Firefox-extensions | Technology Blog

Web of Trust: collaborative online security

December 2nd, 2008

No comments

Most systems which warn of unsafe websites, like ~~OpenDNS~~ and Google, work in mysterious, non-transparent ways and websites are often deemed as unsafe for reasons other than safety. Web of Trust is a Firefox extension which rates the safety of websites based on ratings received by other users of the plug-in.

Users rate websites on their ‘Trustworthiness’, ‘Vendor reliability’, ‘Privacy’ and ‘Child Safety’. Information about websites is also gathered from Compete, comments by users and through links from reliable sources (such as Digg, Lifehacker, Open Directory Project and Wikipedia).

Web of Trust sits alongside your navigation buttons, ensuring it has your attention, and should a website be cause for concern the button will change colour. Information is also integrated in webmail and search results, to ensure you won’t stumble across an unsafe website.

Firefox Temporary Bookmarks

November 21st, 2008

No comments

Temporary Bookmarks are bookmarks that expire after a certain amount of time automatically. While most users prefer their bookmarks to last indefinitely some might want to be able to add temporary bookmarks to the system without having to worry about manually uninstalling them after a certain period of time.

One prime example would be to bookmark an offer on a website that expires after a set amount of time. It would not make much sense to keep the bookmark afterwards unless a new offer would be put on the same page. Might also be interesting for research.

TARK is a Firefox add-on that can make the bookmarks temporarily available. It does so by providing access to a new toolbar button - or several buttons - that make it possible to mark bookmarks. Bookmarks can be set to be available for up to four weeks using the Firefox add-on. Keep in mind that this is an option, it is still perfectly possible to add bookmarks the usual way which ensures that they will never expire.

Sort Firefox Bookmarks

October 19th, 2008

No comments

The option to sort bookmarks in Firefox is tucked away in the Bookmarking Manager. While the sorting options should be sufficient for most users the lack of distinguishing between different kind of bookmarks and the temporariness of the selected options make it barely usable.

Sort Places is an experimentally Firefox add-on that provides better and faster sorting options for Firefox bookmarks. The add-on adds a Sort entry to the bookmarks menu and can also be added as an icon to a Firefox toolbar.

It sorts all bookmarks by default but can be modified to sort only selected folders. The options that make it superior to the default Firefox sorting function are the following:

Split The Firefox Browser

October 17th, 2008

No comments

The Ask The Readers article yesterday asked for recommendations for splitting the browser window in Firefox so that two websites could be displayed next to each other. The general consensus was to use the Split Browser extension for Firefox. The Firefox extension Split Browser can split the Firefox screen into multiple areas. Each area can display a website and provides basic browsing capabilities to enter a different url or navigate on that page normally.

After installing the Firefox extension and restarting Firefox the option to split the browser window becomes available in the right-click context menu. The options are to split the browser window horizontally or vertically. The original window will keep using the main Firefox address bar, the bookmarks and status bar while the new windows that share the screen will only use their designated area and a custom address bar.

Another option to create new windows is to right-click links or drag and drop bookmarks or links into newly created windows. Browser controls on the other hand are only working in the main window even when right-clicking the new window and selecting a function like back from the context menu.

Custom Firefox Startpage

October 11th, 2008

No comments

Users can practically set one or multiple websites as their start pages in Firefox (and any other web browser as well). Another option are Speed Dial extensions which copy a feature from Opera to Firefox that provide access to a handful of links on one page. Autohome puts that concept to the next level by providing a way to create a startpage that is filled with links that have been added by the user.

This concept is not truly that different from creating a simple html file with links and use that as the startpage except that it does not require technical knowledge to create the page. The Firefox extension adds an icon to the Firefox status bar which provides access to the extension’s functions and options to add the current page to the startpage.

The extension will automatically grab the url, page title and a folder suggestion of which the latter two can be customized. Folders are basically headings under which the titles are shown on the startpage.

Firefox URLBar Extension

October 3rd, 2008

No comments

UrlbarExt is an experimental Firefox add-on that adds a few interesting functions to the Firefox location bar. Experimental meaning that users have to log into an account at the Mozilla website to download and install the add-on. It is usually not an indicator of a “not yet ready” add-on. Users who do not have an account but would like to install the add-on could use one of the available logins from Bugmenot instead.

Back to the Firefox extension. It adds six new icons to the right side of the Firefox location bar which look a lot like the icons that the Tagmarks extension is adding in that place. Users with the Tagmarks extension enabled might run into troubles. This has not been tested and is just an assumption.

The icons provide easy access to the following functions: