Excellent Firefox Addons

[aimeeandbeatles]

I've found Adblock Plus and Stop Autoplay (blocking all flash) in combination to be good enough for me.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

NoScript it better in that sense. It blocks all scripts, including JS which can be malicious or just plain annoying.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

I've been using the StumbleUpon addon, and I stumbled on Zotero. Basically simplifies citations and reference tracking.

 

[Macha]

NoScript it better in that sense. It blocks all scripts, including JS which can be malicious or just plain annoying.

All scripts are JS. Except a tiny miniority that are VBscript, and they only run in IE6 and under anyway.

Sites that break completely or have significantly hampered functionality without javascript (off the top of my head):

Gmail
Windows Live Mail
Google Maps
Google Documents
Twitter
Stack Overflow
Mozilla Bespin
eBuddy
Any online messenger program
Mibbit

Sites that have reduced functionality without JS
Google
MSN
Yahoo
Yahoo Answers
CFC
Poly
Wikipedia
Yahoo Email
Many online games
Adobe.com
Mozilla Addons
Microsoft.com
Apple.com
and many more...

Of course, if blanket destruction of javascript was your goal, disabling Options > Content > Enable Javascript is just as effective.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I use plenty of sites which use javascript, which is why I don't want to disable it. It's the screaming flash stuff that I want to turn off (unless I tell it to run)

 

[Genocidicbunny]

All scripts are JS. Except a tiny miniority that are VBscript, and they only run in IE6 and under anyway.

Sites that break completely or have significantly hampered functionality without javascript (off the top of my head):

Gmail
Windows Live Mail
Google Maps
Google Documents
Twitter
Stack Overflow
Mozilla Bespin
eBuddy
Any online messenger program
Mibbit

Sites that have reduced functionality without JS
Google
MSN
Yahoo
Yahoo Answers
CFC
Poly
Wikipedia
Yahoo Email
Many online games
Adobe.com
Mozilla Addons
Microsoft.com
Apple.com
and many more...

Of course, if blanket destruction of javascript was your goal, disabling Options > Content > Enable Javascript is just as effective.

I use plenty of sites which use javascript, which is why I don't want to disable it. It's the screaming flash stuff that I want to turn off (unless I tell it to run)

Ive got sites that I trust on a whitelist.
noScript also blocks XSS ( which interestingly enough, was recently used to traverse piratebay through either the RIAA or the MPAA site) and flash.

You can just allow scripts one by one to allow you to use a website. It cuts down loading times and can set a limit on what you want to see.

QFT

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

You can just allow scripts one by one to allow you to use a website. It cuts down loading times and can set a limit on what you want to see.

 

[LucyDuke]

I've never liked, nor found noscript particularly useful.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I googled XSS, I don't quite understand the Pirate Bay/RIAA thing. Explanation please?

Thanks.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_scripting
tada!

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I did read it, didn't quite understand it. All I got was that they stole cookies to post as other people.

 

[Zelig]

I googled XSS, I don't quite understand the Pirate Bay/RIAA thing. Explanation please?

Thanks.

http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-website-now-with-torrents-090502/

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

That's hilarious!

 

[dutchfire]

Me too, they once installed NoScript at university, but it basically just breaks down almost all sites. Heck, even the university website itself didn't work properly with NoScript running

 

[Mise]

It seems like a blunt tool. I'm pretty sure you can configure different security levels (i.e. to turn of JS by default, except in certain trusted websites) in IE straight out of the box

 

[Zelig]

Me too, they once installed NoScript at university, but it basically just breaks down almost all sites. Heck, even the university website itself didn't work properly with NoScript running

This seems like something my university would do, except IE6 is their only browser.

 

[dutchfire]

Yeah, I'm glad I'm in the science department where the computer science students/geeks are too. I don't know many schools/universities/companies that have Firefox as their default browser and give you the choice between Windows and Linux at start up.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

At my school, there's a choice between IE and Firefox. But IE is always the default.

No Linux, either. I can't use a live CD as there's no way to get into the BIOS at startup. All the setup keys are disabled, and if you press anything it just exits the BIOS and starts up Windows.

And our schools insist on paying humongous amounts to upgrade all their working MS Office 2003 to MS Office 2007. Why didn't they just leave it or use OpenOffice?

 

[Zelig]

Yeah, I'm glad I'm in the science department where the computer science students/geeks are too. I don't know many schools/universities/companies that have Firefox as their default browser and give you the choice between Windows and Linux at start up.

We used to have a dual-boot going, but then some bright person decided to outfit the school with imacs and just virtualize linux. It works, but they've still got Firefox 1.

I have to keep browsers on my networked drive to get anything useful done on the web.

Why didn't they just leave it or use OpenOffice?

It's not your school, it's a schoolboard deal with volume licensing.

And Office 2007 is much, much better than Office 2003.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I didn't know you could access your network drives from school...? Unless it's a server.