Customize your firefox browsing

Murdoch

Murdoch

Half-way Through My Half-life
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Greasemonkey is the shit:

What is Greasemonkey?
Greasemonkey is a plugin (referred to as an 'extension') for the Firefox browser. It allows you to change how your favorite pages behave and look. There are many scripts that have already been written, and if you know javascript you can easily create your own! This site is a repository to download and install Greasemonkey scripts.

What is tagging?
Userscripts.com uses tagging to organize scripts on the site. If you are logged in, you can assign any given script keywords (referred to as a tag) that it is then associated with. For example, you might give a script that modifies Google's GMail the tags google, gmail, and email. These tags will then show up in the tags box on the main page, and you can also search based on any of these tags.
Click to expand...

First, download the userscripts extension.

Then using the directions on the second link. you can modify favorite websites in many ways, such as eliminating the banners and crap from pages. I'm looking for someone to make an NMA mod myself... :twisted:
 
It seems their most recent release fixed the huge security holes in it. Luckily.

As for NMA's banners, you've apparently never heard of AdBlock
 
Graz'zt, stop destroying my faith in you.

There is an option, under the Adblock menu, "Overlay Flash (for left-click)."
 
Hmmm... when was this option added? All this time I have used a plugin called Flashblock in addition to Adblock, which didn't actually *remove* Flash ads, but only prevented them for playing.
 
You tech-weenies are annoying.

-smacks Sander and Ratty with a 9 iron-

I use extensions to de-annoy things like cnn.com and skins.be as well.
 
Couldn't you just find out what file names flash uses and set adblock to block them by adding "*.swf" or whatever to its list?
 
The extension is designed to do alot more than just block ads. It works off the premise that while the webpage is at its core nothing more than code- for content, formats, columns, ads, etc. The script downloads modify that code, so that the information displayed is altered, after it has been delivered to your computer. For example the cnn.com script removes the side banner, but also removes the left side 'content' bars, and reformats the article into more of a newsgroupish style. The end result is that cnn.com is less glitz and more information on the page. Ad removal is just one aspect of the functionality, the real benefit is that you can take any page and alter it at the webcode level to present what you want, how you want and when you want.
 
Sounds pretty good. How hard is it to modify though? Does it involve any coding?

And a second, slightly tangential question; how hard is to to modify or create firefox extensions? I've got one for another forum that I would love to change so that it works here but I have no idea how to go about it.
 
I've heard Greasemonkey also being used to download updates and shit from Microsoft without going through the annoying copyright check... Or so I've heard... yeah.
 
Montez said:
Couldn't you just find out what file names flash uses and set adblock to block them by adding "*.swf" or whatever to its list?
Click to expand...

That's what the "Overlay Flash" option is about.
 
Montez said:
And a second, slightly tangential question; how hard is to to modify or create firefox extensions? I've got one for another forum that I would love to change so that it works here but I have no idea how to go about it.
Click to expand...
AFAIK it's fairly simple. The basic language for Mozilla extension development is JavaScript, probably the most trivial programming language in existence. A subset of XML is used to define layout and visual appearance of the GUI. Anyone who ever coded GUI with MFC or, worse yet, Win32 API knows what a chore it can be and how much easier it would be if a simple markup language could be used instead. Well, Mozilla lets you do just that.

Oh, and you also need to have good knowledge of CSS and dynamic HTML (well, duh, obviously, since you'd be developing extensions for a web browser).
 
XUL, the XML dialect, plus JavaScript are all you need to make a basic interface. Add to that RDF to handle the internal data structures, CSS to make it look neater and HTML whenever you want to go beyond that which XUL offers.

Obviously you need to wrap it all up in one file to make it an extension, but that's explained in the references.
 
Yep, all I do is copy/paste some lines of gobbly-gook internet formatting into a Firefox extension program. When the page first loads it looks normal, but once loading is complete the script takes over and reformats it. Pretty slick actually.

I first learned about this program from this arcticle too.
 
Arcticle? Is that some kind of arctic icicle?

Seems like we got an epidemic here.
 
I just use Maxthon. Customization out the wazoo, extensions to beat the bands, and it's not like Firefox, which seems to be the official browser of the Soviet Union. [Every error must produce a dialog box which steals the focus and you can't so much as use a menu until you tend the dialog box; butt-simple intereface and the favorites, even though they are called "Bookmarks" are still in the MS-style one-big-conveyor-belt format that doesn't respond to anything but its control buttons. Nor does it provide any indication that it's at the end of its run...] Between the built-in "Ad-hunter", and a plug-in called "Kill flash and flying ads", I hardly ever see a flash ad, and when I do se it it goes away real quick. I can also force-enable right click no matter what, and easily block any content. I haven't seen a single ad on NMA now for months. I have no idea what the ad cycle is on most pages, to be honest. I dont' miss it.
 
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