Archive
Become a Reddit power user
Goal
You want to become a Reddit power user.
Tip
Install the Reddit Enhancement Suite Firefox add-on. The result will be a Reddit on steroids :)
Links
- RES @firefoxfacts (with a short description)
- RES @mozilla.org (install)
- RES HQ (read more)
- RES @reddit (discussion, feature requests)
Siphon – Add-on Synchronizer for Firefox
Problem
You have Firefox on several machines and you want to have the same add-ons everywhere. Also, when you re-install a machine, you want to have back your favorite add-ons.
Solution
“Siphon will manage and sync all your Firefox Add-ons with your different computers. It will also save your Add-on list if you ever need to reinstall Firefox.“
Read about Siphon on Lifehacker.
Copy the URL and the title of the current web page to the clipboard
The following tips are from the post “My vimperator settings“, but they are somewhat hidden in the text :)
So, when browsing, a common task is to get the address or the title of the current web page. Getting the address is easy, but for the title we need to consult the page source. How to get these data painlessly and copy them to the clipboard?
Steps:
- Visit the post “My vimperator settings” and install vimperator + my config file.
- For copying the URL address, use the command “y”.
- For copying the title of the page, use the command “ALT + y”.
Essential Firefox add-ons
Here I will list my favourite Firefox add-ons. The list will change over time.
Must have
First wave:
- Siphon add-on synchronizer (+)
- Xmarks Sync
- Vimperator (+)
- WebMail Notifier (+)
Second wave:
- Download Statusbar (+)
- DownThemAll!
- Flagfox
- Google Talk plugin (+)
- Linkification
- Send Link button (+) with Send Link in context menu
- Tab Mix Plus (how to use multiple tab rows) [my config file]
- URL Lister (+)
- Video DownloadHelper
- WebMail Ad Blocker (+)
Third wave:
Optional
- Adblock Plus
- FoxyProxy (+)
- The Pandora Directive (Media Hint) (+)
- Print Edit
- Reddit Enhancement Suite
- Remote XUL Manager (for Lotus Notes web client)
- RIP — Remove It Permanently (+)
Development:
Useful Links
- List of most popular add-ons.
- “I want an extension to…” 200+ extremely useful firefox extensions that save time and effort: http://www.econsultant.com/i-want-firefox-extension/.
Save your current Firefox tabs and restore them later
Problem
When you work on a project, usually you have lots of tabs open in Firefox: some Google results, related blog posts, API documentations, etc. If you use several machines, it would be useful to save the current tab list to a file, and restore the list on another machine and continue the work from where you stopped.
Solution
Save the current tab list
What you need is the URL Lister Firefox add-on (official home page is here). Once installed, go to Tools -> URL Lister…, copy the list to the clipboard and save it to a file, send it to you in e-mail, etc.
Restore the tab list
For restoring the tab list, use the script open_in_tabs.py. Example:
cat url_list.txt | ./open_in_tabs.py
Real-life scenario
You are working on a (hobby) project on your desktop machine. You feel like going to the library where you want to continue the project on your laptop. Just save the tab list and open the very same tabs on your laptop.
Related tip
If you need to restart Firefox and/or your machine, you can ask Firefox to restore your tab list. Go to Edit -> Preferences -> General tab, and next to “When Firefox starts“, select “Show my windows and tabs from last time“.
Who is hosting a given website?
To find out who is hosting a given website, visit http://www.whoishostingthis.com/.
Example: http://www.whoishostingthis.com/wordpress.com
Related work
You can also install the Flagfox Firefox add-on. Then, with a simple click you can get lots of information about the current page you are visiting.
Patch to Google Translate https pages
Problem
When you want to translate a page with Google Translate that uses the HTTPS protocol, you will get an error. Translation only works with HTTP addresses. Here is how to reproduce the problem:
- We will use https://ubuntulife.wordpress.com/ as our test subject (Spanish site).
- Visit Google Translate.
- Paste “https://ubuntulife.wordpress.com” (without quotes) in the text area.
- In the dropdown list next to “From:”, select “Detect language”.
- Click on the button Translate.
You will get a beautiful “Sorry, this URL is invalid” error.
Explanation:
This a known bug on the side of Google but they don’t rush to correct it. In the address bar you have the string “http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fubuntulife.wordpress.com%2F”. Notice that the address to be translated begins with https. In the upper frame, Google Translate transforms this address to “http://ubuntulife.wordpress.com:443/”, i.e. port 443 is added automatically.
Update (20110211): Google has a clarification. In this thread, Google guy Josh says the following: “Currently our webpage translation service will not translate secure https pages. This is because such pages often have secure content, that you wouldn’t want to send over the wire plain text to Google Translate.” That is, they know about this problem but they don’t have a good solution.
Manual workaround #1:
Remove the port “:443″ from the Google Translate textfield and press the button Translate.
Manual workaround #2:
In the address bar, locate the string https and change it to http. Then press Enter to reload the page. The port “443″ will also disappear.
Workaround for the lazy ones
Let’s use a simple bookmarklet that implements the manual method #2:
javascript:
var l = document.location;
var h = l.href;
var https = encodeURIComponent('https://'); // https%3A%2F%2F
var http = encodeURIComponent('http://'); // http%3A%2F%2F
l.href = h.replace(https, http);
void(1);
Installation:
Open this page in a new tab. There, you will find a link “ReTr” (re-translate). Drag and drop that link to the bookmark bar.
Usage:
Once the ReTr (re-translate) bookmarklet is installed, try to translate an HTTPS page. When you get the error message, just click on the ReTr bookmarklet and the page should be translated correctly.
Translate with Flagfox
Flagfox is a Firefox add-on that can “display a country flag depicting the location of the current website’s server and provides a multitude of tools such as site safety checks, whois, translation, similar sites, validation, URL shortening, and more…“
How to translate a page with Flagfox: right click on the country flag in the address bar -> select Google Translate. You will get an error message with HTTPS pages, but you can correct it with the previously mentioned “ReTr” bookmarklet.
Send link button in Firefox
Problem
When you browse the Web, you encounter articles quite often that could be interesting for your friends too. How to send them these links in a fast and painless way?
Solution
Install the Send Link button add-on for Firefox. It’s a “trivial extension to add a toolbar button to trigger Firefox’s built-in Send Link… menu…”
Combine it with Gmail
If you have a Gmail account, you can set Gmail in Firefox as the default e-mail client. Then, when you click on a mailto: link, Gmail will open automatically.
Steps to follow: in Firefox, go to Preferences. Choose the Application tab and type in “mailto”. Under Action, choose Use Gmail. Done.
My vimperator settings
Update (20110502): This post was updated for Vimperator 3.1. Copy/paste is corrected in this new version, thus the plugin mswin.vimp is not needed anymore. I removed that part from the post.
“Vimperator is a Firefox browser extension with strong inspiration from the Vim text editor, with a mind towards faster and more efficient browsing. It has similar key bindings and you could call it a modal web browser, as key bindings differ according to which mode you are in. For example, it has a special Hint mode, where you can follow links easily with the keyboard only. Also most functionality is available as commands, typing :back will go back within the current page history, just like hitting the back button in the toolbar.” (source)
Vimperator is a very useful Firefox add-on. When I reinstall a system, this is one of the first add-ons that I need to install in order to be able to work efficiently :)
Here are my config files:
Useful commands:
To tell the truth, I only use a very small subset of the features offered by Vimperator. Here are my favourites:
ESC(hitting the ESC key => enter command mode)j,k(Scroll down and up. To memorize:jlooks like a down arrow.)r(reload the page)o URL(open URL in the current tab)t URL(open URL in a focused new tab)T URL(Open URL in an unfocused new tab. This is a custom feature added to my config file.)/ SEARCH_TERM(Vim-like, case-insensitive incremental search. Pressingnyou can jump to the next the search hit.)d(close the current tab)u(Restore a closed tab. Can be used repeatedly to restore several closed tabs.):res(Restart the browser. It’ll restore the tab set.)gu(From the current URL, remove the part after the last ‘/’. Example: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/central/ becomes http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/)gU(In the current URL, leave the host name only. Example: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/central/ becomes http://www.mozilla.com/)gg(jump to the top of the page)G(jump to the end of the page)y(copy the current URL to the clipboard)ALT+y(Copy page title to the clipboard. This is a custom feature added to my config file.)- Shortcuts; I just love them. You have a favourite site, say http://slashdot.org/, and you want to assign an alias to this site, for instance “sd”. Then, you’d like to open this site by using the command “
:o sd“. To this end, visit the site (here http://slashdot.org/), and assign a bookamark to it by “:bma -k=sd“. From now on, “sd” is associated to http://slashdot.org/. You can type “sd” in the address bar too.
If you know some cool tips, please share with us in the comments.
