Top 10 Firefox Extensions to Avoid

jcatcw writes "First there were the 20 must-have Firefox Extension and ensuing Slashdot discussion. Now Computerworld has the top 10 to avoid. For example, NoScript, which does make Firefox safer, but isn't worth the hassle, Or, VideoDownloader for slow downloads, when it works at all. Then there's Greasemonkey — on both lists."

Missing from the list

[Anonymous Coward]

GoToGoatse - The extension takes you to that famous page everytime you click a link.

I'm still not sure why anyone would install it though.

Re:

[The Living Fractal]

Obviously to pull a prank on poor unsuspecting, unknowing-of-the-infinite-blackness-of-that-hole that is goatse.

In fact, thanks for mentioning it. Time for some fun.

TLF

Re:

[e4g4]

Heh, you're a little over a week late...or do they sell "Belated April Fools Day" cards at the drug store?

Re:Missing from the list

[ShieldW0lf]

That's funny as hell.

#1 Fasterfox: Don't use it, it hammers webservers! There are a lot of links on the page that you are NEVER going to click on, mostly ads. This prefetches all those ads from the adservers webserver, but you're not looking at them! Not cool!

#2 NoScript: Don't use it, it's annoying. Plus, it screws up important scripts. For example, the article has these scripts:

function popup( ...
function popup_noscroll( ...
function switchPage( ... // this ord is used for Double Click Integration
ord=Math.random()*10000000000000000;

Do you really want to have to deal with the trouble?

#3 AdBlock: Do you think we do this to provide you with lame lists? We don't. We do this to make you watch ads. And you have to watch them! Didn't you get that under #2? You're breaking the social contract, you bastard!

What a joke.

Re:

[MightyYar]

As soon as I read "NoScript" on page 1, I began to get suspicious... after all, it is one of my favorites. But when clicking on page 2 revealed "AdBlock", I stopped reading. I mean, damn, without one of those two extensions you might as well IE7. Well, no, not quite. :)

Of course, the way they make you click from page to page to load their ads (if you weren't running NoScript or AdBlock...) gives me an idea for another extension which stitches these kinds of articles together.

Re:

[Captain Splendid]

Agreed. Some of the criticisms are valid, but the whole article felt like it was written to make big media companies happy. "Nooo, you don't want to block our ads, it's too much hassle!"

I'll admit that something like Noscript takes a little work before it runs just the way you want it, but until FF is 100% secure, I'll keep using it, especially at work.

Re:Missing from the list

[Bretai]

gives me an idea for another extension which stitches these kinds of articles together

Firefox repagination: http://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2099 [mozilla.org]

Of course, once you do that, it becomes even more obvious that the content to garbage ratio on that site is well below 50%, but at least you don't have to click and wait at each break.

Re:Missing from the list

[Bretai]

You're breaking the social contract, you bastard!

So, would it be wrong to show people the whole list, allowing many people to ignore their ad-laden web page altogether?

Fasterfox [mozilla.org]
NoScript [mozilla.org]
Adblock Plus [mozilla.org]
PDF Download [mozilla.org]
VideoDownloader [mozilla.org]
Greasemonkey [mozilla.org]
ScribeFire [mozilla.org]
TrackMeNot [mozilla.org]
Tabbrowser Preferences [mozilla.org]
Tabbrowser Extensions [sakura.ne.jp]
FormSpy [nai.com]

Hmmm. It doesn't feel wrong.

Re:Missing from the list

[lowrydr310]

From TFA:

For some reason, paranoia seems to be cool among Web geeks, but for the most part, it is totally unwarranted unless you're sending and receiving sensitive data.

I'm not using Noscript because I'm paranoid. I ran into many sites that used Javascript to float ads over the entire page. Noscript puts me in control of the content I wish to view.

Re:Missing from the list

[Anonymous Coward]

What's a goatse?

Re:Missing from the list

[iminplaya]

Probably about the same thing you and I do, but possibly in black and white.

Re:Missing from the list

[jimicus]

This has to be the first time in history a link to goatse could reasonably be modded +5 Informative. It won't, of course - it'll be modded -5, Troll.

But since you ask:

http://www.goatse.cz/ [goatse.cz]

[shudder] I prefer THIS informative link

[Ahnteis]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goatse [wikipedia.org]

At least, I think so. There's no way I'm actually clicking on your link.

Re:[shudder] I prefer THIS informative link

[Khaed]

I right clicked, copied the location, pasted to my friend Derek.

I'm pretty sure, judging by his reaction, that you were right not to click GP's link.

Now if you'll excuse me I need to assume a new identity...

Re:

[ad0gg]

The original goatse website(.cx) had its domain seized by christmas island domain authority.

Re:Missing from the list

[Mattintosh]

I went ahead and tested it with my fingers poised and ready on ctrl-w, just in case...

Damn good thing, too. It's back. Beware.

Re:Missing from the list

[elrous0]

It's a /.er's way of saying "Welcome."

Re:

[Dogtanian]

GoToGoatse - The extension takes you to that famous page everytime you click a link.

That's not a website, that's just a side-effect of Goatse itself. You see, the horrendous, erm... black hole at the heart of Goatse is in fact an actual black hole at the heart of the web. Get too close to it and you'll be sucked beyond its event horizon; once this happens, there is no escape.

Worse still, many of you will have passed this point without realising it. I don't want to dwell on your fate, but I've heard that encountering the Goatse singularity is likely to be very unpleasant.

Re:

[elrous0]

Actually, there is an extension that will install both at the same time: inoneendouttheother.

Sorry but the list is BS

[A beautiful mind]

For example, NoScript, which does make Firefox safer, but isn't worth the hassle Says who?

Re:Sorry but the list is BS

[Gr8Apes]

No kidding. This article should be renamed:

What users need to do to maximize our cashflow.

Re:Sorry but the list is BS

[voice_of_all_reason]

It derides fasterfox for wasting bandwidth (a genuine concern), videodownloader on spurious speed/usage claims, and adblock specifically by saying "where would the web be if everyone blocked ads."

This news source is not objective and is, therefore, made of Fail.

Re:Sorry but the list is BS

[Fordiman]

Yeah. I was gonna say, Adblock at number 3 the avoid? Not if you're an end-user.

Though, I gotta say, videodownloader is overrated, especially if you're only after YouTube videos. The below link will work more quickly:

javascript:(function(){var x = document.createElement('iframe'); x.style.width='1px'; x.style.height='1px'; document.body.appendChild(x); x.src='http://www.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=' + window.location.toString().match(/v=([^\&]*)/)[1]+ '&t='+ document.body.innerHTML.match(/\&t=([^\&]*)/)[1]; })();

Re:

[Shawn is an Asshole]

I used to use VideoDownloader. Though it got frustrating when the majority of the time I tried to use it, I was getting "Server Busy" errors. That's when I found FastVideoDownload [mozilla.org]. It runs completely in your browser. If you're on YouTube, click it's icon on the status bar and a file dialog pops up for saving the file. It works great.

For the places it doesn't work, I just keep "tail -f /var/log/squid/access.log | grep flv" in a terminal and then grab the urls and download them with wget.

Re:

[Eivind]

Their lack of a business-model ain't your problem, now is it ?

You should look at ads because they'd like you to ?

Migth as well argue they should drop ads because readers would like them to. Especially anoying ones.

Re:

[Korin43]

You seem to imply that I'd actually click on those ads. When these websites start putting in ads that relate to their site, that are actually worth looking at, and don't take up half the space on the page I'll take off adblock. But really, I'm not interested in Adult Friend Finder and v14gr4. As for this site, I have to admit that the ads are pretty well built into the site, but there are 2 popup windows. Any site that uses popups for ads isn't going to convince me to stop using adblock.

Re:Sorry but the list is BS

[ConceptJunkie]

"where would the web be if everyone blocked ads."

The fact of the matter is that's not the user's problem now is it?

Don't whine to me if your business model doesn't work because it annoys people. That's the free market, baby. Adapt or die.

Re:Sorry but the list is BS

[ConceptJunkie]

The more I think about it, the more this article is really awful. It should be titled, "10 Firefox Extensions I Want to Avoid Despite not Having Good Reasons to Do So", or "10 Firefox Extensions that Cripple Our Site And We Are Too Lazy To Do Anything About It", or, given the tone of it "If You Know More About the Web Than I Do, You're A Hopeless Geek, Get A Life".

For most of the extensions he gives several reasons _to use it_ and then some really lame excuse like "but I don't like it" or "that's too much hassle for me", or "you're just paranoid", the latter being a particularly egregious example of stupidity given the millions of machines that are botnetted. Those so-called "too paranoid" people will be the only ones left surfing when the next big virus/worm/trojan takes down half the 'net.

Re:

[fraudrogic]

Adblock and Adblock Plus
Obviously, we have some bias when it comes to ad-blocking extensions.......But if everyone blocked ads, how would sites such as ours continue to offer content free of charge?

You know, I can give them the same answer I would for a dvr skipping commercials: Because I can and I will, that's why I use Adblock Plus. Its fantastic and does it's job. I despise commercials and ads. I'm sorry it creates revenue for you but that's not my problem. Are they really asking us to deliber

Re:Sorry but the list is BS

[walt-sjc]

What pushed me to adblock isn't ads, it's ANNOYING ads. It's ads that make noise, that flash, that move around the screen, that pop up, etc. Regular simple ads were not annoying to me. Now all content providers suffer because of the behavior of some advertisers.

That said, I do pay for some premium content, such as the Wall Street Journal, and a couple other work related (and work paid for) news sites. Unfortunately, we don't have a viable micro-payment system yet, so when you hit a site that you would pay 5 - 10 cents to read an article, you can't.

Re:Sorry but the list is BS

[Andy Dodd]

I think that's why Google has been so successful with their ad system.

The targeting is one thing, but far more important is that Google's ads tend to be far less intrusive (and thus far less likely to get added to a user's blocklist).

Re:Sorry but the list is BS

[deanoaz]

If the web content disappears because I don't see the ads, then I'll happily live without the content. If my favorite TV shows go off the air because I skip most of the ads when I watch, I'll watch something else instead. If every TV show goes off the air, I'll read more books.

What I won't do is expose myself to more advertising than I have to.

"Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people." - George Bernard Shaw

Re:Sorry but the list is BS

[rjshields]

However, you must concede that entrepreneurial instinct (which often involves "pushing" information or products at people when they don't really need or want them) has done a lot to forward technological advances.

Absolutely. Where would we be without web page ads or spam? The world needs more Scott Richters!!1

Re:

[sconeu]

I stop visiting all together (I'm looking at you espn.com)

I think you mean "I'm talking to you espn.com", since I assume you're no longer looking at it due to annoying ads.

Re:Sorry but the list is BS

[Danse]

However, you must concede that entrepreneurial instinct (which often involves "pushing" information or products at people when they don't really need or want them) has done a lot to forward technological advances.

While ads have helped the web become what it is today, I can't help but think that maybe if there weren't so many sites out there trying to get hits for ad purposes, the web might be a better place. Even if that means I have to pay for subscriptions to sites with content that I want, I think I might like that web better. We'd still have a lot of low-cost hosting solutions out there, and we'd still have people posting whatever they want. There just probably wouldn't be so much auto-generated garbage out there to sift through in order to see the interesting stuff. Then again, I've thought about this for all of about 3 minutes now, so I could be completely wrong.

Re:

[jotok]

Personally, I'm willing to pay for content, but generally speaking most of the ads I see are not anything I'm interested in, which annoys me. I hate going to a tech news website and seeing ads for mortgages. I hate going to cooks.com and seeing ads for a site on looking and feeling "younger" (realage.com).

For sites like this, it rapidly becomes apparent that the purpose of the site is to generate ad revenue, for which the content is a draw, rather than a site that presents good content and is supported by

Re:Sorry but the list is BS

[ergean]

What would be a pertinent ad for an article with Firefox? ... ...
RAM!

Re:Sorry but the list is BS

[misleb]

I think he's saying that most sites simply wouldn't get any revenue because at least he (and probably myself) would neither pay for the content (in most cases) nor suffer ads. I think he's just being honest. Fact is that a lot of sites just wouldn't exist without ad support. But then, so what? That isn't his (or my) problem beyond there being a smaller number of sites available to browse. There was an internet before advertising was ubiquitous, ya know. Even today, plenty of sites manage to get by without advertising OR charging for content.

Finally, what's the "winning" scenario here - consumers (if they can be called that) - getting everything for free?

Winning is businesses finding better ways to make money than by annoying the general user. And yes, I find any and all ads annoying. I don't care if they are relevent or targetted or whatever. If I want to see/here about a company, I will seek them out. If there is any "legitimate"
form of advertising, it is in the form of yellowpages-like directories or catalogs. Beyond that, I don't want to see it or here it. And quite frankly, I don't give a crap how it affects business.

-matthew

Re:

[misleb]

But why bother? Why go through the trouble of selecting which ads to keep and which to block? There's absolutely nothing wrong with just filtering out all ads. You didn't sign any contract. It is your internet connection. Your computer. You can view the web however you damn well please. So why not just get a good filter (Filterset.G for Adblock Plus is awesome) and save yourself the work? Are you afraid of missing something? Are you afraid that there aren't perfectly adequate resources for finding out abou

Re:

[treeves]

Same thing, right? I mean taxes aren't really my money to begin with, it's the government's money.

Re:Sorry but the list is BS

[misleb]

I disagree, and would argue that the web started with DARPA.

But there was a time when the vast majority of content was essentially ad free. Much of it even useful information. Heck, even today I visit plenty of sites that have no ads nor do charge for content. Although maybe that has changed in the last couple years. Adblock Plus is just so effective, I'm often shocked if for some reason I have to browse without it. Like I am actually overwhelmed. You just don't realize how in prevelent advertising is until you've shielded youself from it for a while. Mass ad blocking is like a drug. A sweet, sweet drug that I never want to come off. ;-)

-matthew

Re:Sorry but the list is BS

[BalanceOfJudgement]

Like I am actually overwhelmed. You just don't realize how in prevelent advertising is until you've shielded youself from it for a while. Mass ad blocking is like a drug.

You just said something else, although you didn't realize it:

That mass advertising itself is also like a drug. I'm constantly amazed when I hear people talk about their experiences when they don't watch TV or go on the internet for awhile.. it's like they see the world completely differently, and in fact, they do: without the constant drum of advertising against their skulls, they start to see a world NOT based entirely on crass consumerism, a world where there IS meaning and simply joy in things like going to a picnic or talking to your family or reading a book on a gentle afternoon.

We've become so conditioned to be the perfect consumers that we're actually surprised when we step out of that mold. I never watch or listen to ads anymore, and advertisers be damned: I'll buy your product when and if I need it, and only then will I go looking for it. You do not need to spend every waking moment of my life telling me I am a worthless piece of shit because I don't have the latest gadget or waving things in my face that you KNOW I'm going to have to use credit to buy.

Fuck you, all of you. I am a human being, not a machine you can control.

Re:

[fraudrogic]

1) No free content available, anywhere

Oh yeah, that'll happen. Because EVERYBODY will be willing to pay for content. Guess what, when competition is giving it out for free, guess where everyone will go? Not the pay site. Sure they take a hit, but then they get popularity which is infinitely more valuable than a few hundred subscribers.

2) Everyone makes you register for access


That's what bugmenot.com is for. If I run into registration for content, I most likely don't bother. It can't be that

The web with NoScript is so much better!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, I miss some content, but normally NoScript is saving me so much time getting there and missing junk adds, flash garbage etc.etc. that the benefit outweighs the losses hundreds of times over.

constantly having to whitelist sites so that scripts can execute in order

I admit I don't use myspace / facebook and things that go boing (though I guess that even if I did, whitelisting two sites one time wouldn't really stress me out) but I have to say that you are sadly deluded if you think that I keep whitelisting your site to see the stupid scripts on it. Most of the time, if it doesn't work straight up, then it's a good sign that the content wasn't worth it. You learn this quickly since on the first day you use noscrpt you do try whitelisting, but soon you realise you aren't really seeing anything worthwhile.

Simple message: if you are designing a site; make sure it works fine without the scripts. Otherwise you will lose viewers who just don't care enough.

Re:The web with NoScript is so much better!

[walt-sjc]

Worse, there are some sites that are just HORRIBLY designed, and use javascript for no real reason at all, and in many / most cases CSS would work BETTER.

Then there is all the statistics / tracking javascript which noscript does a wonderful job getting rid of.

Hey, I like NoScript

[jfengel]

I use NoScript not for security but because it cuts out one more way that web sites can annoy me, with their javascripted pop-up ads.

Yeah, it takes a moment to re-enable JavaScript for sites which insist on using it for navigation (which is itself annoying, but sometimes a site has content I want.) But it's less than the aggravation of having the text I'm trying to read covered with a pop-up layer.

I don't mind polite advertising, but anything that moves (Java, Flash, and most recently Javascript) is going to be worthless unless I absolutely require it.

Re:

[syphax]

NoScript is a total pain in the ass, but I love it.

Re:

[Aladrin]

I avoided installing NoScript for a LONG time because it -is- truly a hassle. (Actually, I had it, and removed it within a few days.) I finally installed it the other day to stay because of the Ajax vulnerability found where sites could cross-site-script and view information from other sites that I'd logged into. The fact that this is not only possible, but possible on multiple browsers... That's scary. So NoScript stays now.

It's a heck of a lot easier than turning off JS altogether, which is the only

Re:Hey, I like NoScript

[Hatta]

Exactly, you only have to whitelist a site once. And it takes all of 2 seconds. Annoying scripts however, will fuck with you every time you visit a site. It's not long until the benefits manifest. And since we tend to spend most of our time on sites we've been before, it's really pretty rare that I have to whitelist anything.

In a perfect world, we wouldn't have to deal with client side scripting at all. It's inconvenient, dangerous, and downright impolite. If you want me to see your page, do your processing on YOUR computer. Until then, noscript will have to do.

Re:

[jfengel]

There are good uses of JavaScript. Google uses it pretty well; I use Google Maps and GMail continually. The latter really doesn't NEED JavaScript, but it does add some nice features (like the inline autocomplete for addresses.)

But it's a lot of rope for a web site to hang itself with, and more often than not it's evil.

Re:

[Danse]

Gmail isn't any better than any number of local mail clients. If your site really really needs javascript, it's probably better off not being a site at all. Make it an application and network it.

Being a website rather than a desktop application is half the benefit you get from Gmail. I can access it from anywhere I have an internet connection and a browser, and have all my mail in front of me. Not true with desktop apps.

Re:

[pjt33]

It might take all of 2 seconds when you have a short whitelist, but I've found that when the list gets long changing it becomes amazingly slow. It feels as though it's storing the entries in a dense array and uses linear algorithms for everything.

To pre-empt queries as to why I have a long whitelist: work computer, and I imported a whitelist as I was told.

Re:Hey, I like NoScript

[Saint Aardvark]

One more "me, too". I hate dancing baloney on a web page, and doubly so when it's for useless, distracting, intrusive advertising. Not to mention all the stupid security problems that come up [ckers.org] when you just blindly trust any code to run in your web browser.

For a handful of sites, JavaScript is worth turning on; for everything else, there's NoScript.

Re:Hey, I like NoScript

[flynt]

I hate dancing baloney on a web page, and doubly so when it's for useless, distracting, intrusive advertising.

Is there any other kind of dancing baloney?

Re:Hey, I like NoScript

[Red Flayer]

I hate dancing baloney on a web page, and doubly so when it's for useless, distracting, intrusive advertising.

Is there any other kind of dancing baloney?

Umm, dancing baloney not on a web page?

Re:Hey, I like NoScript

[Red Flayer]

Wow. My comment is neither interesting nor informative, AFAICT. Funny, maybe, since the PP was referring to the "useless, distracting, intrusive advertising" aspects of the dancing baloney... but I guess this goes to show that one man's funny is another man's informative/interesting.

Re:Hey, I like NoScript

[Mr2cents]

FTA:

For some reason, paranoia seems to be cool among Web geeks [...]

Can you be paying attention to security and not be paranoid at the same time?

Sure

[utlemming]

Wow, that was the most biased article that I have read in a long time. The summary, for those that didn't RTFA, they pretty much say avoid all the things that make a web master's life difficult; it was from a website perspective and not from the user. Anyhow, it is not worth the read and definitely is not news.

In a related story:

[Kadin2048]

In other news ... Russian mafia releases list of 10 pieces of software to avoid. Topping the list are anti-virus and anti-spyware utilities. Details at 11.

Article translation

[kpainter]

Number one extension to use: IE7 God, what a lot of drivel.

Re:Article translation

[gEvil (beta)]

Number one extension to use: IE7 God, what a lot of drivel.

Where can I find this "IE7 God" extension?

Re:Article translation

[hotdiggitydawg]

Easy. Type "about:iddqd" in your addressbar.

here's the tell...

[Naurgrim]

They're just pissed that NoScript and AdBlock knock down their revenue stream.

"...while continuing to support the sites we love by allowing most ads to appear."

Bzzt - sorry. I chose to not see ads.

Who is this guy anyway?

[BillGatesLoveChild]

This has to be the dumbest articles to ever come from ComputerWorld.

Think every single poster we've seen here has agreed how his list of mostly good tools, and it does seem targeted against tools that target ads and privacy. There *are* many dumb Firefox extensions he could have covered (like the 'make us your portal' ones) that he didn't. But really, how stupid does he think we are? Anyone even remotely tech savvy will see through his 'list'. Who is this guy anyway? His bio doesn't exactly shine out from t

As pointless as the last article

[WarwickRyan]

Adblock is bad because it makes their site readable?

NoScript bad because it stops nasty/naughty javascript?

PDF download bad because it stops embedded PDFs breaking your system (but also stops hacked tracking links from working)?

TrackMeNot because it stops you being tracked and wastes bandwidth?

I'd suggest the only waste of bandwidth their is their site!

Re:

[jandrese]

Trackmenot did seem a bit rude. Sending random queries to search engines constantly (if the article is correct) sounds more like a DDOS than anything else.

Re:

[Zebai]

They really pushed it by mentioning adblock, but they totally lost their credibility when they mentioned PDF download, the only people who will EVER want to view a PDF in browser, are those who don't know there are other options.

And to top it off, when you didn't think site could lose any more karma, i see a link to another article

http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/4251 [computerworld.com] Why Firefox has lost its mojo

This article states that IE has bridged the gap in features and quality because a few copycat fe

Re:

[turnipsatemybaby]

Oops! that reminds me... I rebuilt my system and forgot to reinstall the addons.

*goes to the article to find out what add-ons to download*.

Re:As pointless as the last article

[WarwickRyan]

You always need to code to the lowest common denominator, which'll be a browser without Javascript. At the very least popup a message about it.

As for a site broken by Adblock: how about not using horribly intrusive ads? They don't work except maybe with the moron element.

Re:As pointless as the last article

[rootofevil]

You always need to code to the lowest common denominator, which'll be a browser without Javascript. At the very least popup a message about it.

agreed. ajax is a feature not a requirement. my smartphone doesnt do ajax, and more and more people are getting them, so building even reduced functionality should be a priority.

As for a site broken by Adblock: how about not using horribly intrusive ads? They don't work except maybe with the moron element.

it would be useful to note that if your target demographic is the moron element, you arent losing anything by breaking functionality to people who have adblock installed. additionally, if you do have adblock installed then why are you going to a website targeted at the moron element?

Re:As pointless as the last article

[AJWM]

Run a website of your own, see how many people call or email with problems that are caused by noscript and adblock

I run a bunch, and nobody complains because I don't do client side scripts or run other people's ads.

because it actually enhances the browsing experience.

I go to websites for information, not a "browsing experience". What enhances my browsing experience is delivering the information I'm looking for without a lot of singing and dancing. If I'm looking for entertainment, again it'll be the specific content (eg video clip) I'm looking for, not all singing all dancing all popup crap.

Any "Performance" tweaks as well

[Pope]

Avoid any so-called "performance" tweaks that do nothing but open a few dozen connections to every web server you visit. It's fucking pointless and does nothing but piss off server admins. Cut your max connections down and make sure pipelining is on to get real, actual performance increases.

Re:

[Jesus_666]

Let's just settle in a sane, easy-to-comprehend alternative like virus.getPlural().

Adblock and Adblock Plus?!?!

[Skadet]

Adblock and Adblock Plus

Obviously, we have some bias when it comes to ad-blocking extensions, as Computerworld is an ad-supported site. We also understand that these are very popular extensions. But if everyone blocked ads, how would sites such as ours continue to offer content free of charge?

Who says free content at the price of advertising is a good thing? Take a good look at TFA. Do you SEE those ads? I'm on page two, which weighs in at 136kb. That's for what, two paragraphs of text? And don't forget -- gotta navigate all 4 pages for maximum impressions!

Really, sites like Slashdot, Google, etc. have it right. Minimally intrusive ads with quality content == a good experience for most users.

Re:Adblock and Adblock Plus?!?!

[StormReaver]

"And don't forget -- gotta navigate all 4 pages for maximum impressions!"

You hit on one of my pet peeves -- web sites that break a single article into multiple pages. I rarely go beyond the first page, and I only read the first page of this self-serving article. If I knew ahead of time that this was one of those articles, I would have skipped it entirely. Maybe a [WARNING: multiple pages] heads-up is warranted on future Slashdot postings.

Re:Adblock and Adblock Plus?!?!

[p0tat03]

Part of the problem is that websites have zero clue what they're doing when they're laying out the page. They put the ads in the largest, most obtrusive places in an attempt to gain eye-time, but all it does is piss off the user.

Look at a print magazine. Most of them have remarkably good layout - ads are clearly ads, and text flows around the ads naturally. The site in TFA has horrifying ads that break the flow of the article and send your mind into unnatural gymnastics trying to follow along.

Ads and web content can coexist peacefully, but not until webmasters realize that layout is not just a 5-minute job in Dreamweaver, but is rather a full-time job that requires real qualifications and real training.

That article sucked

[14erCleaner]

...but that's probably because my NoScript and AdBlock settings impaired my viewing experience.

Adblock..

[Sporkinum]

They practically beg for you not to use adblock or adblock plus. I say too freaking bad. If they really want to keep cheap bastards like me from using their site, they will have to do some artful coding to detect that I am not looking at their 3rd party ads.

Re:

[Nasarius]

AdBlock used to offer an option of loading but not displaying the ads, though I don't see it in AdBlock Plus. It's effectively impossible to detect that, unless you do something like Salon, which grants a "day pass" for watching an ad. Just add a simple captcha to the end of the ad if you really want to be a dick about it.

But the future of Internet advertising is with astroturfing, viral ad campaigns, etc. That can't be blocked with any technical solution.

A little Bias

[Herkum01]

I also love how they put in 'Adblock' and 'Adblock Plus'. They say, well we don't like it being an advertising web site, but trust us, it is not very good.

I thought 'Adblock' was a great extension and very effective.

I also like 'Noscript', it is simple to prevent sites that insist that they and every site they connect to should be allowed to run javascript on your browser. 'Noscript' allows me to specify only the sites, like the one I am browsing, to actually run Javascript instead of every ad aggregator that wants information on you.

NoScript is in fact worth the hassle

[frdmfghtr]

FTA:

Does NoScript make Firefox safer? Sure. Is it worth the hassle? No. For some reason, paranoia seems to be cool among Web geeks, but for the most part, it is totally unwarranted unless you're sending and receiving sensitive data. Most typical Web surfers who install this extension remove it after the novelty wears off.

Paranoia is not "cool among Web geeks,", it's an unfortunate necessity when wandering the jungle that is the World Wide Web. How many times do we hear about exploits using JavaScript? Too often, in my mind's eye. If a particular site that you trust needs JavaScript to run, then whitelist it, even if just temporarily, with two mouse clicks.

I don't call it "paranoid," I call it "due caution" and it is, in fact, worth the minor hassle.

NoScript sometimes breaks DHTML

[illegalcortex]

This is a good opportunity to bring up a problem with NoScript. It seems to have a flaw with certain sites. With digg, it sometimes makes the thumbs and the show/hide comment links not work properly. It breaks the thumbs completely and instead of the show/hide working in a DHTMLish way, it instead follows the href version of the link. This bug doesn't show up all the time, but on a page where it does show up, you can reload over and over and still get the bug every time.

It does this even when all the sites it lists for the page are set to allowed. But if you set it to "Allow script Globally" (basically, letting EVERYTHING through) and reload the page, the bug goes away. So something there is being blocked that shouldn't be.

Re:

[Giorgio Maone]

It was a glitch in dynamic inclusion of external scripts through the document.write("<script...></script>") hack used by some AJAX libraries (e.g. Scriptacolous on Digg). This was an rare problem under normal conditions, but NoScript filters used to make it appear more frequently.

Good news is that current NoScript 1.1.4.7 Release Candidate [noscript.net] fixes this issue once (hopefully) for ever.

#3 = Adblock? No bias there

[Excelcia]

But if everyone blocked ads, how would sites such as ours continue to offer content free of charge?

If everyone who didn't want to see ads blocked them, then the ads that were seen would have more value because they would be seen by people who wanted to see them. Pushing an ad on someone who doesn't want to see it is, what, going to suddenly make that person buy something?

I freely admit I block every ad I can. If I'm going to buy something, I'll actively go looking for it. I resent people telling me that I'm damaging them by not displaying their ads on my PC. Your ads are valueless when displayed on my PC anyway, so why should I expose myself to them? The ad industry has not endeared itself to the internet community. They have only themselves to blame for people wanting to block them.

Re:

[Kjella]

Pushing an ad on someone who doesn't want to see it is, what, going to suddenly make that person buy something?

Why do you think telemarketers hate do-not-call lists? They should be celebrating to high heavens, since all their non-customers got sorted out of the pool. *BUZZ* wrong answer. There's plenty people that don't want to be bother with them but who respond to ads - not directly but then you don't see a TV ad and immidiately call and order unless it's TV shop. Hell, there's plenty people like you that

Fasterfox

[SevenHands]

How about a plugin that fetches all subsequent pages of articles and condenses into a single webpage so a user doesn't have to follow five page links to read the whole article.

Re:

[Dystopian Rebel]

Sites should provide a "whole article" link. But as has been mentioned, they get money for exposing their sponsors to you.

You could save URLs that interest you and use wget or curl to grab your interests from a list.

Re:Fasterfox

[Dirtside]

They do have one -- click on "Print this story" and it gives you a single page with the entire article... unfortunately, it uses a popup to do so ;)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

And an extension you NEED

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

The Henry Earl [thepangburns.com] extension! If you don't know about Henry Earl, read up on him here [monkeygumbo.com]. Show the brother some love.

Worst... List... Evar!

[pestie]

Seriously. I don't often cry "worst evar!" but this qualifies. I'm going to be installing that PDF-downloader extension just as soon as I'm done mocking this list for sucking so hard. And while I do agree that NoScript just breaks too many sites (and it's only going to get worse as the web gets all AJAXy and buzzword-compliant), I don't think I'd bother with the web without tools like Adblock Plus. What can I say - I'm sensitive to noise, both visual and audio. I find it harder than most people to filter out extraneous crap from my sensory input. Maybe it's because I grew up muting the TV audio during commericals (it got to be reflexive in our family) but advertising grates on my nerves like nobody's business. I'll tolerate Google-style text ads, but I find anything with graphics distracting and want it gone.

And yeah, some of it is my significant anti-consumerism bias, too. I block ads on principle, as I consider them an ever-increasing intrusion into my life. Yes, people have the right to create and use advertising, but I have the same right to use any legal means to keep them away from me. And for those who ask, as this article did, "what would happen to all the great ad-supported sites if everyone used these tools," well, they'd be replaced by something else - subscription-driven services, smaller clusters of free services, etc. I love the web as much as the next guy, but it's not like I'd be lost if the entire web went dark tomorrow. I have other interests. But that's not going to happen anyway.

VideoDownloader *is* extremely useful

[cos(x)]

For those who cannot (*BSD, non-i386 Linux) or do not want to run Flash, VideoDownloader is pretty much the only way to watch YouTube videos. That, and sometimes it actually is great to fetch a video from YouTube for offline viewing, even if you have Flash installed. Sure, the server that the extension uses may go down sometimes, but so what? Just wait a couple of seconds and try again.

Ad block and ad block plus...

[SCHecklerX]

Computerworld, you get no sympathy from me for being an ad-supported site.

If ads had continued to be a small banner at the top or bottom of the page with NO ANIMATION, or even small ads down the sides that didn't interrupt the flow of the CONTENT (again, no animation), then guess what? I would never have seen a need to use ad blocking software.

The fact is that advertising has gotten very intrusive and counter productive. Hell, I'd likely visit a few advertiser's sites, but now I never see them because of the way they were changed to be as intrusive as possible, hence sent to the bit bucket. WHy do advertisers believe that being as in-your-face as possible would do anything BUT piss people off about the stuff they are trying to sell?

That decent ads (see above ... small banners, no animation) get killed too is collateral damage, and it's the advertiser's own fault that people see fit to block the crap. Many even constitute security hazards. Yeah, I'm going to allow THAT to be displayed on my browser (yes, it is MY BROWSER, and it is meant to render things as the USER sees fit...many seem to have forgotten that).

So cry me a river. I'll stick with adblocking software. It's your own damned fault that people block your precious advertisers these days.

Fasterfox

[glwtta]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Fasterfox doesn't prefetch links unless you specifically enable that option (or they are marked for prefetching, and who does that?). It doesn't matter which level you select, the indiscriminate prefetching is a separate option.

Its main benefits are multiple connections and pipelining (oh and the timer - I love the timer). To say that you should throw the whole thing out because they don't like prefetching (which is indeed a poor idea) is just plain silly.

Also, what's with the extremely patronizing tone of the whole article? Who made them the hall monitors of the internet?

Re:

[pjrc]

Some time ago, I got a complaint from someone trying to use my website. I use mod_throttle, mainly due to people trying to run automated whole-site downloader programs that get stuck inside the bugzilla pages. When that happens, every perl-rendered bugzilla page chews up excessive CPU time and they're so heavily interlinked that this continues on forever. The bugzilla documentation specifically recommends installing mod_throttle to deal with this well known problem.

In this guy's case, he wasn't really ev

Computerworld should know better

[Roadkills-R-Us]

Within just a few minutes, CW was slashdotted. It's mindboggling that any real media company converting to the web can't handle the hit rate.

The Real List of Extensions to avoid.

[mr_3ntropy]

Here is the real list [mozillazine.org] of problematic extensions. I found it when trying to figure out why my FF has become so slow that I have had to go back to IE (yes, imagine how bad it must be). My tabs just remain stuck on "Loading..." with a white page and nothing happens. And the memory usage keeps climbing. Yes even with all latest versions of everything. So I set out to minimize my add-ons to the barest that I must have.

So far I have 4 I can't live without. Adblock, IE View Lite, Firefox View, and BugmeNot. Out of these I am assuming only an "Always on" types like Adblock can cause memory + slowdown issues. The others should not hurt much right?

The blacklist has some popular extensions like Adblock, but usually its only the older versions with problems. Tab Browser Extensions and Tab Browser Preferences particularly stand out as they are not recommended.

Oh and the article is drivel.

Noscript.....

[hendersj]

FTFA:

Does NoScript make Firefox safer? Sure. Is it worth the hassle? No. For some reason, paranoia seems to be cool among Web geeks

I guess they think that having your system pwned and turned into a spam-spewing zombie DoS machine of death is what really makes one cool.

Unfounded

[sacrilicious]

Does NoScript make Firefox safer? Sure. Is it worth the hassle? No. For some reason, paranoia seems to be cool among Web geeks, but for the most part, it is totally unwarranted unless you're sending and receiving sensitive data.

This is a pretty broad set of statements to make, and I doubt the article's author has anything but his own opinion to back it up with. Example: Google Analytics javascripts are everywhere, directly allowing google to track an individual user's journey to any pages that include them. The author apparently doesn't think that visits to such pages are "private information". Or maybe the author doesn't realize how such information is tracked and might be used.

Re:AdBlock??

[ZiZ]

I'll make mention of the same thing I did last time AdblockPlus + Filterset.G came up: you might try switching to the EasyList and EasyElement [adblockplus.org] subscriptions instead. I was a staunch user of Filterset.G for a long time, and only switched to Easy* because I was reinstalling, in a hurry, and EasyList came up as an option when AdblockPlus was installed, but I'm hooked now. In my experience, and experiences of others [brianyi.org], the Easy* lists are faster and easier to maintain, plus you don't need an extra extension to manage them.