hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4292.txt

Episode: 4292
Title: HPR4292: Firefox Add-ons
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4292/hpr4292.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 22:36:33

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4292 for Tuesday the 14th of January 2025.
Today's show is entitled Firefox Addons.
It is hosted by Rato and is about 29 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is How to Enhance the Capabilities of Firefox.
Hi, this is your host, Rato.
And this is a show about Firefox Addons recorded in January 2025.
The headings I will talk about.
Introduction of Addons is it safe?
Access or finding addons?
Addons I have in use.
So let's get started.
Introduction Firefox has addons and browser extensions.
Extensions also known as Firefox Addons.
These are extra features.
You can download and install to add more functionality to your browser.
Addons allow you to customize your Firefox browser and enhance the way you use the web.
Next to the extension or in the same area, you also find themes.
They can change your browser's appearance.
And there are also dictionaries and language packs.
And all this you get from a community of creators.
The addons listed here are created by thousands of developers and theme designers from all over
the world, ranging from individual hobbyists to large corporations.
Some addons listed on addons.motsilla.org have been automatically published and may be
subject to review by a team of editors once publicly listed.
Is it safe to use addons?
Well in short, no, but what is safe?
If you would write an addon, would you try to harm others or help yourself and others
as well?
A rhetorical question, but yeah.
Well I wouldn't use an addon to keep my crypto wallet in it or my password per se if it
is not coming from the one like writing key pass or something like that so that, yeah,
do some background checks as much as it needs and as much as is possible.
Usually I go and try to look at the GitHub page, sneak a little bit around, look how
it sounds, if I got a good guts feeling, I go for it.
If I don't, I rather leave it for the moment and maybe return later when I probably find
something else about it.
The web is the web as it is.
How to access or finding addons is the next topic.
If you look at your Firefox on the top right side, you see a puzzle or jigsaw piece and
the hamburger menu with the three lines menu, via addons and themes inside there, you
can go into this section.
So either so you have several options to go in there, there is also shortcut via the keyboard.
So I have different ways to find addons, sometimes somebody mentions it on a podcast,
for example, like I will do later on or you read somewhere about it or you're just curious
yourself if nobody has ever had that problem that you are facing and you go and search
for an addon with Firefox.
There is a search inside that menu option on the top right in the middle on the top, how
we are mostly used to it.
Then you get the overview on the left hand side, you get the categories and in the middle
of it you see the addons you have installed, if you have any, usually one or two is always
there.
For example, if you use the KDE Plasma Desktop like I do, there is at least the Plasma
integration provides better integration with the KDE Plasma Desktop.
Another thing is you can to find that place apart from all the others I mentioned before
is if you type in the address bar about colon addons, addons one word.
You can also find out some more detail about the addons you have installed if you type
about colon support, hit enter.
About the sixth table covers details about the addons you have installed.
So there are several tables when you go in the about support, so it's about the sixth.
Then you can also enter in the address bar about colon processes, so you can see what your
web browser has kind of energy impact on your computer and a very special one about colon
memory, then you click first probably on a tab and then you go inside that tab and click
on measure, the button measure, then you have to wait a while and then it will build
up a large tree with all the consumption that is going on.
So this is about the access of the addons you already have.
So let's go through the addons I have in use or I have installed.
It is 13 and another 3 that are deactivated for quite some time.
Some of my addons work quietly in the background and other addons I have to start and control
up on my need request.
So the first one I have is bookmarks organizer, I still have from the past quite a lot of
bookmarks and the bookmarks organizer will check them if they are still valid, if they
still work.
Consider before you delete some that the web server may be down today this week for whatever
reason before you just wildly delete anything.
It features finds no longer working bookmarks, finds duplicate bookmarks, finds books marks
without a name, broken bookmarks can be edited or deleted and so on.
Not sure if I even got that one because of a tip from someone from HPR, then another
nice one is clear who are you are else.
This does remove tracking elements from the link you copy, for example if you want
to send a product link from a large river from a shop called after a large river in
South America, they have a tracking link in it and this addon should help to remove it.
It is called clear URL.
Another one I have is a nicely called don't fuck with paste, prevents the blocking of
copying from and pasting into input fields that works often but not always.
Then another one is don't track me Google, this removes the annoying link conversion that
Google does when you copy results from the Google, it gets really long and it is unreadable
and whatsoever it removes all that and you just got a nice clean link to copy and paste
to somebody or whatever.
Then I have download all images, easily save images with a wide range of customization
features such as file size, dimension and image type.
If you are or if you want to download a specific picture from a website or all of them this
is really handy when you started it gives you a nice overview of all the images and the
sizes as I just read and you can choose which one you want to download or all of them.
Then I have the enhancer for YouTube.
This was a really nice YouTube advertisement, remover and a lot of really nice features
and functions. However, since version 2.0.121, so I am in the past with the version I am
using, I searched for it in GitHub also and found an old version and downloaded that one
again because it stopped working because it was something about the legal thing and so
the guy removed the function to jump over advertisements.
But you can define how each other repeat a YouTube video if you want to hear the same section
of a song all the time or if you wanted to YouTube to play not in the highest resolution
like myself, I only want to have it playing 70-20p because I also want to reduce the
bandwidth, not that I have not enough bandwidth, but if I want to jump very quick to a YouTube
video, I want it to be quick and the less data the quicker it is from the server to me usually.
And a lot of other functions, you can speed up and down, you get an extra button there.
Yeah, a lot. You have to look for yourself. It has really a couple of things that you can
put into the default values, how you like YouTube to present you the videos and for the
one with the ads I come later to another one. Then there used to be, I don't care about
cookies until he sold this extension to a company who also makes an antivirus software and they
got some bad press because they did things that you shouldn't be doing. And so this project got
forked and the new one is called or the fork is called I still don't care about cookies.
You can check by yourself and you can do a wide listing inside and so on.
Well, it should in any case usually hit the button where it says I don't want to have any cookies.
Sometimes maybe it does not hit the perfect one. I guess sometimes it goes on on the
on the pattern of some of those cookie questionnaires and then it guesses. Because I cannot imagine
that they have defined a role or a rule for all of those cookies. So it says the community version
of the popular extension I don't care about cookies. It also has a GitHub repo. The
regulation required that any website using tracking cookies must get used as permission before
installing them. So it stops to bother you most of the time. And sometimes I want to have
the control myself. Then you have this as I said before you have this preference thing where you
can add stuff like I have like Google inside there or YouTube where I want to be able to see
and to decide what I want to click on also in order to make sure that that it functions very well.
Then I come to a next one which used to be
the micromatrix. U-matrix. U-matrix is from this guy called Raymond Hill.
It is no longer maintained micromatrix. However I kept it going. It does basically block
everything. It's incredible. You get a matrix where you see what it is blocked and what you want
to allow and what you don't want to allow. So you can for each website. Basically in default
value it blocks as much as possible. Then you can go ahead and decide what you want to allow.
And you can save your choice or you can just allow it for the one where you visit
thing it. And when you leave it it forgets it. And the next time you come it is all blocked again.
Now there was a guy that I heard by accident who picked up micromatrix and it's called
NU-matrix. So this is like Norbert uniform and then matrix. And it does basically the same. He
did some corrections on it or some changes. He changed one word in the matrix, one column,
topic at just a different name so far my understanding. And I have it still running. But
it's this one can be a pain to be honest. Sometimes while I have a second web browser installed
the Vivaldi. So if everything if I cannot get it to run I go over there just for certain things.
But my standard web browser is Firefox and so I have it every day actually. Then the plasma
integration I already mentioned before. And for some reason Firefox removed the RSS preview.
When you nowadays click on an RSS preview it's just garbage you get served. So I have the RSS
preview that's just one word. So it's preview of RSS feeds in your web browser. It's a simple one.
And you will see such add-ons are pretty small, couple kilobytes usually. So it is not that you
blow to your computer like gigabyte-wise it is really these extensions are usually quite small.
Also you can for each extension well I did the default thing that I don't want it to update
automatically. I don't want that. And then for certain I go and allow it.
Because sometimes it broke something or like I mentioned before the one with YouTube
in retro perspective I didn't want that to automatically update.
So I switched it off for all of them. And then again I went and enabled some of them to do
the update automatically. Next one single file just one word.
Single file extension is to help you to save a website in a single file. You know you can hit
well you can hit the old tab on your keyboard and then the file menu appears and then you can
save page S and then you usually get an HTML file or an HTML file and then folder where it puts
everything inside. And so this one does as it says single file. So it does put everything in a
single file. And I think this is I prefer this approach than the one with a folder the standard one
from Firefox. So now again micro U block origin. So it's a U block space origin. So this is I
guess the most famous ad blocker all around all over the world. It's really great when you're used
to it on some pages when you see them without it. It's like you you cannot imagine how it is to
use the web anymore. When you when you surf it or when when you have it when you have U block origin
I recommend to you that you have on the right hand corner next to the next to that icon the
jigsaw piece. Next to it that you have the U block origin that you have the icon up there because
if you click on the icon up there you have a large on off button. The on off button looks like
you have on your remote control for your TV or such. And if you have some problems on the
website you can quickly hit that icon, turn it off, reload the page and see if it is got fixed.
If you have to do a complete reload don't forget to hold down the shift key and press the reload
button again or shift plus F5. Yeah U block origin also helps you with YouTube ads and so on. It's
really a beautiful add-on and I can recommend it and it needs automatic updates or if something stops
working you go in there and see whether or not there is an update available. So number 13 the
user agent switcher switch between popular user agent strings from from toolbar pop up.
This one is really well a special situation. I think I had it at some place where I was looking
for an article in a newspaper and I could read it on my mobile and when I came back or when
I turned on the computer and tried to find the same article on my computer it wouldn't serve it
to me it would say like yeah that's behind the paywall forget it. And then I switched my user agent
switcher and told the computers that I'm and that it is an Android mobile and the website got
served to me. So I need this on a rare occasion but if you if you work on websites and such and
you want to test your website how it is delivered on a mobile. If the computer identifies as
mobile whatsoever you can use that user agent switcher. And what else? So yeah then the one I
had was a twitter to nitter redirect. This one is deactivated because it didn't work anymore.
I don't have a login to twitter. I never ever had one and if I wanted to read something over there
or just look at the profile of a person it wasn't possible and so this one would help me but it
did no longer work so I have disabled it and the micromatrix I have disabled and another one.
So that's about the extensions. Then in themes I have nothing. Then on the left hand side I have
the plugins. There is an open age 264 video codec of Cisco systems. I don't know why it is just there
and then there comes the dictionaries, manager dictionaries and I have added here the German
dictionary as for spell checking. And yeah depending on how you want the language of your web browser
I have added the German language pack here as well and so I can switch between the English version
or the German version just on my need. Okay so that's about it for all my 13 extensions. I will
put I guess I will try to put the links of them into the show notes so that if you're interested
in one or the other that you can look for it. So my recommendations it doesn't make sense to install
13 extension to your Firefox install because you're not familiar with it and then you wouldn't
wouldn't use it maybe or search or forget about it whatever. So my recommendation so the number
one is you block origin from Raymond Hill. This is really one of the best tools I know and it does
work without your interaction in the background. You just have to be aware in case a website doesn't
behave as it should. You probably have to turn that off. Then the other one is clear URLs.
I just tested it with the company with the river name. The company river name link I tested had
619 characters. After I you can also have this little icon here in the right hand corner and if
you click on it it is a trash can. There is a design of a screwdriver and another one to
move nuts and bolts. If you click on it then it does open a separate tab and in there you can
enter the URL to get it cleaned. So I have that visible up there and so from 619 character it
cleaned it out and it left over 140. So it's really taking something away. Clear URLs.
So this one works as well automatically in the background for you. So if you send someone a URL
or if you save an URL for yourself or if like me now if I paste it into the show notes it is
cleaned before. It's not just for the river company it's for others as well. Then the next one
which falls in the same category doesn't need your interaction is don't track me Google which does
also remove from Google search the tracking feature. What is it called? The feature you don't want.
I don't know. Well then I still don't care about cookies because this also works fully automatically
in the background it just helps you to get rid of the cookies. The same is true for or as preview
if you don't already already have one which does work without your interaction and then the other
ones it's on your well on your need or if you think like it would be a good time in the winter to
go through your bookmarks and see which one are obsolete in the meantime or the website no longer
exists. Bookmarks organizer is a good one for that and the download all images this is just for
the occasion when it when it happens and you need it. Also the single file to save a website that
you think it's very handy like I just did on the on the podcast from a guy who did one in December 2024
about how to use the camera what are the the low hanging fruits to get good pictures of your camera.
Yeah that's it. Last but not least the outro. I hope you enjoyed my introduction of Firefox add-ons
and remember Firefox is the last web browser with a different web engine than Google Splink
and it's 40 million lines of code that include tracking and circumvent data privacy when possible.
So you won't get data privacy without being willing to accept some loss of convenience.
There is a trade-off. I accept that trade-off and you? If you like leave a comment, send me a message
or record your thoughts on that topic. Have a nice one.
and our syncs.net. On the Sadois status, today's show is released on their creative comments,
attribution 4.0 international license.