for you. You can then sift through those cookies and selectively decide which you want to delete. It's a simple but effective tool.
BlockSite lets you block sites you don't like.
(Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET)BlockSite BlockSite gives you the option of blocking a Web site that you deem unsafe or unsuitable for the family. The extension even disables all links to the sites you might find in search results. When you access the extension's menu, you need only to add the site's URL to the blacklist. You won't be able to access the site, unless you remove it from that list.
Dr. Web Anti-virus Dr. Web Anti-virus enables you to verify that any file you're downloading, or any page you're browsing, isn't installing malware onto your computer. Once you right click on a link or file path, you'll find the Dr. Web Anti-virus option in the menu. Click it, and the path will be scanned to determine if there is any malware being added to your computer.
FormFox You think you're on a familiar site while filling out an online form, but you're nervous about whether the trusted source will actually receive it. That's where FormFox comes in. The add-on gives you the exact URL destination of information you're submitting to a site. So when you input your name, address, and other information, you can mouse over the Submit button and search boxes to find out exactly to where you're directing the information. You might be surprised to see where your data is going.
Ghostery Ghostery gives you alerts whenever a Web site is "watching" you. When you have the extension on, it constantly analyzes the site to determine if it's running hidden scripts that track your behavior. If it does, it will alert you to it. You can then decide to leave the site or stay.
... Read moreDon Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Right-click, then select Find using... to query any URL.
(Credit: CNET)Like many other Download.com staffers, I use a customized version of Mozilla Firefox. I run the Littlefox theme to maximize real estate, Tab Mix Plus to manage my myriad tabs, and a few other essential add-ons like CustomizeGoogle and Greasemonkey for specific functionality.
The most noticeable tweak in my version of Firefox is the lack of a search-engine box in the upper-right corner of the browser. Back in summer 2007, I explained how and why I killed it. In essence, I replaced the functionality of the Firefox search engines--annoying to manage--with keyword-activated bookmark searches--simple to manage--that I could run from the standard Firefox address bar.
That setup choice gave me a bigger address bar with which I can better view and edit lengthy URLs, and it also allowed me to compile a literal library of hundreds of keyword-based quick search bookmarks. (Helpful hint: The OpenBook extension for Firefox allows you to add a keyword field to the standard "Add Bookmark" dialog window.)
However, address-bar-based searches still require cutting and pasting, which is frustrating when the search term I want to use is right there on a Web page. What I really needed was to highlight a term in the page, right-click, and then search that term in a new tab using whichever Web site or service I choose.
I first tried the Auto Context extension, which is a fantastic add-on that adds a host of new functionality to the Firefox right-click menu. It's also highly configurable, letting you automatically copy any selected text or open new URLs in new windows, new tabs, or background tabs, etc. However, it only allows searching on the Firefox search engines, which as I mentioned above are too much of a pain for me to manage.
Adding and editing URLs are still basic.
(Credit: CNET)Enter Advanced URL Builder. Created by James Cook, this tiny 30K add-on lets you create bookmarks nearly identical to the keyword-based quick searches that I use hundreds of times a day. Unfortunately, the process of setting up Advanced URL Builder is not just as simple as importing your Firefox bookmarks (now that would be a great extension). In order to use Advanced URL Builder, you'll need to re-create all of those searches in the options for the add-on. It's one huge cutting and pasting task, but you'll only have to do it once.
The Advanced URL Builder options interface is very basic. You have the ability to add or edit existing URLs or group them into folders. However, I had a very difficult time organizing URLs by folders. Specifically, creating new folders had a tendency to completely delete the contents of other folders, erasing all my hard work. Frustrating!
After a few thwarted tries at grouping my URLs in directories (which would appear as submenus in the right-click menu), I gave up and created one list. It's not the most elegant implementation, but it still lets me highlight any text and quickly search any URL in my list from the right-click menu.
The miscellaneous options are slim.
(Credit: CBS Interactive)The miscellaneous preferences in the second options dialog window allow you to specify where the new search page should open--new tab, background tab, new window, or current tab in current window--and which placeholder variable you plan to use for search queries. Firefox uses the variable "%s" in keyword searches, and using the same for Advanced URL Builder will make transferring search URLs from your bookmarks much easier. If you don't select a variable, the add-on will simply append your search term to the end of the URL provided.
The Firefox extension that I really want to find would let me select any text, right-click, and then automatically search that text using any of the existing keyword searches already in my bookmarks. I can imagine the difficulties of connecting a subset of Firefox bookmarks (those with keywords) with the right-click context menu, but surely it must be possible? For now, Advanced URL Builder definitely provides the basic one-click searching functionality that I require.
What are your favorite Firefox add-ons for searching the Web, or what shortcuts do you use to minimize effort and maximize results? Tell me about them in the comments.
I use Firefox's on-page search tool all the time. One thing that's always bugged me about it, however, is that it can only remember one word or phrase at a time. If you're working on a research paper, or switching between the same few words every time you use it, I recommend downloading FindList. This new, experimental extension gives your search box its own drop down history list.
With it installed you can have up to 15 of your latest searches saved for later use and quick selection. Every time you do an on-page search it simply saves that word or phrase in its history even after you start searching for something else. Neat.
Firefox's stock search only remembers one search. With FindList installed it saves up to 15 of your most recent searches for using again and again.
(Credit: CNET)It hasn't been updated since February 2005, but the free Firefox Preloader continues to help users who want faster boot times while maintaining a heavy load of tabs and extensions. Weighing in with an installer at 840kb and using around 30MB of RAM, the program gave me dramatically improved start-up times on a fully loaded Firefox 3.0.7.
Light on options, Firefox Preloader does one thing and does it well.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)Somebody running a clean, unencumbered version of Firefox probably wouldn't find Firefox Preloader all that useful, so I tested it against Firefox with 22 extensions and about 40 open tabs. The extensions ranged from the bulky Cooliris to the svelte AutoCopy, while the tabs included everything from text-heavy, easy-to-render message boards to the main Facebook page and YouTube.
How dramatic were the improvements? Without using the Firefox Preloader, it took 32.1 seconds for Firefox to open, and 2 minutes, 34.2 seconds to finish loading all the tabs. With Firefox Preloader running, Firefox opened in 7.8 seconds, with another 1 minute, 36.7 seconds to complete all the tabs. I tested the times by hitting a stopwatch at the same time as I opened Firefox, so my times might be off by a couple tenths of a second, but even with factoring in the imprecision of the test, the results are still impressive.
Firefox Preloader is not otherwise laden with options. You can set it to run when you turn on your computer, and it installs a convenient system tray icon for accessing it on the fly. From there, you can unload the preloader, which clears out the program from the list of active tasks. And you can reload it, which dumps it from the active cache and then reloads it.
The Preloader doesn't play well with certain browser functions, notably when Firefox restarts after installing an extension or theme. It almost certainly adds at least a small amount of time to the computer's boot cycle, since it's one more thing that needs to load before Windows is ready to go. But for users who want to have their cake of extensions and tabs and eat it, too, Firefox Preloader remains a reasonable way to gain back more than a few precious seconds.
Firefox, for all its great functionality and superior performance, has long been a laggard when it comes to managing PDF content on the Web.
Apple's Safari and Microsoft's Internet Explorer browsers both give users the option of reading Portable Document Format content within the browser, while Firefox forces users to navigate to PDFs through its Downloads window. Not very convenient.
Leave it to Firefox's online community, however, to remedy this failing. While there are a range of Firefox plug-ins to help manage PDFs documents, two stand out for me.
The first, Download Statusbar, doesn't actually enable in-browser rendering of PDF documents but gives the user a status bar at the bottom of the browser window that displays the progress of downloads and allows the user to double-click any download to open it in the application of one's choice.
In other words, no more searching for the Downloads window to check on the status of a file download, and no more scouring one's hard drive to remember where the download went. Download Statusbar keeps it all in Firefox. For my PDF documents, I just double-click the status bar to open them in Preview. Easy.
If you use a Mac and you prefer to have PDFs rendered in the browser, you can thank Google for its simple but excellent Quartz PDF viewer, which does one thing really well: opens PDFs as if they were HTML right in the browser. If you want it to do more than that, well, it's an open-source project, so feel free to contribute.
If you use the two together, Google's Quartz PDF viewer overrides Download Statusbar for PDF files. So, if you want to manage PDFs through Download Statusbar, you won't want Quartz PDF viewer. But through add-ons like this, Mozilla and its large and diverse community have you covered.
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As performance reasserts its prominence and features become less of the driving force behind browsers, I find myself looking at the list of inactive extensions in Firefox with jaundiced eyes. It's been months since I've added a new extension, but the ones I still have I use regularly, and several are actually new to me for this year.
Cooliris, formerly known as PicLens, turns photos and videos into moving walls of imagery.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Part of the problem with add-ons is that they're such a personal, subjective thing. What do you need? Why do you need it? One of my favorites is a minor, tiny thing, but it saves me so much time that I have trouble when I use browsers without it. Dragdropupload gives you the ability to drag a file from your desktop into any text field in a Web page. Lightweight but extremely effective, if you e-mail a lot of attachments, this should quickly become a massive time saver.
I use it at work to drag images into form fields that then upload them to the CNET servers. Instead of having to navigate that obnoxious folder tree, I just drag the file and drop it into the appropriate field.
One of the problems with Dragdropupload is that sometimes Firefox updates break it, and it takes me a while to bring it back to life. There are two user-end solutions to solve that conundrum, but both are somewhat risky. Using either Nightly Tester Tools or MR Tech Toolkit, you can use the override compatibility feature to force Firefox to recognize outdated extensions. However, as I've noted before, this greatly increases the chance of having Firefox crash on you.
Nightly Tester Tools can revitalize dead extensions...for a price.
(Credit: CNET Networks)I wouldn't recommend doing this unless you can't find the same feature replicated elsewhere. I used to force compatibility with AutoCopy, another tiny little extension that introduces Linux-style compatibility to Firefox. Since I do a lot of cutting and pasting, AutoCopy and its multiple clipboards and automatic functionality make it a must-have for me. The mileage you can get out of it may vary with use, of course.
I have one frivolous extension installed: Cooliris. For compatible Web sites such as Flickr, YouTube, and Amazon, it introduces a bit of a futuristic vibe to browsing the Web. Your display turns into a full-screen wall of images, smoothly zooming in and out. It makes me wish that we all had Minority Report-style interfaces to work from instead of these comparatively-clunky mice.
Session Manager offers in-depth tools for saving and restoring sessions.
(Credit: Session Manager)The last new-to-me add-on that I still use is Session Manager. Besides resurrecting crashed browsing sessions, it also lets you save current ones and keep them for later. You can configure how the sessions are named, change the default saved-sessions' location, encrypt saved-session data, and configure how post data gets saved, even from encrypted Web sites. Since each session file created by Firefox includes text data, cookies, and history, as well as tabs, being able to recreate all that information effortlessly is incredibly helpful and shouldn't be underestimated.
If you've got an extension that you've discovered in the past year and can't imagine how you got by without it, tell me in the comments below.
Here's a fun extension from the experimental section of Mozilla's Firefox add-ons site. It's called Puzzle, and once installed lets you turn any image from a page you're on into a sectional puzzle with pieces that can be moved around. Upon completion you have the option to ramp up the difficulty, which goes all the way up to a 15x15 grid. It's also able to resize larger images into smaller, laptop-friendly versions.
To toggle it on you simply right click on an image and select which difficulty you want. It then opens up the image (in puzzle form) in a new tab.
I didn't have any luck getting it to work with Firefox 3.1 beta 2, however it worked fine in the current public build of Firefox 3. As with all experimental add-ons, you'll need to be registered with Mozilla to download it.
With Puzzle installed you can take any photo and turn it into a quick game.
(Credit: CNET Networks / Josh Lowensohn)
A new Firefox extension called Pirates of the Amazon lets users download movies, games, TV shows, and MP3s free of charge by cross referencing Amazon's product pages with torrent files from the Pirate Bay.
If the content can be found on the Pirate Bay's search index it shows up as a "Download 4 Free" link on the top of the Amazon product page. This links directly to the hosted .torrent tracker file, letting the user avoid having to make a purchase from Amazon in place of acquiring it illegally via BitTorrent.
The extension developer's site, along with the link to download the software is currently offline. The extension made the front page of Digg a few hours ago, which is likely what took the site out (not legal intervention). I've contacted Amazon to see if the company is making any efforts to block the extension but have not heard back yet. As it stands, the extension still works, albeit without the "Download 4 Free" thumbnail, which is hosted on the developer's servers.
As blog Torrentfreak notes, this is a really bad time for such an extension. Piracy continues to be a huge problem for movies, music albums, and PC games. Amazon's online MP3 store is one of the least expensive places to legally purchase DRM-free music, and this extension manages to make it that much simpler to pirate. It also coincides with a time of year when online retailers are getting an increase in traffic due to holiday sales.
That said, anyone who knows how to pirate content probably did not need this to continue their habit.
A similar add-on is available for IMDB users from Userscripts.org that cross references movie titles with torrent sites to find copies of films online. Despite its clear lean toward piracy, I'd argue that one of its more useful features it is to track down subtitle files, which can provide translations in smaller countries where the content might be legally available but not localized.
Below is a demo of how the extension works. Expect the developer's site, along with the download links to be back up later today.
Pirates of the Amazon screencast from pirates_of_the_amazon on Vimeo.
A new Firefox extension aptly named "Flash Game Maximizer" is a must-have for any Flash game enthusiast. It does one thing, and does it well: letting you toggle between standard- and full-screen modes on any game--regardless of whether it has been coded with such an option.
Considering that Flash games are hosted all over the place, and rarely with a ubiquitous user interface, you're likely to run into a good number of them that must be played in whatever space they've been given on a Web page. With Flash Game Maximizer, however, you don't have to worry about this at all.
Once the extension has been installed, you'll get a new button on the bottom-right corner of your browser that turns yellow when it detects Flash. Clicking it resizes the game to fit your browser window. A slight caveat here is that it completely restarts whatever Flash module is on the page, which on most games means losing any progress.
Because Flash Game Maximizer is an "experimental" extension, you will need to log in to Mozilla's add-on site to download it.
If you're a Flash game enthusiast, I wholeheartedly recommend giving this a go. It works on my personal favorite, Totem Destroyer, as well as on Desktop Tower Defense.
Flash Game Maximizer turns almost any Flash game window into a full-screen affair, regardless of whether the developer made it an option. (click to enlarge)
(Credit: CNET Networks)
