Filed under: Internet Tools
I'm not much of a Firefox extension user, but Neil Lee suggested Fission and it rocks. It gives Firefox a progress bar in the URL window, a la Safari. This is one of my favorite Safari features, and now I can have it on the browser that I actually use for most of my web surfing.Use Spotlight as a reference tool. Type any word in the Spotlight box and one of the top entries will be a definition. Click on it, and it will bring up the dictionary application to check the word in either the dictionary, thesaurus, Apple database, or Wikipedia.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Paul Stamatiou said 7:17PM on 10-26-2006
IMO Fission ROCKS. Been using it for at least 5 months or so now.
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Mr Lizard said 7:32PM on 10-26-2006
I've used Fission since as early as I can remember, and is possibly my favourite Firefox extension
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Zachary Hinchliffe said 7:30PM on 10-26-2006
link needs to be changed from http://https//addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1951/ to http://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1951/
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Scott McNulty said 7:32PM on 10-26-2006
Thanks, Zachary. Our CMS did something wacky to the link, but it is all fixed.
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Nabster said 7:45PM on 10-26-2006
if ur running firefox and dont have 'adblock', i really dont understand why ur running it in the first place. Adblock rocks, so does Flashblock (but that one depends on the user).
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Andre said 7:54PM on 10-26-2006
Kudos for Adblock Plus, which includes a bunch of options for blacklists. I use the del.icio.us extension too, pretty handy. And I manage all my RSS in Firefox with Sage. I added the css from Aronnax (http://www.takebacktheweb.org/themes/files/grapple_sage2.css)
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Andre said 7:55PM on 10-26-2006
And since I'm at it, I can't forget to mention Aronnax themes for Firefox, which make it look just like safari. The best Mac OS X themes out there. http://www.takebacktheweb.org/
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Jordan said 8:07PM on 10-26-2006
I've actually put a decent amount of effort into making my Firefox mimic Safari, or at least make it a little sexier. I'm still running 1.5 because not all of these extensions work with 2.0. Yet.
Here's what I use:
ErrorZilla Mod: Just gives it a nicer error page.
Fasterfox: Might notice a boost in speed.
Fission: TUAW already has this one covered.
Googlepedia: Adds a Wikipedia side panel for all your google results.
Image Zoom: Resize your images in the browser.
Linky: Manage links more efficiently.
PDF download: Automatically open PDFs in preview or download them directly.
Sage: Firefox lacks RSS support, and this extension has a great theme that mimics Safari's RSS reader. (Style Sheet named "Hicks")
Screen Grab: Exactly what it sounds like.
Search Engine Ordering: Exactly what it sounds like.
Slim Extension List: Compacts your list.
Stop-or-Reload Button: Safari-like stop/reload button.
Tab Mix Plus: Resize those tabs to make them more Safari-sized.
Tab X: Adds a nice "X" on your tabs.
Viamatic foXpose: Think expose for tabs.
On top of that I use the UNO theme from takebacktheweb.org.
Although I still think Firefox lacks the "soul" of Safari, at least it looks like it now. :)
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mpmchugh said 8:32PM on 10-26-2006
Fission is cool, but if you use Tab Mix Plus, it has the option (on by default, I think) to indicate load progress for each tab in the tab itself.
I actually re-installed Fission again today, as I saw it mentioned elsewhere, but promptly turned it off again, because the Tab Mix Plus indicator is more than enough for me.
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Andrew said 8:44PM on 10-26-2006
My personal favorite is FoxyTunes. This integrates iTunes controls into the bottom bar of Firefox. Much easier than using a remote or going to a separate window.
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Jason said 12:59AM on 10-27-2006
I have used Fission since it took over for Fusion after that extension died. I even made sure it was fully supported in my themes I built for the windows version of firefox (Eternal Aqua Safire and Amalgam). It's a great space saver and can be customized quite extensively.
Another great Safari-like extension is autohidestatusbar. It allows you to only show the statusbar on loading or when a link is hovered. A perfect compliment to fission.
Also, to use some of the useful chrome edits out there, install Stylish. It is the easiest way to edit the userchrome files and usually shows results without restarting Firefox.
Another awesome theme for firefox 2 is Pinstripe. Search for it on Google. It's not as Safari-ish as Arannox's Grapple themes, but it's tighter and more streamlined IMHO. Use it with UNO for a nice, clean look. Check out a screenshot of my setup here: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/41604878/
Enabled Extensions: [13]
* Adblock 0.5.3.043
* Adblock Filterset.G Updater 0.3.0.4
* autoHideStatusbar 0.3.9.4
* Configuration Mania 1.07.2006091201
* DOM Inspector 1.8.1
* Download Statusbar 0.9.4.3
* Fission 0.8.6
* Flashblock 1.5.2
* MR Tech Local Install 5.3.1.1
* Nightly Tester Tools 1.2
* Stylish 0.4
* Tab Mix Plus 0.3.0.61001
* Tweak Network 1.1.1
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zak said 8:43AM on 10-27-2006
does anyone know of a plugin that does the kind of thing that "site alteration" does in safari stand?
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Jason said 9:38AM on 10-27-2006
Doesn't greasemonkey do something similar?
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Brandon said 9:47AM on 10-27-2006
This is an honest question, not a snarky jab: Why so many comments about "make it look just like safari," "making my Firefox mimic Safari," "Safari-like extension," and so on? Why not just use Safari?!
Before I switched to Mac a year ago I used Firefox to avoid IE6, but now Safari suits me just fine. Is Firefox for OS X really any better than Safari? It seems a lot easier to just *use* Safari than to go through the trouble of *making-Firefox-look-just-like- Safari-but-without-the-soul.*
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Chad said 11:33AM on 10-27-2006
Brandon:
I use firefox instead of safari for two reasons... #1 is that Safari has always suffered from the dreaded spinning beachball. I get several times an hour where it freezes up for 5-10 seconds. Really annoying... Other people report the same problems, while some others don't, so I don't know what the deal is...
Second reason is the extensions. There are just many things that firefox extensions offer that you can't do in safari.
The downside to firefox is that it isn't the speediest thing around, especially when you load it up with extensions. It's a tradeoff for me. Camino is much speedier, however one thing that's annoyed me about it is that it's save passwords feature only saves one username/password per domain. On my domains I have several web based apps where I may need to log in as an admin, an sql user or my user account and camino can't do that as firefox does.
As for other cool firefox extensions, I'm digging Cooliris Previews. Basically when you hover your mouse over a link (or over an icon it puts next to a link, or when holding down control and hover over a link), it opens that page in a small window on the page you are viewing, which dissapears when you mouse out. It's handy for google search results, forums, etc where you can take a quick look at each page without having to open and close new tabs.
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c. said 11:41AM on 10-27-2006
***Extensions I use***
Right-Click-Link
Opens select text (or URL text with no embedded link) in a new tab.
undocloetab
Adds "Undo Close Tab."
Popup Alt Attribute
Popups alternate texts of images (as Firefox only pops-up "title" but not "alt" tooltips for images).
Greasemonkey
A User Script Manager for Firefox. It's what you make it...kinda like Quicksilver is.
Flashblock
Replaces Flash objects with a button you can click to view them.
Adblock
Blocks ads and allows you to selectively block images.
Filterset.G
Companion extension to Adblock or Adblock+ that auto-updates adblock filters.
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Jason said 11:23AM on 10-27-2006
Well, I switched about 6 months ago and used Firefox exclusively on XP before that. When I first switched over, I found Safari to be excellent - tight integration, fast response, nice design. But I soon found that some of the sites I visited (a very small amount, but still annoying) wouldn't load properly, or at all. Also, Safari has a very annoying bug where the mouse will completely disappear (randomly?) and I have to quit the app and restart to fix it.
That being said, Firefox has very few problems for me and starts quickly on my MBP, especially with an optimized build. It also can be configured and tweaked to look and act almost exactly the way I want it to through extensions and userchrome tweaks. I know Safari has some ability to expand and morph through external plugins, but the degree is far smaller.
I love the look of Safari and some of the features are very useful, hence the unified stop and reload button extension mentioned above and fission, which saves even more space and simplifies the interface. Themes that mimic Safari are only complimenting its design and keeping with a familiar, unified look in using firefox with OSX.
But to each his/her own. If Safari works well for you, then use it. I use firefox as my default browser and Safari as my backup for the very rare occasion that a page won't render. Meanwhile, my eyes don't burn too much looking at the Safari-like firefox window. ;)
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c. said 11:43AM on 10-27-2006
Type-o...
I meant to say "undoclosetab"
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Janak Parekh said 11:58AM on 10-27-2006
"Before I switched to Mac a year ago I used Firefox to avoid IE6, but now Safari suits me just fine. Is Firefox for OS X really any better than Safari?"
Yes, it is. Things like typeahead find, the optional tab browsing extensions, and the like make Firefox a lot more powerful, and for me, a much more pleasant browsing experience. Safari is certainly very fast and a nice browser, but I've tried to switch (tried Saft, its typeahead find and tab customizations are much weaker) and found it's just not up to par in features.
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phlavor said 1:08PM on 10-27-2006
BugMeNot To get around having to register at news and photo sites.
del.icio.us To streamline my location free bookmarking. It's all Web 2.0 up in your face!
Download Statusbar I just started using this but it follows my ideal of keeping everything in one window. It lines up download progress bars at the bottom of the window instead of in a separate window.
Gmail Manager So I can know when I've got mail and stuff.
Google Browser Sync To uh, sync my browsers. Actually this one is kind of annoying. It doesn't handle you having concurrent logins and throws up annoying messages as a result.
Tab Mix Plus! I am lost without it now that Firefox 2 is out. It will be updated in a day or so but it's not soon enough
Greasmonkey! Solely to use the GMail Macro script which assigns key commands to functions in GMail and gives auto complete, Quicksilver like functionality to labeling of messages. I can not even explain how useful this is. I fly through my In Box three times as fast with it. You can read an outdated page with a really long thread about it here: http://persistent.info/archives/2005/12/23/greasemonkey and check out a Google Group on the subject here: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/gmail-power-users
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