Firefox's Most Powerful Feature: Thousands of Add-ons
*Note that I did not specify Fahrenheit or Centigrade. At this temperature, it doesn't matter. Literally. That's because -40F = -40C. Don't believe me? Try it for yourself: The formula is (F-32)*5/9. So ...
-40 - 32 = -72
-72*5 = -360
-360/9=-40
Occasionally I bemoan the fact that Firefox loads at about the same speed that 10W50 motor oil pours when it's 40 degrees below zero.* Much of the fault is mine, not Firefox's though, because of the number of add-ons that load with Firefox and the fact that I have turned on update checking. So what makes Firefox slow is also one of the browser's most powerful features.
Click any of the smaller images for a full-size view.
I currently have more than 25 Firefox add-ons. At one time, the add-one page told how many add-ons were available. The most recent figure I can find in from early 2008. At that time, more than 4600 extensions and at least 650 themes were listed. There's a lot of duplication in some areas (weather, for example), so you can pick the add-on you prefer. Some are clearly better written than others. Some seem to exist to solve problems that don't exist.
The add-ons extend Firefox's capabilities. The ones I use most tend to be utilities that help me get my work done, but some are there solely because they modify Firefox's appearance in a way that I like.
Here's a list of some of the add-ons I've installed along with a brief description of what each does. I'm not necessarily recommending these for your use, but I do strongly recommend that Firefox users spend some time looking through the add-ons to see if there's something you'd like to install.
Adblock Plus: Probably the only controversial add-on that I use, Adblock Plus can cause commercial sites to be displayed without their ads. I understand the need for sites to sell ads and I don't object to them if they don't get in the way. But when an ad contains sound or motion, I block it.
BabelFish: In the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, we learned the importance of the babel fish. Stick one in your ear and it would translate any language to your language. That's essentially what this add-on does. Instantly translating between dozens of languages (from Albanian to Vietnamese). If I visit Pravda (available only in Russian), Babel Fish translates "Задумывались ли вы, откуда берутся названия тех или иных населенных пунктов, ведь порой они звучат очень странно и даже нелепо?" to "Do you wonder where are the names of certain settlements, because sometimes they sound very strange and even ridiculous?" Translations aren't perfect and, as with most translations, idioms are a particular problem, but you'll get at least a rough idea of what the article is about.
Better Gmail 2: Although Gmail isn't my primary e-mail client, this is still a useful add-on because it provides features that Google left out such as hierarchical labels, macros, and file attachment icons. This add-on is compatible only with Gmail's new interface. If you use the old interface, an earlier version of Better Gmail is still available.
Copy Plain Text: You may occasionally need to quote text from a website, but if you copy and paste the text in the usual way, you'll get the formatting that you may not want. Of course, most applications have ways to paste just the text without the formatting (on Microsoft products, it's called "paste special"), but having this feature built in to the browser is helpful. Just select the text, right-click, and choose Copy Plain Text. The formatting is gone.
Customize Google: This is one of the most useful add-ons available for those of us who use Google frequently. You can change the way Google works and fine-tune it to your preferences. Some may want to eliminate the ad results from Google searches. Others may want to keep them. Or you may want to keep the ads in searches, but remove them from Gmail. You may want to change some settings that are normally temporary to "sticky" (meaning they stay until you specifically change them instead of reverting to the default value.)
Firebug: Anyone who wants to understand how a Web page does what it does should install Firebug, a powerful website development and debugging tool. Firebug shows you the HTML code, cascading style sheet layout, any embedded Javascript code, and the document object model of the page. Enable the Net tab and you'll see every object on the page, its status, its location, and the amount of load time it adds to the page. And that's just the start.
Forecastfox: This is one of many weather add-ons. It's provided by AccuWeather and offers a reasonable number of functions and information. Currently Mozilla lists more than 50 add-ons that provide weather information, either as their primary function or as a secondary function.
Ghostery: Do you wonder who's tracking you when you visit a website? If so, then you need Ghostery. When it's activated, Ghostery will tell you the identity of every Web bug installed on the site. Web bugs are hidden scripts that track your behavior and are used by the sites you visit to understand their own audience. The TechByter Worldwide site will show the presence of one Web bug (Stat Counter), which I use to estimate the amount of traffic on the site. Stat Counter collects information about visitors' browsers so that I can adjust the pages to give you the best possible site design; it does not collect any personally identifiable information.
Google Preview: Fortunately, this plug-in also works with Yahoo because Google was having a bad morning when I was working on illustrations for this article. Sometimes a preview is helpful in determining which link to choose. If you have a slow connection, this is will delay the page load time, but it might eliminate your loading of several pages.
HTML Validator: Here's another development tool that isn't essential because Dreamweaver has excellent built-in validation tools. Still, it's helpful as a double-check. And if I visit a Web page that seems to have problems, I can quickly check to see if it's a browser incapability (rare) or a coding error (common). In the example I've shown here, the writer has created the page in Microsoft Word or in Microsoft Front Page. Both of these applications insert nonsense non-tags into the code.
Leet Key: This one is, for the most part, just silly. English "This is wonderful" becomes "7h15 15 w0nd3rfu|" in 1337 ("leet"), "Guvf vf jbaqreshy" in ROT13 (all letters are rotated 13 places in the alphabet), or "lufrednow si sihT" in reverse. Exciting, eh?
Microsoft Net Framework Assistant: Yes, it was there when I started working on this program segment. It's no longer there because I removed it. Why and how are here.
Minimap: If you use maps frequently, Minimap will maintain either a map tab for you or a sidebar with a map. You can define your start location so that it will always be used when you want to obtain directions to or from a location. To start Minimap, drag an address to the application. If you want to keep the address in a list for future reference, you can name it.
Nightly Tester Tools: Let's say you download and install a new version of Firefox or that Firefox does it automatically and then half a dozen of your add-ons stop working. Add-ons have built-in expiration settings. The developer may know that the add-on works properly with all versions of Firefox from 3.0.0 to 3.0.9, but not with 3.5.0 (which is in development or with any unreleased 3.0.x versions) so the add-on will be coded with a 3.0.0 minimum and a 3.0.9 maximum. When 3.0.10 is released, the add-on will no longer load. In most cases, the application will work properly following a minor step upgrade, so all that's needed is to reset the maximum number. That's one of the primary features of the Nightly Tester Tools. Use with care, particularly when you're testing a major new version.
NoScript: This is a tool that I consider to be important. I turn off all scripting by default and enable it on a page-by-page basis. The first time the browser visits a page that depends on scripting, the page won't work properly. If it's a page that I trust, I can turn scripting on for this visit and all future visits or only for the current visit.
Override Mozilla Firefox Guidance: It's a totally useless add-on, but it gives me a smile when a website isn't available. Normally Firefox intercepts cryptic response codes and displays a page that explains, in a slightly less cryptic way, what went wrong. This plug-in intercepts the intercept and displays an entirely useless message instead. It does show the real reason the page failed to load at the bottom of the page, but the main message will be something like this: "Were you motivated enough? The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading."
User Agent Switcher: Occasionally, misguided webmasters code their pages so that they will load only with Microsoft's Internet Explorer. When you encounter a page such as this with Firefox, you could open IE or you could tell Firefox to tell the site that it's Internet Explorer instead of Firefox. In virtually all cases, the page will load properly.
WorldIP: Where is that site hosted? You might be surprised to find that some sites you think would be in other countries are actually in the United States. Pravda, as expected, is hosted in Russia. But Al Jazeera is hosted in England.
WOT: WOT is either an acronym or an initialism (depending on whether you pronounce it as a word) that stands for web of trust. WOT accepts ratings from users and reports a combined rating on 4 categories: Trustworthiness, reliability, privacy, and child safety.
You can add your own rating, which is reported to WOT. Pravda (left) gets good marks, while a porn site carries cautions about vendor reliability and warnings about child safety.
And what if you mistype a domain name and accidentally wander onto a bad site? (Hint: Try just about any misspelling of "Microsoft".) In that case, WOT lets you know that there's potential danger.
But beware the possible dangers of WOT itself. Because the raters themselves aren't vetted in any way, incorrect ratings and mob mentality can take over. When I attempted to log on to my account at Your Mailing List Provider (YMLP), WOT told me that the site was dangerous. I've used YMLP for the TechByter Worldwide newsletter for years. I use it for clients' newsletters. The service and support are excellent. I could tell WOT to ignore the rating and let me in, but this reminded me that citizen-contributed ratings aren't always reliable.
Firefox: Hunted or Hunter?
Browsers are changing so fast that it's hard to keep up with the latest features. Mozilla added so many features to the latest version of Firefox (available 30 June 2009) that the version number increased from 3.0 to 3.5 instead of to 3.1, which was the original plan. Internet Explorer 8 is out and is well regarded. Opera 10 is coming soon. Chrome had a recent upgrade. Safari 4 offers major improvements.
At the right you see the upgrade notice that warns the new version will break some of the extensions I have installed.
Click any of the smaller images for a full-size view.
When I installed Firefox 3.5 on June 30th, some of my add-ons had already been updated. I used Nightly Tester Tools to force the others into compliance despite the usual dire warnings. They all worked.
What's New?
Move a tab in the lineup? Sure, Firefox could already do that. And you'll see a transparent thumbnail while you're moving it.
When you open Firefox, you can choose the History tab and open recently closed windows or restore everything from the last session. During a session, the History tab will allow you to reopen recently closed tabs.
Want to browse without leaving a trace? Under Tools, select Start Private Browsing. Any existing tabs will disappear and you'll see a reminder: "Firefox won't remember any history for this session. In a Private Browsing session, Firefox won't keep any browser history, search history, download history, web form history, cookies, or temporary internet files. However, files you download and bookmarks you make will be kept." When you're finished, Tools, Stop Private Browsing will restore all of your previous tabs.
I've complained previously about Firefox's slow startup time. Version 3.5 seems to be faster, but I'll need more time to test this. And as long as I load 25 add-ons, the startup will never be fast.
If you're already using Firefox and it hasn't automatically updated yet, use Find Updates under the Help menu. If you're still using another browser, now's the time to upgrade to Firefox.
More New Faces of Fraud
The letter looked legitimate. Granted, it hadn't arrived in a US Postal Service envelope, but it looked like USPS letterhead. And it had been sent presorted first class, not standard mail (the new name for third class). It invited me to become a confidential volunteer to study postal performance. The letter directed me to a website (www.reportez.com) and told me that I would earn points that could be redeemed for prizes at over 300 retailers nationwide. I could understand how the USPS might want to know how it's doing, but somehow the letter just didn't seem to ring true.
CORRECTION
Following additional research, I have determined that the postal panel described below is actually a legitimate operation, despite numerous clues that would suggest otherwise. Rather than just delete the article and pretend that it never appeared, I felt it would be better to post the correction here.
The Postal Panel
For one thing, there was a notice at the bottom of the letter: CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL. NOT FOR REPRODUCTION OR GENERAL DISCLOSURE. It's not like this would be a matter of national security. And telling the mark something is confidential is one of the older tricks in the scammer's book.
Click any of the smaller images for a full-size view.
The letter claimed that IBM was working with the USPS to conduct the surveys. That didn't seem reasonable, either. IBM makes hardware. It doesn't conduct surveys. But I decided to play along for a bit. I handed the Web address to Central Ops (www.centralops.net) to see who it was registered to.
At the right, you'll see some notes I kept during the research.
Not IBM. What a surprise!
Domain Name: REPORTEZ.COM
Registrar: CSC CORPORATE DOMAINS, INC.
Whois Server: whois.corporatedomains.com
Referral URL: http://www.cscprotectsbrands.com
Registrant:
. (There's just a period here where a name should be.)
. West Corporation
11808 Miracle Hills Dr.
Omaha, NE 68154
US
Email: domaincontact@west.com
A couple of things caught my attention here. Large corporations almost always use Network Solutions as their registrar. For example, IBM:
Domain Name: IBM.COM
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com
I had never heard of a registrar called CSC Protect Brands.
The other points that stood out are the registrant's name (.) and the address. Large corporations fill in contact names, not periods. So in addition to that, the domain isn't owned by IBM and I've caught the writer of the letter in a lie of some significance.
When I checked the address, I found the Nebraska Spine Surgeons PC Center, but a list of other companies in the building included West Telemarketing. So that's who the sender is, the people who claim to be from IBM.
Next, I cautiously visited the website and read the FAQ. The site told me to visit www.usps.com (which is the USPS website) and search for "EXFC". I did. There I learned the IBM is indeed involved in reporting performance statistics. But keep in mind that I already know the company portrayed in the letter is not IBM.
The website describes a "Scanner Panel" that I can join if I'm qualified. I can report the results on-line by using a special barcode scanner that scans an "Intelligent Mail" barcode. The special barcode is mentioned on the USPS website, too, so everything would seem to be legitimate. Except for that lie about being IBM.
West Corporation
A Google search for "West Corporation" and "Omaha" turned up a lot of legal cases, most of them involving former employees who say they weren't paid for the work they did. I also found several sites where people described the company as a telemarketing operation.
About that time, I thought I'd see what I could learn about the registrar, cscprotectsbrands.com. I got an eye-full. The Web of Trust (I described that earlier in the program) had nothing but red markers for the company's website. Some people have vilified CSC Protects Brands, but not everyone. I'm undecided on whether this is important, but I offer it as yet another data point. In any event, it doesn't seem to be a registrar that large, legitimate companies use.
I won't be joining the postal panel anytime soon. In fact, I've turned the letter over the the US Postal Inspectors who, so far, seem to have ignored it with great gusto.
Finally, Bank Fraud for a Bank I Use
I've probably received at least 5000 bank fraud notices from the Bank of America, but I don't have a Bank of America account. I do, however, have a Chase account.
Click any of the smaller images for a full-size view.
The spam is at the right and I'm looking at the message in my spam catcher, so I knew immediately that it wasn't legitimate. I have cleared the legitimate bank addresses so that real messages from the bank won't go to the spam filter. In addition, I use a special e-mail account for banking, one with a user name that's more than 15 (random) characters long. It's not an address somebody could guess.
But it's fun to see what the fraudsters are up to. The first order of business was to see what I could find out about the domain 1iiljih.net.
The registration came back to what's probably a false name at an address in Perry, Pennsylvania. Ever hear of Perry, Pennsylvania?
Perry seems to be rural and the address appears to be an intersection. I'm fairly certain that Chase doesn't have any large operations at this intersection. The address is really in Harmony, Pennsylvania, too.
And the corporate server for the website that the fraudster would like me to visit? That's hosted by Shaw Cable. This would not be a good choice for a high-security bank website. The URL I'm supposed to visit is buried deep in the site's directory structure, so I thought I'd see what's on the site's front step.
You'd think that the fraudster would go to just a little more trouble to make the site look legitimate.
Short Circuits
Is Twitter the New UPI?
*One example: UPI White House correspondent Merriman Smith scored the beat on John Kennedy's assassination has passed into legend. Smith and his AP counterpart, Jack Bell, shared one car -- and one phone -- in the presidential motorcade. When shots rang out, Smith dove for the phone and began dictating bulletins to his office while Bell fought for the receiver. Dodging roundhouse swings, Smith kept talking into the phone, at one point even asking the office to read back his story in order to stall and keep Bell from reaching AP. Smith managed to hold out and hold on, scoring a stunning triumph over AP and eventually earning a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of one of the century's most competitive stories.
SOURCE: Downholders
Despite every effort, internal and external, to kill it, United Press International (UPI) continues to exist. Those who worked for UPI refer to themselves as "unipressers". UPI was always a scrappy competitor for the Associated Press (AP) and managed to beat the larger AP* with embarrassing regularity. At this point, you may be asking what this has to do with technology. After finishing last week's account of social networking in general and Twitter in particular, it occurred to me that tweets (Twitter posts) can look a lot like unipresser chatter between bureaus (buros).
Bureau-to-bureau communications were often conducted on the newspaper wire and they were usually written entirely in lowercase, possibly because it was faster to type that way or maybe because it was easier to keep in sync with those old teletype machines without shifting. A message might say:
jeffreys-ra:
emery, you old scutter. mene thnx. will commisirate more next week. til then.
making final approach. looks like a perfect landing. thnx for everything.
mauldin-ct
The message is addressed to Emery Jeffries. I believe that "ra" is the bureau. The message was sent by a unipresser named Mauldin in, I assume, Connecticut. This is part of an exchange between people who left or were fired during UPI's decline. I've quoted it from http://www.downhold.org/. The Downholders is a free site intended to preserve the history and lore of United Press International and its predecessor agencies, United Press and International News Service, their alumni (the Downholders), and the people who still work there.
What strikes me about these messages is their brevity. And it reminds me of the brevity that is enforced by sites such as Twitter.
According to Wikipedia:
United Press International (UPI) is a news agency headquartered in the United States with roots dating back to 1907. Once a mainstay in the newswire service along with Associated Press (AP) and Reuters, it began to decline as afternoon newspapers, its chief client category, began to fail with the rising popularity of television news. This decline accelerated after the sale of UPI by the founding Scripps family culminating in two bankruptcies.
In 2000, UPI was purchased by News World Communications, a media company owned by Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. The news wire's daily coverage today includes domestic and international top news, business, entertainment, sports, science, health and "Quirks in the News" through its traditional NewsTrack newswire, as well as coverage and analysis of emerging threats, the security industry and energy resources through its "premium" service. UPI's content is presented in text, video and photo formats. Its news stories are filed in English, Spanish and Arabic.
Nostalgia time (from Downholders): "Staff members took pride in outwitting AP, censors, government officials and anything or anyone else standing in their way." In the 1980s, when I was still working at WTVN, I could expect to receive a call from the UPI office in Columbus. The AP's office was essentially part of the Columbus Dispatch, but UPI operated out of the local bureau chief's house. Despite UPI's limited market share and its physical location in the metro area, the goal was still to beat the AP.
Who worked for UPI? Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Eric Sevareid, Harrison Salisbury, William Shirer, and the legendary Helen Thomas, who is now employed by Hearst, worked for 57 years as a correspondent, then as White House bureau chief for United Press International.
Today's UPI is, sadly, nothing like the old UPI, but it continue to putter along.
The RIAA: Still Dead (A Story for Independence Day)
In January 2007, I said "The big record labels and the RIAA are dead. They just don't know it yet. Independent artists and small labels are using the Internet to go around the big labels that used to control music. The RIAA continues to fight, but the cause is already lost. Groups such as Chumbawamba openly thumb their collective noses at the old system and new artists such as Vienna Teng (a former Cisco Systems programmer) use the Web to spread the word about their CDs." Since then the Recording Industry Association of America has lost some suits and won others. Suits notwithstanding, the trend continues.
What artists such as Katie Melua, John Prine, Vienna Teng, Chumbawamba, and Chris Stamey understand and the RIAA doesn't is that music sharing, whether by radio or Internet, builds awareness and develops a following—the people who are in the audiences at live performances. For income, the RIAA depends on the sale of physical discs. Artists, on the other hand, make more money from live performances. It's even better if they can produce their own CDs, which is now possible for a relatively small investment. The RIAA wants to keep recorded music under wraps and continue to be paid for every disc sold. Artists, at least the smart ones, understand that music distribution is the key to convincing the public to pay money to put their butts in seats at concerts.
The RIAA used to understand this the concept of publicity. Members of the organization paid a lot of money (later termed "payola") to convince disk jockeys to play music on the air. Somewhere along the line, the trade group forgot about publicity as a way to entice fans to show up at concerts.
If you recall Aesop's fables, you may recognize some elements of the goose that laid the golden egg. The couple that owned the goose thought that they could get richer faster if they killed the goose because that would allow them to obtain the entire store of precious metal in the goose. Instead, they found that the goose's innards were like those of any other goose.
The RIAA continues to wave it's axe at the goose, but some of today's artists aren't willing to play along. Instead, they've gone to the Internet, where they can provide their music to fans without charge, and where they can interact with fans. "What venues should we schedule for our next tour?" the artists ask. Fans answer. The artists can cut the RIAA out of the financial picture. They can produce and sell CDs to their fans without the RIAA.
Should Music be Free?
Artists differ on the answer, but many of them realize that when more people hear their music, more people will be likely to show up at their concerts.
Chumbawamba Calls for Freedom: "Send this song to 20 people!" one selection begins. This is followed by "But isn't it stealing?" The track includes quotes from a corporate voice that says "Why does the consumer wanst to download music for free?" and this is followed by "No matter how much legal action you put behind this, people are going to do what they want to do."
The track ends with the ironic "We don't mind when our fans pay money to wear our promotional T-shirts. And it's fine when they pay $40 to come to one of our concerts. But when our fans think that they can listen to our music for free, they've just crossed the line."
Some artists get it. The RIAA doesn't.
The author's image: It's that photo over at the right. This explains why TechByter Worldwide was never on television, doesn't it?
