Web-browsers & tips to make Google/Youtube better.

[steiner666]

I dont know what size screen most of you use, but i have a 24" LCD and a 60" DLP that i alternate between using. I have the 24" on a desk, and i sit at the desk so i'm pretty close to the scree, and sometimes i sit back and use my wireless keyboard and big screen. Either way, screens with bright, solid white backgrounds are WAY too common and unpleasant on the eyes, especially if you're going back and forth between them and darker themed sites (such as FC).

But anyways, i found a great solution for the issues i had with youtube:

and google:

by installing the plugin "Stylish" for my firefox and then getting custom themes for each site at http://userstyles.org/

My eyes can already feel the difference lol. Btw, i use quite a few other addons for firefox and have obviously customized the layout and such to suite my taste and needs. Most noteably i have addon's that hide the title and menu bars, as well as status bar disabled, to conserve on vertical screen space (something you dont have as much of on a 16:9 aspect screen) and an add-on (splitbrowser i think) that lets me display multiple ttabs at once. I use it to load the IRC addon chatzilla in a skinnier tab on the right (to make use of the additional horizontal screenspace available on 16:9 screens, since most webpages are still designed for 5:4). Theres also a handy addon called foxtab i love that lets view and select from all opened, recently closed, or favorited tabs at once:

Also, the addon Omnibar, which combines search and address bar. You can just type something in the address bar to do a search w/ your default search engine, or you you can specify which to search by typing @ and the first part of teh name (like "vaporizers @ goo" for google search "herbalaire @ you" for youtube. Actually, unless you have other search engines added with the same first letter, you could probably just type @ g and @ y and get the same results.

These are only a few of the add-ons that i use for FF. So, anyone else out there have any cool add-ons or really anything that helps make webbrowsing and/or other things easier and more convenient that they want to share?

 

[hopandstop]

I'm a huge fan of Google Chrome. I love the integrated downloads window, how each tab is it's own process (one page crash does not equal Chrome crashing/locking up) and, especially, built-in support for bookmark syncing between computers.

A cool add-on is Cooliris: http://www.cooliris.com/

Fun way to browse pics and others mediums.

 

[bstar]

Nice! I used to use that before I got too lazy to keep it up. I liked the dark backgrounds but got too picky and had different themes written for tons of pages.
There's also a key combo I used at work for Macs that would make the screen display inverted colors. Forget what it was but that was really handy too. Not to mention simply turning the brightness all the way down. Takes a little while to get used to it but I forgot years ago what a screen looks like with the brightness on....

I use Firefox and my number one addon is definitely Adblock Plus. I haven't browsed on the regular without it for years. If I use another computer or have to turn it off for some reason, it's actually a little shocking. I also use Element Hider which goes with it. VERY HANDY! You can manually block ads that aren't caught by ABP filters. But since that almost never happens, it's more handy to block any content you don't want. I mostly use it when part of a site is just annoying, or when I want to block a bit of text or a pic/video/flash that bugs me. (I block all pictures of spiders, lol. More practically, my SIL uses it for her son to block inappropriate pics from other folks on facebook.)

Also use InFormEnter to save frequent form text like emails and addresses. (That one might be outdated, haven't checked in a long time.) Mobile Barcoder makes barcodes of links or selected text for my cell phone (MyTouch with Android). SkipScreen for downloading sites. And a Super Mario theme for the hell of it.

 

[steiner666]

@ hopandstop - yeah i tried chrome for a while, but i didnt see any speed or stability improvements over firefox, and the 2 PCs i installed it on got adware and spyware on them shortly after puttin chrome on, something i havent encountered for a long time with FF. Cooliris is pretty nifty tho, they have it for FF too and i've tried it out. Also theres a FF extension called downloadstatusbar or something similar that mades teh FF downloads appear in the status bar instead of a separate window like chrome, on of the things i did like about chrome.

@ bstar cool shit. i love adblock plus too. Every time i get on some elses computer that doest have it i'm totally shocked to see any ads lol. It totally made me forget that there are advertisements on the internet.

There's also:

Fastestfox - lets you enable endless pages which is really cool on sites it works on. also, you can just highlight something and then it shows you a pop up bubble with buttons to click to do searches for the highlighted text on diff search engines, can even display dictionary definitions of the selected word.

X-marks - securely syncs your bookmakrs and passwords between multiple PCs. Great for when you're on your work PC and find something you want to read later on on your home pc.

Web of Trust is a great addon that keeps you from visiting untrustworthy sites

1-click youtube downloader (or something close) lets you download and select the quality of the video you want to d/l, right on the videos page below the video itself. Its nice to download some HD and ful HD videos as opposed to waiting for them to stream sometimes.

 

[DeepFried]

I hate to be a downer, but I find the more add-ons you add to FF the worse it operates. I used ABplus for 2 years until recently I discovered sites load much quicker with it off. Add-on toolbars are even worse and basically just monitor your every move on the internet and report it to the mothership.

 

[steiner666]

I hate to be a downer, but I find the more add-ons you add to FF the worse it operates. I used ABplus for 2 years until recently I discovered sites load much quicker with it off. Add-on toolbars are even worse and basically just monitor your every move on the internet and report it to the mothership.

I've found some add-ons to have a bit of a performance impact. Like, say, an add-on that displays thumbnail previews of search results, of course its going to take longer because it has to retrieve and load that thumbnail image. You just gotta balance between convenience and performance. A while back i did notice some thing were taking a bit longer to come up and things werent as fast, so i removed a couple non-essential addons that i thought might be effecting speed. I actually did some tests on a low-power netbook to see how each add-on effected speed as i installed them. I think cooliris was actually one of the ones i gave the boot because of how little i used it how much it effected performance in some situations

I can't say i share your exp w/ adblock causing slowness tho. I install it on dial-up users browsers for the opposite purpose, to make pages load faster because they odnt have to d/l the ad banners and such, and it DOES noticeably improve page load times on those dusty old dial up connections.

I havent noticed any real performance hits with the addons ii'm currently using... of course i do have a 3.8ghz quad core and an 8Mb home and 20Mb work connection, so it would be odd to see any.

You can also increase the speed of loading some webpages by enabling pipelining in the about:config area and setting the max requests to 8, google is your friend for finding out the specifics tho, cause i dont remember

 

[DeepFried]

Yeah for sure, I have enabled

network.http.pipelining;true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests;30
network.http.proxy.pipelining;true

they make a noticeable difference in page loading speed. With a fast connection like you have, you should notice that ABplus takes more time to block the ads than it does to just load them LOL.

The only add-on I use now is noscript for security as well as BetterPrivacy to get rid of flash cookies.

 

[bstar]

I hate to be a downer, but I find the more add-ons you add to FF the worse it operates. I used ABplus for 2 years until recently I discovered sites load much quicker with it off. Add-on toolbars are even worse and basically just monitor your every move on the internet and report it to the mothership.

I agree with the first part, although it can depend on which addons you install. (Obviously some are bigger than others.) Also on your PC's speed in general.

I have to say though that ABP hasn't caused a noticeable slow-down for me on any of the 3+ computers I've used it on. I've only ever noticed a speed difference when it blocks video and flash ads, and that's a good change. I have however uninstalled it on some smaller devices like my Nokia internet tablet. On that I did notice a huge slowdown. So maybe it just depends on the PC, or maybe the browser (since the tablet had its own thing and not the standard firefox install).

On that subject, I have to mention Flashblock. I used it for a long time with great success. Basically it keeps Flash from autoloading on pages, and you just click to load specific instances. I finally had to disable it though since I use flash apps too much. I'd say if you find ABP slows you down, try flashblock instead. If you don't play a lot of games or other flash apps, it might be very handy for you.

And yes, toolbars are evil.

 

[vtac]

For YouTube, Greasemonkey with YouTube Enhancer.

Flashblock is great, couldn't surf without FireGestures.

I don't think Adblock Plus ever made pages load slower (unless it was configured terribly wrong), if anything, stripping ads and preventing them from downloading makes pages render faster. It did add a couple seconds to the initial browser load time. Since the code re-write in the last major release it's faster in that regard.

Chroma and Opera are great but Extensions such as the ones above keep Firefox indispensable for me. Come a long way since Phoenix in early 2000.

 

[steiner666]

...On that subject, I have to mention Flashblock. I used it for a long time with great success. Basically it keeps Flash from autoloading on pages, and you just click to load specific instances. I finally had to disable it though since I use flash apps too much. I'd say if you find ABP slows you down, try flashblock instead. If you don't play a lot of games or other flash apps, it might be very handy for you.

And yes, toolbars are evil.

Yeah i used to us Flashblock, esp on the netbook i used to own because flash anything was like a slideshow. I use NoScript tho now days, and along with letting you choose which scripts are allowed to run on each page, it also does pretty much the exact same thing as flashblock, makes a flash video a box with the flash F logo in a circle on it that you need to hit to load up the video at all.

... Chroma and Opera are great but Extensions such as the ones above keep Firefox indispensable for me. Come a long way since Phoenix in early 2000.

For sure!