Friday, June 24, 2011

Firefox extensions

If you're reading this using Firefox then I have a few browser extensions I want to make you aware of. If you're reading this using Chrome, Safari, or Opera... well these extensions won't help you. And if you're reading this using IE then you need to stop using it and go with a superior browser. [Totally random, but recent web statistics show IE's market share is at an 11 year low.] Here are two add-ons for Firefox which I consider indispensable.

Adblock Plus - Firefox has a built-in pop-up blocked, but this takes it one step further. Ads that are embedded in the page that do not pop-up, this add-on blocks those too. And this add-on does an incredible job. I rarely see an ad of any type when browsing with Firefox. No ads and no pop-ups, this is the way the Internet was meant to be.

Flashblock - I've grown to hate flash. I think it goes back years ago (and still today), I hate when you visit a site and all of a sudden video and/or audio starts playing on your system and you can't stop it. Or you're trying to read a page of text (like on cnn.com) and there's some animation on the side which is very distracting. My hatred of flash is so deep that for as long as flash has existed I refused to install it. I would never install flash, in fact I would go so far as to disable it on systems which came with it preinstalled. Well that's all about to change. This really cool add-on only plays flash content if you approve it. When you view a page with flash content all the flash items appear as play buttons. They only run if you click the play button. So by default no flash item plays, only if you run it does it work. I like to think of this as the best of both worlds, I get to see flash content but on my terms not the web page designer's terms.

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