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hey instead of bullying or scaring you into switching to firefox, let me tell you why i LOVE firefox and how my online life has improved significantly since installing it
- the setup process is easy, and even fun! if you’re using tumblr rn, you can handle it, and if you’re the kind of tumblr user who likes customizing your blog or tinkering with xkit, you can have a lot of fun personalizing really granular settings and picking themes and extensions and everything, it’s very customizable and i happily spent like 2 hours getting everything perfect.
- you can use a command line entry tool to change specific settings right from the search bar! i did this to make firefox stop auto filling my email information since i use a different password locker (which you should too! try bitwarden!), and it was easier than digging through a bunch of submenus for a setting i wasn’t sure existed. you can just turn shit off!
- there’s a preset theme called aurora that’s purple and VERY pretty
- once you get ublock origin and as many other blockers as you’d like set up, no ads, anywhere, ever! streaming sites, youtube, all the basics, totally no stress and no compatibility issues for me
- in browser screenshot and picture in picture functions!! holy shit i use these every day, the PiP is especially helpful, it replaced an extension i used to use on chrome and it’s leagues better and works on all video content pretty much
- overall better downloads management imo, it’s a lot easier to get to your downloads and find them later
- better bookmark system, with the ability to organize your bookmarks with searchable tags and assign them a shortcut you can type into the search bar to go to
- containers! you can have two accounts to the same website open in two different tabs and switch between them without having to switch accounts. also gives firefox the ability to contain facebook and their trackers, so you can click that party invite link without feeling like you just let mark zuckerberg into your house
these were just off the top of my head, i love firefox a lot and actively enjoy using it, which i never felt with chrome! please download firefox!! you will not regret it!!! where’s your fucking rage!!!!!! go!!!!!!!!!
So You've Finally Switched to Firefox: a Brief Guide to a Some Very Useful Add-Ons.
This post is inspired by two things, the first being the announcement by Google that the long delayed Manifest V3 which will kill robust adblocking will finally roll out in June 2024, and the second, a post written by @sexhaver in response to a question as to what adblockers and extensions they use. It's a very good post with some A+ information, worth checking out.
I love Firefox, I love the degree of customization it offers me as a user. I love how it just works. I love the built in security features like DNS over HTTPS, and I love just how many excellent add-ons are available. It is a better browser than Chrome in every respect, and of the many Chromium based browsers out there, only Vivaldi comes close.
There are probably many people out there who are considering switching over to Firefox but are maybe putting it off because they've got Chrome set up the way they like it with the extensions they want, and doing all that again for Firefox seems like a chore. The Firefox Add-on directory is less expansive than the Chrome Web Store (which in recent years has become overrun with garbage extensions that range from useless to active malware), but there is still a lot of stuff to sift through. That's where this short guide comes in.
I'm presently running 33 add-ons for Firefox and have a number of others installed but disabled. I've used many others. These are my picks, the ones that I consider essential, useful, or in some cases just fun.
Adblocking/Privacy/Security:
uBlock Origin: The single best adblocker available. If you're a power user there are custom lists and scripts you can find to augment it.
Privacy Badger: Not strictly necessary if you're also running uBlock, but it does catch a few trackers uBlock doesn't and replaces potentially useful trackers like comment boxes with click-to-activate placeholders.
Decentraleyes: A supplementary tool meant to run alongside uBlock, prevents certain sites from breaking when tracker requests are denied by serving local bundled files as replacement.
NoScript: The nuclear option for blocking trackers, ads, and even individual elements. Operates from a "trust no one" standpoint, you will need to manually enable elements yourself. Not recommended for casual users, but a fantastic tool for the power user.
Webmail Ad Blocker: The first of many webmail related add-ons from Jason Saward I will be recommending. Removes all advertising from webmail services like Gmail or Yahoo Mail.
Popup Blocker (Strict): Strictly blocks ALL pop up/new tab/new window requests from all website by default unless you manually allow it.
SponsorBlock: Not a fan of listening to your favourite YouTuber read advertisements for shitty products like Raycons or BetterHelp? This skips them automatically.
AdNauseam: I don't use this one but some people prefer it. Rather than straight up blocking ads and trackers, it obfuscates data by injecting noise into the tracker surveillance infrastructure. It clicks EVERY ad, making your data profile incomprehensible.
User-Agent Switcher: Allows you to spoof websites attempting to gather information by altering your browser profile. Want to browse mobile sites on desktop? This allows you to do it.
Bitwarden: Bitwarden has been my choice of password manager since LastPass sold out and made their free tier useless. If you're not using a password manager, why not? All of my passwords look like this: $NHhaduC*q3VhuhD&scICLKjvM4rZK5^c7ID%q5HVJ3@gny I don't know a single one of them and I use a passphrase as a master password supplemented by two-factor-authentication. Everything is filled in automatically. It is the only way to live.
Proton Pass: An open source free password manager from the creators of Proton Mail. I've been considering moving over to it from Bitwarden myself.
Webmail/Google Drive:
Checker Plus for Gmail: Provides desktop notifications for Gmail accounts, supports managing multiple accounts, allows you to check your mail, read, mark as read or delete e-mails at a glance in a pop-up window. An absolutely fabulous add-on from Jason Saward.
Checker Plus for Google Drive: Does for your Google Drive what Checker Plus for Gmail does for your Gmail.
Checker Plus for Google Calendar: The same as the above two only this time for your Google Calendar.
Firefox Relay: An add-on that allows you to generate aliases that forward to your real e-mail address.
Accessibility:
Dark Reader: Gives every page on the internet a customizable Dark Mode for easier reading and eye protection.
Read Aloud: A text to speech add-on that reads pages with the press of a button.
Zoom Page WE: Provides the ability to zoom in on pages in multiple ways: text zoom, full page zoom, auto-fit etc.
Mobile Dyslexic: Not one I use, but I know people who swear by it. Replaces all fonts with a dyslexia friendly type face.
Utility:
ClearURLs: Automatically removes tracking data from URLs.
History Cleaner: Automatically deletes browser history older than a set number of days.
Feedbro RSS Feed Reader: A full standalone reader in your browser, take control of your feed and start using RSS feeds again.
Video Download Helper: A great tool for downloading video files from websites.
Snap Link Plus: Fan of Wikipedia binge holes? Snap Link allows to drag select multiple hyperlink and automatically open all of them in new tabs.
Copy PlainText: Copy any text without formatting.
EPUBReader: Read .epub files from within a browser window.
Tab Stash: A no mess, no fuss way to organize groups of tabs as bookmarks. I use it as a temporary bookmark tool, saving sessions or groups of tabs into "to read" folders.
Tampermonkey/Violentmonkey: Managers for installing and running custom user scripts. Find user scripts on OpenUserJS or Greasy Fork, there's an entire galaxy out there of ingenious and weird custom user scripts out there, go discover it.
Browsing & Searching:
Speed Dial 2: A new tab add-on that gives you easy access to your favourite sites.
Unpaywall: Whenever you come across a scholarly article behind a paywall, this add-on will search through all the free databases for an accessible and non-paywalled version of the text.
Web Archives: Come across a dead page? This add-on gives you a quick way to search for cached versions of the page on the Wayback Machine, Google Cache, Archive.is and others.
Bypass Paywalls: Automatically bypasses the paywalls of major websites like those for the New York Times, New Yorker, the Financial Times, Wired, etc.
Simple Translate: Simple one-click translation of web pages powered by Google Translate.
Search by Image: Reverse search any image via several different search engines: Google Image, TinEye, Yandex, Bing, etc.
Website Specific:
PocketTube: Do you subscribe to too many YouTube channels? Would you like a way to organize them? This is your answer.
Enhancer for Youtube: Provides a suite of options that make using YouTube more pleasant: volume boost, theatre mode, forced quality settings, playback speed and mouse wheel volume control.
Augmented Steam: Improves the experience of using Steam in a browser, see price histories of games, take notes on your wishlist, make wish listed games and new DLC for games you own appear more visible, etc.
Return YouTube Dislikes: Does exactly what it says on the package.
BlueBlocker: Hate seeing the absolute dimmest individuals on the planet have their replies catapulted to the top of the feed because they're desperate to suck off daddy Elon sloppy style? This is for you, it automatically blocks all Blue Checks on Twitter. I've used it to block a cumulative 34,000 Blue Checks.
Batchcamp: Allows for batch downloading on Bandcamp.
XKit Rewritten: If you're on Tumblr and you're not using whichever version of XKit is currently available, I honestly don't know what to say to you. This newest version isn't as fully featured as the old XKit of the golden age, but it's been rewritten from the ground up for speed and utility.
Social Fixer for Facebook: I once accidentally visited Facebook without this add-on enabled and was immediately greeted by the worst, mind annihilating content slop I had ever had the misfortune to come across. Videos titled "he wanted her to get lip fillers and she said no so he had bees sting her lips", and AI photos of broccoli Jesus with 6000 comments all saying "wow". Once I turned it on it was just stuff my dad had posted and updates from the Radio War Nerd group.
BetterTTV: Makes Twitch slightly more bearable.
Well I think that's everything. You don't have to install everything here, or even half of it, but there you go, it's a start.
Firefox Extensions I like
UBlock Origin - Adblocking
Chameleon - IP and random agent spoofing
TrackMeNot - Floods web search engines with false queries at a settable interval
Location Guard - Obfuscates precise location
Privacy Possum - Blocks and falsifies information collected by tracking
ClearURLs - Removes tracking elements from URLs
LocalCDN - Prevents third party requests
CanvassBlocker - Prevents fingerprinting
UnPaywall - Circumvents paywalls for research papers
Sci-Hub - Adds a Sci-Hub link to academic papers
ChromeMask - Disguises Firefox as Chrome for Chrome-only websites
FlagFox - Adds a flag next to the URL indicating its origin
firefox just started doing this too so remember kids if you want to stream things like netflix or hulu over discord without the video being blacked out you just have to disable hardware acceleration in your browser settings!
Hey all, you know how internet searches suck now? When the results are awful, full-of-AI, death-of-the-internet levels of bad?
Start appending date constraints to your searches - "before:2023".
My results have gone from 90% AI bullshit to ~60% usable - which frankly at this point is a huge improvement.
://www.dreamstime.com/ ://www.freepik.com/ ://www.craiyon.com/ ://stock.adobe.com/ ://storybird.ai/ ://www.dinosaur.org/ ://pngtree.com/ ://creator.nightcafe.studio/ ://www.123rf.com/ ://lumenor.ai/ ://neural.love/ ://www.vecteezy.com/ ://openart.ai/ ://www.artpal.com/ ://generativeai.pub/ ://promptbase.com/
Block these sites in your uBlock Origin so you won't see that shit in your searches
hbo max blocks screenshots even when I use the snipping tool AND firefox AND ublock which is a fucking first. i will never understand streaming services blocking the ability to take screenshots thats literally free advertising for your show right there. HOW THE HELL IS SOMEBODY GONNA PIRATE YOUR SHOW THROUGH SCREENSHOTS. JACKASS
In recent years, Google users have developed one very specific complaint about the ubiquitous search engine: They can’t find any answers. A simple search for “best pc for gaming” leads to a page dominated by sponsored links rather than helpful advice on which computer to buy. Meanwhile, the actual results are chock-full of low-quality, search-engine-optimized affiliate content designed to generate money for the publisher rather than provide high-quality answers. As a result, users have resorted to work-arounds and hacks to try and find useful information among the ads and low-quality chum. In short, Google’s flagship service now sucks.
And Google isn’t the only tech giant with a slowly deteriorating core product. Facebook, a website ostensibly for finding and connecting with your friends, constantly floods users’ feeds with sponsored (or “recommended”) content, and seems to bury the things people want to see under what Facebook decides is relevant. And as journalist John Herrman wrote earlier this year, the “junkification of Amazon” has made it nearly impossible for users to find a high-quality product they want — instead diverting people to ad-riddled result pages filled with low-quality products from sellers who know how to game the system.
All of these miserable online experiences are symptoms of an insidious underlying disease: In Silicon Valley, the user’s experience has become subordinate to the company’s stock price. Google, Amazon, Meta, and other tech companies have monetized confusion, constantly testing how much they can interfere with and manipulate users. And instead of trying to meaningfully innovate and improve the useful services they provide, these companies have instead chased short-term fads or attempted to totally overhaul their businesses in a desperate attempt to win the favor of Wall Street investors. As a result, our collective online experience is getting worse — it’s harder to buy the things you want to buy, more convoluted to search for info
I cannot put into words how much I Fucking Loathe the fact that when you search something on youtube now it will randomly intersperse blocks of "people also watched" and "for you" into the results. That's not what I searched for, youtube. I typed in a search query because I wanted to see search results, not random unrelated garbage you have placed in my way apparently to either inconvenience me or force me to scroll further for actual results. I despise your wretched little games and every time I see it I can only instantly close the tab as I am overcome with the urge to burn something down.
hello google chrome refugees
don't use any of these browsers, they're also chrome
Here are my favorite firefox plugins for security/anti-tracking/anti-ad that I recommend you get
please get off chrome google is currently being investigated for being an Illegal Monopoly so get outta there okay love you bye
Firefox v120!
New copy link without site tracking feature: removes the tracking at the end of urls usually that end with "?=[long ass string of numbers or info on your browser or how you clikced the link]" previously an optional feature of ublock origin to remove it as you go to sites, but now you can also copy links as well
New "Tell websites not to sell or share my data" option in privacy settings. Websites have no obligation to do this, except under GDPR which is most sites. adds a bit to your fingerprintability, however if everyone turns this on it will work better for everyone.
Firefox is rolling-out Cookie Banner Blocker by default in private windows for users in Germany during the coming weeks. Firefox will now auto-refuse cookies and dismiss annoying cookie banners for supported sites.
you can set "cookiebanners.service.mode" to 2 to automatically refuse cookies and have them stop asking you about it. While it's also an optional feature of ublock origin, this might work better
Firefox has enabled URL Tracking Protection by default in private windows for all users in Germany. Firefox will remove non-essential URL query parameters that are often used to track users across the web.
Not sure how to turn this on in settings (this is also an optional ublock feature, these don't hurt to stack) but once again removes the tracking at the end of urls telling you how the link was shared and how you got there
Firefox cares about your privacy and is making the internet a safer place from corporations. Do your part and download it today
my guide to getting started on firefox is the only one you need
step 1: download firefox from the official website
step 2: import your passwords and such from your browser. this sounds complicated, but it should take no time at all
step 3: download ublock origin from the firefox add-on website
thats literally all you need to do in terms of out of the box setup. you may wish to do more, such as downloading more add-ons (see under the cut for some i recommend), but this is all that is needed for most people
my recommended add-ons:
sponsorblock & her sister dearrow. sponsorblock allows you to skip sponsors in youtube videos, dearrow changes clickbait titles and thumbnails
dark reader. forces all websites to have a dark mode
the wayback machines official extension. allows you to archive and see archived versions of websites with 2 clicks
right-click borescope. allows you to view and save images, even on websites that disable it
search by image. what it says on the tin, including like a billion different image search engines, and you can customize which ones it uses
ruffle. a new flash player that is supposedly safer?? idc i use it because i have nostalgia for flash
xkit rewritten, my beloved. a suite of tumblr features you can toggle on the fly, including one-click reblogs with tags, blocking entire posts, loading the vanilla versions of audio and video, and much, much more
dont accept webp. does what it says on the tin, kills webps FOREVER
wikipedia vector skin and old reddit redirect. forces the old, better layout for those two websites
tampermonkey. allows you to write and use scripts for any website. examples include the dashboard unfucker, youtube no rounded video, and disable safesearch
redirector. make websites redirect to any other website, like forcing fandom wikis to go to breezewiki, forcing youtube to display shorts as videos, or forcing tumblr to display images in full quality (plaintext of these rules)
I often don't post code stuff on here but I guess I should more often since I do that too. I made a Bluesky Bookmarklet for anyone that still uses bookmarklets (I do). It doesn't do anything complex, just grabs the current URL you're looking at and tosses it in a Bluesky action intent so I'm not grabbing any data or anything like that. It's just a simple share button. 😊 Just to to this Codepen link to get it.
When I’m introspective about the last few years I think the biggest mistake that we made, as a company, is betting too much on HTML5 as opposed to native… because it just wasn’t there. And it’s not that HTML5 is bad. I’m actually, on long-term, really excited about it. One of the things that’s interesting is we actually have more people on a daily basis using mobile Web Facebook than we have using our iOS or Android apps combined. So mobile Web is a big thing for us.
Mark Zuckerberg @ Disrupt SF 2012. (via tobie) This quote is why I don't read articles like this.