2 Bit Hacker

Somewhat bored at work at the moment, and not really inspired to be writing code, like I should be, so instead I’ve decided to make a quick post about Mozilla Firebird, a stripped down version of Mozilla, without the newsreader, mail client, IRC client, or composer stuff, which I never used anyway, and some of the extensions that I use for it. Actually, I’ll probably just detail the extensions, it’s more interesting that way.

• Adblock is a pretty slick extension that filters images and iframes out of pages with the intent of blocking ads. If you see an ad, you can just right-click on it, select “Adblock” and it gets blocked. It works on pattern matching, so it’s pretty easy to set it up to block all the ads on a site with just one rule.

• RadialContext replaces the traditional right-click menu with a circle of icons that do pretty much the same things. Because of the way the circle moves with the mouse, it’s possible to use it as a mouse gesture system, similar to those found in Opera. Also, people looking over your shoulder tend to get confused by it.

• User Agent Switcher is a very simple extension that just adds a menu to the Tools menu that lets you switch what your browser is reporting itself as. There are still some stupid sites out there that will only let you in if you’re using IE or Netscape, and this lets you easily circumvent that detection. I don’t use it a lot, but it comes in handy when I need it.

• Googlebar is perhaps the greatest extension ever made. It works like the Google bar for IE, mostly. Puts all the power of Google into a nice, easy to use bar. I particularly like the highlighting feature, to easily see search terms in a window, something that you normally have to use the Google Cache to get.

Well, I think I’ve wasted enough time now. I should get some work done.

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