User:Dmcritchie

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David McRitchie, my main Firefox web page begins with

Another way of viewing my website is through

A few of my additional pages include: Toolbars & Context menus, Bookmarklets, Bookmarks, Keyboard shortcuts, Keyword shortcuts, and Tabbed browsing (includes target/link/cursor tests).


My System: Dell Inspiron 1521 (laptop) with pre installed Windows Vista Basic Home (32 bit), hardware: AMD Turin 64 X2 Mobil Technology TL-50, 1.87 GB RAM, ATI Radeon XL270, Hard drive is 160 GB (8GB reserved), Windows NTSF files. Laptop has a 15" screen (13" x 8")

You can see what extensions, I am actually using about 101 extensions on my main Firefox 3.0.7,  about 83 extensions on Shiretoko (3.1b3pre yyyymmdd), and about 34 extensions on Minefield (3.1b4pre yyyymmdd). All listings are current from last start of Firefox and delayed as to when web pages actually get updated.

MozillaZine articles that need additional information

  • [1] - framework for count of Firefox features (bookmarks, history) and counts of such things (links) within active page, along with some page calculation features. The "CheckPlaces" extension provides some totals as well.

Additional Firefox pages on my website:

Some Styles that I have rewritten from my userChrome code for use in Stylish

Unless you are using Minefield (Firefox 3.6 beta) suggest you use Stylish 0.5.9 instead of Stylish 1.0 through 1.0.2

Advantage of styles over userChrome.css is you can instantly modify and see results, disadvantage won't work if extensions are disabled.

Some Substitute Pastel Colors for gray dialogs (#F0F0F0) and toolbar backgrounds
#FEF5A8 #FFFF80 #F3E078
#DCFFDC #FFD8A0 #F3E0FF
#C5F19A #FFFFCC #F79494
#F5DDB7 #FBF4D4 #FFEEC2
#D3D7CF #EFA521 #CCCCFF
More colors: [2] [3]
See a full screen example showing multiple Firefox versions with coloring to help identify profiles.
Even though some parts of screens are hidden in pictures, basically Menu bar, status bar and dialog boxes show added color, but directions are include to color what you want of menu/search bar, Navigation/Location bar, Bookmarks bar, and Tabs bar.

These are some additional styles by others that I may use

For more information install the "Stylish extension and see

Pet Peeve for Styles: No way to reduce height of title bar, which is controlled by Operating System though some extensions can change the wording of the Title Bar.

Problem with Stylish 1.0 versions is the space wasting use of: addons formatting, unnecessary inclusion of large (ugly) icon and horizontal rule for each style in list. Loss of functional enhancements: custom editor which had a color picker, ability to add "!important" far better than user can do that. Version 1.0 has an ergonomically inferior user interface.

Multiple Profiles

Extensions

See a list of extensions on my home page where I have briefly documented summaries for extensions that I use (or have used), I currently use about 101 extensions that are shown on my InfoLister listing, which has dropped somewhat due to problems with new versions of Firefox, and perhaps a couple that may have been incorporated into Firefox.

Additional Description/Documentation

More information on Extensions than could be included in brief summaries on my home page

Facilities that should be built-in to Firefox as seen in these Extensions

Extensions that should be built-in to Firefox (with all of an extensions features included), see my home page for brief descriptions and links.

  • Auto Hide, Hide/See the toolbars of your choice in Full Screen (F11/context) [Options] [Context]
  • CheckPlaces (experimental), basic checking of your bookmark URIs, with optional checks that the pages still exist (such use is not recommended, could take hours and is abusive to servers), checks for duplicate bookmarks, and for empty folders. Provides bookmark counts. Any check of a bookmark being valid wants an immediate answer keep/delete, you should always keep so it is usually a pointless test -- Use a keyword shortcut such as "archive:" or "a:" to research failed bookmarks when encountered in normal use.
  • Document Map, Displays the current page's H1-Hn heading structure (indented by heading level) in the sidebar (Alt+O)
  • Duplicate Tab, Duplicate a tab to a new tab (Ctrl+Shift+U) or to a new window (Ctrl+Shift+N), and it allows you to merge different windows (Ctrl+Shift+M) in one window. [Tab Context]
  • Go Parent Folder, takes you to parent folder of bookmark. Adds "Go Parent Folder" menu to context menu in The Library list view and Search result in Bookmarks Sidebar.
  • Keyconfig (keyboard shortcuts) ++, view/change any existing keyboard shortcut to another shortcut, or remove a shortcut Fx3 Problems solved ++
  • KeywordManager, keyword shortcuts list and manager from button on "Organize Bookmarks"
  • Locate in Bookmarks, Adds Locate to the Bookmarks Manager context menu so you can tell what “folder” your selected bookmark is in.
  • Menu Editor, Hide/unhide/rearrange menu items and separators
  • Mouse Zoom, Zooming of page with mouse controls (some of this has been built-in to Fx3)
  • OpenBook, customization of the Add Bookmark (Ctrl+D) dialog, Including keyword and Description
  • Open Profile Folder, Opens current profile folder in Windows File Manager
  • PermaTabs Mod, PermaTabs can't be closed accidentally no matter what you click [Experimental]
  • Quick Restart, partially done in Firefox 3, but no keyboard shortcut
  • Read Easily, Adds a toolbar button (toggles) to make hard to read sites readable by removing gaudy CSS usage
  • Show Parent Folder, show containing bookmark directory folder.
  • SortPlaces Sorts your bookmarks in a variety of ways, options: recursive, resort, bookmark toolbar. Option to leave the Personal Toolbar or any folders untouched. As with the built-in sort, you may use bookmark separators to maintain sorted groups within a folder. See Sorting and rearranging bookmarks - Firefox - MozillaZine Knowledge Base
  • Split Browser, Splits the content area of the browser window Top|Bottom |Left|Right by dragging a link to the edge of any frame or via context menu.
  • Work Offline, Adds an icon to indicate and switch online/offline mode on the status bar.

In addition would highly recommend these extensions for almost General Usage

  • Add to Search Bar, Extension provides the ability to effortlessly add your own search engines from any search form you find. Make any pages' search functionality available in the Search Bar (or “search box”). Just make a right click in a search field and choose "Add to Search Bar...". (Fx3 has "Add Keyword for this Search..." built-in)
  • Copy All Url ++, Copies all URLs of open tabs in structured form (sorted or in tab order) to clipboard for pasting. Can work with title, url, order of tabs reported. Must double-check options in use text or HTML before using, has shortcut keys (multiple urls strictly from tabs)
  • Copy URL plus ++, Copy to clipboard a single link via context menu as a formatted link the document’s URL along with the title or the selection. Highly customizable. (single url from page or link)
  • Customize Google, Enhance Google search results and remove ads and spam, has a nice streaming option as well so you can continuously scroll down.
  • Launchy, Enable opening links and mailto's with external applications.
  • Linky, Open all or selected links or text links into multiple tabs (|windows); or all images or image links as images into one|multiple tabs(|windows).
  • Page Diff, a simple page differences application, compares of two HTML files identified from their web pages.
  • Stylish, Customize the look of websites and the user interface. Mostly snips that could be used in userChrome.css, but can be toggled on/off instantly.
  • Tab Counter, counts the number of open tabs.
  • Table Tools, Sort, filter or copy any table (Ctrl+Alt+click sorts, Ctrl+Shift+click shows filter, Ctrl+z+click allows copying in various formats.
  • Web Developer, Adds a menu (and a toolbar) with various web development tools. Mostly an arrangement of bookmarklets type material.

++ See my main page for links to extensions, working versions are not always available at addons

Problems and Pet Peeves

  • Addons_2007 New Format major problems (Bug: 372841), some improvement in that it more conspicuous than the originally dumped search, but I personally prefer reliable well understood Google (site:) search.
  • Profile not readily available for users, makes it difficult to help others and wastes tens of thousands of hours in the Firefox community (finding/helping/documenting). Only nearly practical solution is to install the "Open Profile Folder" extension. Extensions do not work in Safe Mode, have to be installed and can't be used unless it can be installed.
  • Selecting profile to be used, doesn't tell you which Firefox version and in which folder is asking you to choose a profile, also want to know what application asked to start Firefox.  Selecting a wrong profile with an unknown Firefox version can cause serious damage to a profile.
  • Bloated extensions or extensions where a simple user configuration change would have sufficed Options (Tools menu), about:config, userContent.css, userContent.css, user.js) Most of my userChrome.css changes have been converted into styles (see earlier topic).
  • Big Toolbar or Status bar icons, McAfee SiteAdvisor uses about 10% of status bar instead of 16x16 pixels, Launchy toolbar icon useless drop down arrow making icon too high for toolbar. (For Launchy can remove the useless dropdown arrow with Launchy button remove space wasting drop-down, and can squeeze buttons such as the McAfee SiteAdvisor button down to unreadable compact button with a user style StatusBar Minimal Height.
  • Changing color of BACK and FORWARD buttons from Green to Blue, with difficult visual effects. Have minimized problem by severely downsizing the combined back/forward button with either Navigation/Location Bar Minimal Height or Navigation/Location Bar Presentation Height styles.
  • Inability to lock a Tab (Bug: 392313) without an extension such as "PermaTabs" or with the very questionable "TMP" (bloated, poor - reversed naming usage). Strange to have an outright rejection as Opera has some of what is wanted. Very difficult to work with validating a lot of links when invoking a link can hide the page you are working on then get it refreshed, so you have to start all over again.  You can use a bookmarklet so that any link on page will open in a New Tab ("NT:) or in the Same Tab ("ST:").
  • "Stylish" extension usage extremely compromised by all updates since 0.5.9 [5]
  • Reasons that I do not like the Firefox 3.7 mock-ups for Toolbars that will only/mainly apply to Windows Vista at least at first.