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The Mozilla and Firefox Web Browsers

Introduction

I mainly use the Firefox web browser (the successor of Mozilla, which I had used since April 2000) for the following reasons: free software, designed for standards compliance (HTML, CSS, PNG, MathML, SVG, etc.), portable (I can use it on various platforms), good from a security point of view (i.e. with relatively few security holes for its complexity, and they are quickly fixed), actively developped, with extension possibilities (see below).

Firefox Extensions

Firefox extensions database. Here are a few extensions I use:

Tab Mix Plus

Lots of additional useful features for tab-browsing.

Link Widgets

A site-navigation tool (formerly Link Toolbar). Eases navigation within sequences of pages by providing toolbar buttons for the first, previous, next, and last page. Also includes buttons to move up a level in the website, or to the top of the website, and a menu of links to further related pages (which can include a table of contents, an index, printable versions of the current page, translated versions, or page authors' contact details, etc.). Web pages can provide the information about the related pages using the HTML link element, or the extension can guess them [...].

Link Widgets does not work with Debian's Iceweasel, but can be patched.

FlashBlock

Replaces Flash objects with a button you can click to view them.

SearchStatus

Display the Google PageRank and Alexa ranking with search-related tools.

Pinger

Link checker: looks for broken links on a page.

Stylish

Customize the look of websites and of the user interface. In particular, I use this extension to fix the font size chosen by some web sites and to combine the Stop and Reload buttons.

Auto Copy

Copies selected text to the clipboard automatically. Like Linux or mIrc. I use this extension under Mac OS X, with this patch (otherwise Auto Copy forgets to copy text that has been selected just before).

Web Developer

Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools. May also be useful for non-developers and for bug reports.

Split Browser

Provides a temporary browser frame below the main content-area. I find this extension useful to compare two web pages; in particular I use it to check the translations of my pages. Replaces the Content Holder extension.

Open in Browser

Offers the possibility to display documents of unsupported types in the browser window; these documents may be simple text files, like C sources! Very useful extension, until bug 57342 is fixed.

Greasemonkey

Allows you to customize the way web pages look and function.

Live HTTP Headers

Gives information about the HTTP headers.

HeadingsMap

Generates an index of any web document structured with headings, indicating the level of the headings and its possible errors. By clicking on any of its items, you can access directly to the content of the page.

Documentation to build your own extension, and a tutorial by Paul Adams: Your First Firefox Extension (it's on an archive, so maybe a bit obsolete).

Bugs

Like any software, Mozilla and Firefox have bugs and lack some features that would be very useful. Here are the most significant ones for my use of Mozilla/Firefox (some of them may be related to each other). Note that some of these bugs are present only in development versions (trunk), which are not aimed at the end user.



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