So You've Finally Switched to Firefox: a Brief Guide to a Some Very Useful Add-Ons.

This post is inspired by two things, the first being the announcement by Google that the long delayed Manifest V3 which will kill robust adblocking will finally roll out in June 2024, and the second, a post written by @sexhaver in response to a question as to what adblockers and extensions they use. It's a very good post with some A+ information, worth checking out.

I love Firefox, I love the degree of customization it offers me as a user. I love how it just works. I love the built in security features like DNS over HTTPS, and I love just how many excellent add-ons are available. It is a better browser than Chrome in every respect, and of the many Chromium based browsers out there, only Vivaldi comes close.

There are probably many people out there who are considering switching over to Firefox but are maybe putting it off because they've got Chrome set up the way they like it with the extensions they want, and doing all that again for Firefox seems like a chore. The Firefox Add-on directory is less expansive than the Chrome Web Store (which in recent years has become overrun with garbage extensions that range from useless to active malware), but there is still a lot of stuff to sift through. That's where this short guide comes in.

I'm presently running 33 add-ons for Firefox and have a number of others installed but disabled. I've used many others. These are my picks, the ones that I consider essential, useful, or in some cases just fun.

Adblocking/Privacy/Security:

uBlock Origin: The single best adblocker available. If you're a power user there are custom lists and scripts you can find to augment it.

Privacy Badger: Not strictly necessary if you're also running uBlock, but it does catch a few trackers uBlock doesn't and replaces potentially useful trackers like comment boxes with click-to-activate placeholders.

Decentraleyes: A supplementary tool meant to run alongside uBlock, prevents certain sites from breaking when tracker requests are denied by serving local bundled files as replacement.

NoScript: The nuclear option for blocking trackers, ads, and even individual elements. Operates from a "trust no one" standpoint, you will need to manually enable elements yourself. Not recommended for casual users, but a fantastic tool for the power user.

Webmail Ad Blocker: The first of many webmail related add-ons from Jason Saward I will be recommending. Removes all advertising from webmail services like Gmail or Yahoo Mail.

Popup Blocker (Strict): Strictly blocks ALL pop up/new tab/new window requests from all website by default unless you manually allow it.

SponsorBlock: Not a fan of listening to your favourite YouTuber read advertisements for shitty products like Raycons or BetterHelp? This skips them automatically.

AdNauseam: I don't use this one but some people prefer it. Rather than straight up blocking ads and trackers, it obfuscates data by injecting noise into the tracker surveillance infrastructure. It clicks EVERY ad, making your data profile incomprehensible.

User-Agent Switcher: Allows you to spoof websites attempting to gather information by altering your browser profile. Want to browse mobile sites on desktop? This allows you to do it.

Bitwarden: Bitwarden has been my choice of password manager since LastPass sold out and made their free tier useless. If you're not using a password manager, why not? All of my passwords look like this: $NHhaduC*q3VhuhD&scICLKjvM4rZK5^c7ID%q5HVJ3@gny I don't know a single one of them and I use a passphrase as a master password supplemented by two-factor-authentication. Everything is filled in automatically. It is the only way to live.

Proton Pass: An open source free password manager from the creators of Proton Mail. I've been considering moving over to it from Bitwarden myself.

Webmail/Google Drive:

Checker Plus for Gmail: Provides desktop notifications for Gmail accounts, supports managing multiple accounts, allows you to check your mail, read, mark as read or delete e-mails at a glance in a pop-up window. An absolutely fabulous add-on from Jason Saward.

Checker Plus for Google Drive: Does for your Google Drive what Checker Plus for Gmail does for your Gmail.

Checker Plus for Google Calendar: The same as the above two only this time for your Google Calendar.

Firefox Relay: An add-on that allows you to generate aliases that forward to your real e-mail address.

Accessibility:

Dark Reader: Gives every page on the internet a customizable Dark Mode for easier reading and eye protection.

Read Aloud: A text to speech add-on that reads pages with the press of a button.

Zoom Page WE: Provides the ability to zoom in on pages in multiple ways: text zoom, full page zoom, auto-fit etc.

Mobile Dyslexic: Not one I use, but I know people who swear by it. Replaces all fonts with a dyslexia friendly type face.

Utility:

ClearURLs: Automatically removes tracking data from URLs.

History Cleaner: Automatically deletes browser history older than a set number of days.

Feedbro RSS Feed Reader: A full standalone reader in your browser, take control of your feed and start using RSS feeds again.

Video Download Helper: A great tool for downloading video files from websites.

Snap Link Plus: Fan of Wikipedia binge holes? Snap Link allows to drag select multiple hyperlink and automatically open all of them in new tabs.

Copy PlainText: Copy any text without formatting.

EPUBReader: Read .epub files from within a browser window.

Tab Stash: A no mess, no fuss way to organize groups of tabs as bookmarks. I use it as a temporary bookmark tool, saving sessions or groups of tabs into "to read" folders.

Tampermonkey/Violentmonkey: Managers for installing and running custom user scripts. Find user scripts on OpenUserJS or Greasy Fork, there's an entire galaxy out there of ingenious and weird custom user scripts out there, go discover it.

Browsing & Searching:

Speed Dial 2: A new tab add-on that gives you easy access to your favourite sites.

Unpaywall: Whenever you come across a scholarly article behind a paywall, this add-on will search through all the free databases for an accessible and non-paywalled version of the text.

Web Archives: Come across a dead page? This add-on gives you a quick way to search for cached versions of the page on the Wayback Machine, Google Cache, Archive.is and others.

Bypass Paywalls: Automatically bypasses the paywalls of major websites like those for the New York Times, New Yorker, the Financial Times, Wired, etc.

Simple Translate: Simple one-click translation of web pages powered by Google Translate.

Search by Image: Reverse search any image via several different search engines: Google Image, TinEye, Yandex, Bing, etc.

Website Specific:

PocketTube: Do you subscribe to too many YouTube channels? Would you like a way to organize them? This is your answer.

Enhancer for Youtube: Provides a suite of options that make using YouTube more pleasant: volume boost, theatre mode, forced quality settings, playback speed and mouse wheel volume control.

Augmented Steam: Improves the experience of using Steam in a browser, see price histories of games, take notes on your wishlist, make wish listed games and new DLC for games you own appear more visible, etc.

Return YouTube Dislikes: Does exactly what it says on the package.

BlueBlocker: Hate seeing the absolute dimmest individuals on the planet have their replies catapulted to the top of the feed because they're desperate to suck off daddy Elon sloppy style? This is for you, it automatically blocks all Blue Checks on Twitter. I've used it to block a cumulative 34,000 Blue Checks.

Batchcamp: Allows for batch downloading on Bandcamp.

XKit Rewritten: If you're on Tumblr and you're not using whichever version of XKit is currently available, I honestly don't know what to say to you. This newest version isn't as fully featured as the old XKit of the golden age, but it's been rewritten from the ground up for speed and utility.

Social Fixer for Facebook: I once accidentally visited Facebook without this add-on enabled and was immediately greeted by the worst, mind annihilating content slop I had ever had the misfortune to come across. Videos titled "he wanted her to get lip fillers and she said no so he had bees sting her lips", and AI photos of broccoli Jesus with 6000 comments all saying "wow". Once I turned it on it was just stuff my dad had posted and updates from the Radio War Nerd group.

BetterTTV: Makes Twitch slightly more bearable.

Well I think that's everything. You don't have to install everything here, or even half of it, but there you go, it's a start.

Addendum!

I forgot to add, Firefox has skins and themes! And many of them are good! And of the many small creators making themes and skins for Firefox, my favourite is MaDonna an 85 year old great grandmother who's just making browser skins for fun. She's made thousands of them. I'm using one of her creations at this very moment, Dark Polygon.

You know the Grimm version of Snow White makes more sense than most versions if only because in that version Snow White was like 7 years old.

Like imagine you find a 7 year old in the woods and she’s like my mom is gonna kill me because I’m prettier than her and she’s not kidding. You know this queen is that sort of person. So you and your roommates adopt the kid and tell her don’t talk to strangers. And she keeps talking to strangers and getting poison combs stuck in her hair and whatnot.

Like yeah that’s kinda stupid but also she’s seven. She likes apples.

Also imagine it from the hunter’s perspective. The queen tells you this bitch is prettier than me I need you to take her out in the woods and kill her. And then you see who you’re supposed to kill and it’s a 2nd grader. Like how are you supposed to react to that sort of situation? Kill a human child? No. Because you’re not a brainless evil minion you’re just some guy dealing with a cartoonishly evil monarch. Of course you let her go.

Bad look for the Prince of course. Even if she did age while she was in that glass case. He saw a dead woman and just decided to keep her. And once she stopped being dead he was like we’re married now

He did cause the evil queen to dance to death in red hot shoes though. That was kinda cool.

With the acknowledgement that I'm grasping at straws, is it ever directly confirmed that the Prince wasn't also 7?

See, I think that still works.

You are the guardsman assigned to protect the eight-year-old Prince. You are currently in the middle of the forest because he absolutely had his heart set on "going hunting", and the royal second-grader should definitely not be traipsing around the woods on his own. You let him go a little on ahead and he comes running back talking about how there's a dead girl in the clearing and there's no-one else around and he wants to take her home because she's really pretty, Hans, and she's all alone!

You let him drag you to said clearing and okay, that is one angelic-looking dead child alright, and on the one hand the quality of her clothes and the craftsmanship on the coffin (who builds a see-through coffin?) speak to potential Consequences if you simply carry her off, but also for the amount of vines that have grown on the coffin she looks extraordinarily un-decayed, so you should probably get the court alchemist's opinion on that, and there's no way he's going to come all the way out here in his embroidered velvet curly-shoes. And also this kid is technically assigned by God as your natural superior, or something.

So fine. You hoist the coffin onto your shoulder (it's not like the Prince can do it. He's eight.) and head back toward the castle, Prince chattering blithely all the way. And then you turn your ankle on a rock and suddenly there's a thump and a cough and a lot of shouting from inside the coffin and you have now become a key player in a tense political incident with the next kingdom over.

You should probably ask for a raise.

@aenor-llelo‘s Orphan’s Path has such vivid characters and descriptions I had to draw out my interpretations of some of my favorites!

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This is what we used to do with pirates in my home town, Hamburg- heads off, nail it on a pole and then display it on the beach. 

And this is by the way, the alleged real skull of the pirate Captain Klaus Störtebeker from 1401 © Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte

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in b4 95% of all websites in june 2024 announce that "for security" they will only work with browsers that use manifest v3

Just use Firefox.

The more people who use Firefox the better! It's got versions for the desktop, android, and iphone, all free. In addition to ublock origin there are thousands of addons. You could also consider using one of Mozilla's paid products, such as their VPN, or donating to the Mozilla Foundation, in order to ensure they're able to keep going.

Not to be Old on main but I remember this exact thing happening in the late 90s and early 00s. I remember it very well. Microsoft pushed out all the browser competition with Internet Explorer, at which point both browser and web innovation stagnated for years because why fix something that's broken if everyone is using the broken thing anyway because there are hardly any other options. If you want to know how bad it was, Internet Explorer did not have browser tabs and it certainly did not have any sort of adblock. And everyone just lived with it.

I am watching the exact same thing happen with Chrome in real time today and that's why I always reblog these posts and sometimes am extra annoying and add on to them. I don't want to see it happen again because it sucked. Please use Firefox. Use it on mobile too (it has browser extensions!!! Including ad blockers!!!) And reminder that Edge/Brave/Vivaldi are all built on Chromium and you should not be using those either. Those browsers will show up as Chrome on tracking analytics and it does not help the overall project, which is showing web developers that Chrome is not the only browser people are using.

Your passwords and other useful things transfer to Firefox, btw. Go make the switch. You have nothing to lose.

Most websites that tell you they need Chrome to work are lying, even if they block you from accessing them if you're not using Chrome. They just do not want to support the dev work to optimize for anything else, or may have a special deal with Google.

Fortunately, there are Firefox extensions that just basically tell websites "yeah, I'm definitely Chrome. don't worry about it"

Please note I have not used either of these, because adblockers and script blockers are good enough at disabling those annoying messages.

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