17 ms·

Firefox extensions to make remote work and school a little better

531 points by joeyespo 6y ago

itcrowd 6y ago
uBlock Origin needs to be on the list. It doesn't make remote work or school better, specifically, but it makes the whole web great (again).
- nogabebop23 6y ago
  yes - new computer/device for anyone in the family => install uBO. I've only had one complaint abouty a site that no longer worked properly (and it was both (a) garbage and (b) targeting kids specifically)
jyr0s 6y ago
A few of these have the "Access your data for all websites" permission and honestly, I can't shake the feeling that I'm giving away all data on all websites at all times if I install any of these
- paulgb 6y ago
  As an extension developer, I hate to say it, but you're absolutely right to feel that way. I've had people offer to pay me to put tracking or buy an extension outright, and my extensions aren't even that popular; I can only imagine what emails developers of extensions with 100k+ users get. If anyone from Firefox is reading these, I'd love a way to link an extension to a Github repository with a particular hash, and have users be able to verify that the code in the extension actually matches what's in the repo. Currently, even if an extension "lives" on GitHub, there's no way to know that what's in the extension library matches what's on Github.
  - 0x262d 6y ago
    That's really interesting to hear, I had always wondered how bad things can really be. I guess the answer is "as bad as money can buy" which I should have expected. Thanks.
  - _xander 6y ago
    That's terrifying. Is there any auditing done by Mozilla to get an extension published? Or is it a free for all?
    - paulgb 6y ago
      To their credit, Mozilla does have an approval process, but it's pretty opaque what actually happens during that process. They also have a "Recommended Extensions" program which does more thorough vetting, apparently. Chrome is more of a free-for-all.
      - unityByFreedom 6y ago
        > Chrome is more of a free-for-all Chrome is very strict, as of the last several months, about what they allow. There's even a sticky in the support group for people whose extensions have been stuck in review for more than 3 weeks: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!forum/chromium-extensions https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/?utm_medium=e...
    - kbenson 6y ago
      This is the flip side to Google and Firefox both making their extension much more locked down by removing some APIs entirely and requiring signing and approval. There are reasons to be upset that such practices hurt useful existing extensions that people like, but there's also reason to be relieved they are doing so.
      - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
        The old extension system while more powerful, was pretty flaky anyway. Every browser update had a good chance of breaking extensions. At least now there is a clear api that can be kept stable over updates.
    - SmallPeePeeMan 6y ago
      I’m an extension reviewer at adding.mozilla.org. Extensions that request certain permissions are manually reviewed. Others are automatically approved. Recommend extensions are ALWAYS manually reviewed for each update.
  - euid 6y ago
    You can audit the code of a Firefox extension by unzipping the .xpi file in the extensions directory within your browser profile directory. Not ideal, but it's better than nothing.
    - jyr0s 6y ago
      Are you proposing to do that for every update that comes in, for every extension? Far from ideal.
      - euid 6y ago
        Oh, yes, it's far from ideal. I'm reminded of the ArchLinux AUR, which deals with a problem kind of like this. AUR managers show a diff of what changed in a package on each update. Perhaps one could make extension auditing easier by scripting together a Git repository from extracted xpis, and presenting updates as patches to that repository. This is probably only viable for high-security environments - it's not with it in the common case. Of course, the real fix would come from Firefox itself: it should provide signed extensions and a way to tie them back to Git repositories with source code, which would eliminate the need for the above automation, and allow people to crowdsource extension auditing.
    - Hitton 6y ago
      Since the rise of typescript and other transpilers to javascript, this isn't very feasible.
  - diego898 6y ago
    Linking to a particular hash is a great idea. I encourage you to open a feature request as this could go a ways towards making users with extensions that require that kind of permission feel more secure
  - 6510 6y ago
    User.scripts are cool for small tweaks but also for large ones with dubious access.
  - davidzweig 6y ago
    We have 600k users, we get an email every few weeks from shifty 'investors' looking to buy the extension.
  - LinuxBender 6y ago
    I would like to see a tab in about:addons that shows how much data each addon has received and transmitted and to what names/ip's/ports. Could Firefox be modified to do something like this? Perhaps an extension of about:networking?
- bb123 6y ago
  Any extension that asks for that sadly a complete no for me. That is way too broad a permission for something as sensitive as the contents of every site I browse. I’ve found recently it means pretty much all extensions are unusable for me.
  - ghostpepper 6y ago
    I just installed tree style tabs at the recommendation of this article and it was refreshing the way they handled permissions: a first-use popup that explains some additional features and what permissions they will request if you want to use them.
- nojito 6y ago
  Extension devs are notoriously lazy in that they just build first without thinking about the bare minimum permissions that they need to function. I believe Pushbullet got caught using too many permissions recently.
  - gowld 6y ago
    Browsers don't provide simple tools to audit permission needs.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  You are. Exercise caution. As a former extension maintainer that permission is as scary as it sounds.
- kagbor 6y ago
  This is a problem with how poorly extension permissions are handled by the browsers. There needs to be a way to gracefully ask a user for permanent (and configurable) extended permissions without it being an earth shattering event. My experience: I have a moderately popular extension that initially only supported a couple sites so I set the permissions accordingly. I would extend permissions every time I added support for another site. However, with each permission increase my extension gets completely disabled for every user with a very scary warning that suggests something nefarious is happening. With each permission update I would lose HALF of my users. My alternatives are activeTab (awful user experience) or just being greedy with my permissions. I went with the latter.
  - EvilTerran 6y ago
    Could you not use permissions.request() [0] to ask for access to a given site on-the-fly, when the user actually visits it? That seems to be how, for example, Reddit Enhancement Suite goes about getting perms for all the various sites it supports embedding content from (imgur, twitter etc) - you get a prompt when you click to open an embed for a site you haven't granted the permission for already. [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/permissions/request https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
- andrethegiant 6y ago
  I feel exactly the same way. No one should blindly trust installing anything that runs on every page they visit.
- gnicholas 6y ago
  On Chrome, any extension that asks for permission to view/edit all your pages can be limited to a specific set of domains. I don't think Firefox has this feature, but would love to hear if it does.
- vezycash 6y ago
  Firefox should provide the ability to white list, or blacklist extension on certain sites. Chrome has it. I don't know why it's taking them forever.
- thayne 6y ago
  The problem is that scary as that is, as I understand, in order to interact with browser content itself, that permission is necessary. So it isn't possible to implement, say the Language Tool extension, or something that changes the appearance of webpages without that permission. I haven't looked at all these extensions to see if the permissions they ask are reasonable for what they do. Perhaps it would be possible to create more granular controls, although I don't think it would be a simple task. The current situation, is unfortunately bad for both users who must grant scary permissions to use useful extensions, and for extension authors who must ask for permissions that are more broad than what they really need, because it is the only option.
Someone1234 6y ago
> LanguageTool: By default, this extension will check your text by sending it to https://languagetool.org https://languagetool.org over a securely encrypted connection. No account is needed to use this extension. We don't store your IP address. Honestly I'd pay good money if someone invented a competitor to this, Grammerly, or Ginger that was all local (an actual usage for machine learning/NLP!). It doesn't need to be perfect just better than the bad spelling/grammar solution built into Firefox, and more private than these services.
- zelly 6y ago
  Language Tool which you linked to is open source, GPL licensed. It's "okay".
- inglor 6y ago
  Here is how you run your own languagetool server :] http://wiki.languagetool.org/http-server http://wiki.languagetool.org/http-server
  - Someone1234 6y ago
    Thanks giving that a shot now. Edit: Alright this is pretty good. I'm going to stick with this for a while. It was super easy to get up and going (just spawn with "start javaw" for a background daemon). I installed the 14 GB n-gram data too, which makes it even better. Only tip is that the command line arguments are case specific for some reason (languagemodel vs languageModel matter).
    - coldpie 6y ago
      Don't forget to give the creators the "good money" you promised :) https://languagetool.org/#Price https://languagetool.org/#Price
- curiousgal 6y ago
  Antidote has been around for a while It supports both French and English. https://www.antidote.info/en/antidote-10 https://www.antidote.info/en/antidote-10
nilkn 6y ago
I'll vouch for Tree Style Tabs. It's a killer extension that changed the way I work and made Firefox into a serious productivity workhorse for me. I can easily manage 10x as many tabs as I could before without ever feeling like I'm getting lost in them.
- mulmen 6y ago
  I used to have an older extension that did this but it broke a few years ago. I have moved to a workflow where I open a new Firefox window for each of the branches in the tree. I combine this with multiple spaces in MacOS to group by task. This works very well for me because I can then have the browser grouped with iterm sessions and emails and other suporting documentation. The major drawback is that Firefox does not re-open windows in their previous space. They all open on a random space the next time Firefox launches. This makes Firefox updates and system reboots (frequent of late on MacOS) a pain. I have gotten good at moving the windows back to their correct spaces but if Mozilla fixed this so the windows restored to their previous spaces I would be delighted. e: Looks like Mozilla fixed this in FF 75: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=440895 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=440895 I generally run ESR releases for work but I might risk an upgrade to a later version to get this fixed.
  - brigandish 6y ago
    I wish I’d had your success. I tried using Spaces for a while but they can’t be named (or couldn’t when I was trying it) so I’d end up cycling through similar looking spaces trying to recover my place all the time. Being sent back to another space when I go to open, say, a new terminal but it’s already open somewhere else was a pain too. If I’m in a space I want to be able to start apps there without doing a time wasting dance. I never have more than 2 spaces open now, and rarely. Feels like a missed opportunity to me from one more half-finished good idea by Apple.
    - mulmen 6y ago
      I had to fiddle a lot of defaults to make it work. > Being sent back to another space when I go to open, say, a new terminal but it’s already open somewhere else was a pain too. If I’m in a space I want to be able to start apps there without doing a time wasting dance. Take a look at your mission control settings and uncheck "When switching to an application, switch to a Space with open windows for the application". I put a lot of energy in to "getting" spaces a couple years ago and there was a learning curve for a couple weeks but now I have a model that works with the features that exist. The effort definitely paid off. I think spaces are a fairly polished idea from Apple actually. The problem is they create features that work well for a specific use case but then don't clearly explain what that use case is or how their solution works. You very much have to "hold it right" and it's up to you to figure out what "right" is. I figure MacOS is a tool, like a hammer, I should learn how to "swing" it. The lack of named spaces is ok for me, I can tell from context what each space is for and I consider them ephemeral. I do not let MacOS rearrange my spaces based on use (this is another option, "Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use") because I have them sorted by my own mental model of priority. The left most space is always a general desktop space with a browser and mail and IM, etc. The right most space is a "system" space with things like task manager, system preferences and a terminal window with homebrew commands and whatever invocation of jamf commands it takes to get back on the corporate network. Any time something in space #1 requires more than a couple browser tabs or an email I tend to throw it into a new space. I also arrange it somewhere in the existing stack by importance. This means I am almost always doing productive work in space #2. Before a meeting or call I will open up the relevant email thread(s), invite, browser tabs, etc in a new space so I have the full context without distractions.
cJ0th 6y ago
Learned about midnight lizard thanks to this post. like it a lot. some websites take a while till they are rendered in midnight mode. However, my laptop is not very powerful.
theboywho 6y ago
I fail to see how is this related to remote work and not just work in general. Does firefox really need this this kind of "jump on the hype" kind of marketing ?
867-5309 6y ago
If my kids are on Windows laptops I can use Microsoft Family settings to control OS lockout, app access and Edge restrictions. If they're on tablets I can use Google Family for a similar experience with Android and Chrome. If they're on Kindle Fires then Amazon offer similar Family settings. OS aside, what does Firefox have to offer in this respect?
- gowld 6y ago
  What's wrong with OS level control? Your kids can install alternative browser.
  - 867-5309 6y ago
    Windows can only control Edge, so all other browsers have to be blocked. same story with other OSes and their respective browsers
    - rovr138 6y ago
      What kind of restrictions are we talking about?
duxup 6y ago
I wish they would let you hide Firefox accounts behind passwords so the browser just looks vanilla when you sign out. Rather it leaves bookmarks behind. Makes it hard to use with sharing devices like an iPad and etc.
- Polylactic_acid 6y ago
  Does iOS not have user accounts? Every other OS has this and it makes this feature useless.
  - duxup 6y ago
    iPads behave as single user device, so they don't allow for multi users at the OS level. Personally I'd prefer both Firefox and iOS support multi user things ... even if just for my own convenience. I have "work" and "home" type profiles.
  - sp332 6y ago
    Some Android distros also disable this feature. Samsung, for example.
jonny383 6y ago
I've found switching the user agent to Chrome to be the most effective solution for ensuring sites and platforms operate as expected, without degregaded experience. Yes, this includes non-Google educational platforms that block access based on user agent (not compatibility)
kirubakaran 6y ago
May I humbly suggest https://histre.com/ https://histre.com/ that I'm building? Not only can you bookmark and take notes, you can share collections of bookmarks with your teams and they can add theirs to the collection too. You can save all the open tabs in a browser window into a collection and either use it to restore that window later - perhaps even in a different browser or computer, or share that with your teams so they can open the same set of tabs. It has tree style web history too. The disjointed suggestions they have in this post is actually fully integrated in Histre, Emacs-style if you will. The core idea is that you generate a lot of signal as you go about your day doing stuff online and that can automatically be put to use for you. Unlike the Knowledge Bases like Notion and Evernote, where you need to capture and organize the information (which is useful in a different way), Histre strives to automatically organize it for you. I'd argue that this supports the "remote work and school" usecase better. Speaking of integrations, it has Hacker News integration too. Your upvotes are saved into a collection. You can then share that collection with just some friends or make it public (sort of your frictionless publishing page). I'm working on recommending articles based on your HN upvotes.
- alexland 6y ago
  This looks super cool, I'm very interested in trying it. It looks like the link to the Firefox extension is broken though, is there a workaround to install the extension?
  - kirubakaran 6y ago
    Thanks! Sorry, I'm fixing this. The extension is actually open source, so you could install it from source from here: https://gitlab.com/histre/browser-extension https://gitlab.com/histre/browser-extension But then you won't receive updates. So please give me some time to fix it and then you can install from Firefox addons page.
- valeriemettler 6y ago
  I agree. Piecing together a bunch of extensions doesn't help improve my workflow. I love that it is all integrated here. Being able to share is great!
pncnmnp 6y ago
When I switched to Firefox, I found the lack of pop-up styled Google Dictionary to be a deal-breaker. So I created an extension - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/popup-encyclopedia/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/popup-encyclo.... It supports both the dictionary and encyclopedia words. Students may find this extension useful.
niftylettuce 6y ago
We're releasing our extension soon for all browsers. https://forwardemail.net https://forwardemail.net Here's extensions I use and my full setup: https://gist.github.com/niftylettuce/39597a7b3bc0660ffe1e09d77588bcf6 https://gist.github.com/niftylettuce/39597a7b3bc0660ffe1e09d... git clone https://github.com/zenorocha/codecopy git clone https://github.com/philc/vimium.git git clone https://github.com/OctoLinker/OctoLinker.git git clone https://github.com/ilGur1132/Smart-HTTPS.git git clone https://github.com/ovity/octotree.git git clone https://github.com/mrcoles/full-page-screen-capture-chrome-extension.git + https://github.com/jswanner/DontFuckWithPaste https://github.com/jswanner/DontFuckWithPaste + https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock
geoelectric 6y ago
I'm unfamiliar with the Dark Mode extensions referenced in this article, but I've had pretty good luck with Dark Reader. It's not as performant on Firefox as on Chrome (and it really shows in Gmail in particular) but overall it's been very reliable and easy to customize when necessary.
saidajigumi 6y ago
I'd like to offer a recommendation for Zoom Tab Close[1]. It's an extremely simple extension that closes out the leftover tab when a zoom link received by the browser redirects to the desktop app. Just one bit of friction in my day ... gone. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/zoom-tab-close/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/zoom-tab-clos...
jedberg 6y ago
I didn't see multi-account containers mentioned: https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers#readme https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers#readme That one changed my life. It allows me to log into different AWS accounts at the same time. Also different Gmail accounts at once (like my kids' email and mine). Also it gives you a massive boost in privacy since cookies don't follow you around since they are restricted to one container. Combined with Container Tabs Sidebar: https://github.com/maciekmm/container-tabs-sidebar https://github.com/maciekmm/container-tabs-sidebar You get the tree style tabs with automatic organization by container.
- voicedYoda 6y ago
  Add in uMatrix and https everywhere and it's a whole new world
- sp332 6y ago
  This combined with Container Proxy helped me a lot WFH. I can have my Work tabs going through the proxy and let all my other tabs use my normal internet connection.
  - gurjeet 6y ago
    For per-domain, or even per-subdoamin proxy routing, I highly recommend FoxyProxy[1]. It works with containers as well. It was broken by the Firefox Quantum update, by after a long and patient wait the original author rewrote the addon to work acceptably again. [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/foxyproxy-standard/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/foxyproxy-sta...
- robotichead 6y ago
  I heavily use this - it has made my work flow so much better as I can separate work/personal/NearBeach etc.
  - tzs 6y ago
    Don't multi-account containers just separate cookies (and maybe other storage mechanisms)? I'd expect that a lot of people want separate bookmarks and extensions, too. I think you have to use multiple profiles to do that, which is kind of clunky. Anyone know of they have plans to make managing and using multiple profiles smoother?
musicale 6y ago
> Impulse Blocker is here to keep you away from those distracting, timesink websites ... which are the primary use case for Firefox (and all other web browsers.)
nine_k 6y ago
I can't describe in short how Tree Style Tab improves tab management. * You can logically organize tabs, very valuable when you researching something, or when you work on multiple related web pages. Say, issue tracker, a PR or two github for this issue, a couple of doc pages related to the code, etc. The beauty of it is that the tabs mostly self-organize based on the opening order. * You can expand and contract whole subtrees to keep current things in focus, and other things, readily available. * You can have 30 or 50 tabs and still actually read the captions of the tabs! * You can bookmark the whole subtree, or move it to a separate window, or close all of its tabs, or refresh all of its tabs, etc.
- ShamelessC 6y ago
  I love tree style tabs but it takes up a lot of horizontal screen real estate. It's great when my browser is in fullscreen but most of the time I have a terminal on the right half with my browser on the left. This winds up smooshing the actual website to switch to a mobile layout (if I'm lucky). Otherwise the website is rendered useless. Is it possible to make the sidebar float atop the webpage instead of pushing the content in? Then perhaps it could quickly autohide as you move your cursor near it.
  - sp332 6y ago
    You can turn it on and off quickly with the F1 key. And I'm pretty sure the hotkey is configurable.
  - nine_k 6y ago
    My situation is a bit different: I have a 4K display, so space is not at such a premium, but I have 70-100 tabs open, in several large subtrees, and smaller subtrees within them, etc. It is possible to make the tree pretty narrow if the screen is small, then the tabs begin to look more like the crowded top tab bar, but still allow for some structure.
  - enraged_camel 6y ago
    My issue is that you can’t disable the default tab bar, so you end up wasting a lot of space by rendering each tab twice. It also makes the habit (of using the default horizontal tabs) a tough one to break.
ccktlmazeltov 6y ago
If you don't use tree style tabs to browse the web, you're probably doing it wrong.
- yinyang_in 6y ago
  Was using it extensively, have customised it with userchrome file. But then went to idea of having fewer tabs open and only w.r.t context I'm working on. Lesser number of tabs made things much more simpler for me. Have been both sides, and must way for people with lots of tabs, tree style tabs is seriously good.
  - demosito666 6y ago
    I did the same. I was relying on tree style tab heavily and kept 30-40 tabs opened all the time. Obviously without the extension this would be a pain. But then I realized that most tabs I have opened hang there for weeks and months without me even looking at them, occupying screen and mental space. Now I made a simple habbit: once I've read the tab and don't need it right now, I just close it. Should I need to return to it later, it's trivial to re-open it from history. One might think it's kind of a konmari approach, and when you're doing it you don't need extra management tools anymore.
modzu 6y ago
speed dials! this one is open source and privacy conscious (i'm the author): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/yet-another-speed-dial/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/yet-another-s...
ww520 6y ago
Since we're talking about extensions, can I suggest my own Tip Tab [1] for visually navigate and manage tabs? Just updated it after a year of break. I mostly use it for quick search and keyboard navigation (ctrl-shift-F, type search term, Tab Tab Tab Enter to jump to the tab). Also use the predefined search terms like, mail, news, finance, etc, to quickly filter down the tabs. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tip-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tip-tab/
- xcv58 6y ago
  Suggest mine Tab Manager v2 too: it has VIM-like navigation (hjkl) and other features can be searched via Command+Shift+P. And Command+T (Alt+T for non-macOS) to toggle the popup window: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-manager-v2/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-manager-v...
neves 6y ago
My favorite extension is the "Tab reloader". I can set it to reload my work login page and it won't expire my session. And uBlock Origin and Tree Tab are fundamental for the web. Containers also nice, I can login at sites like Trello and GitHub with different accounts.
nevster 6y ago
Panorama Tab Groups is the best replacement for the old Tab groups extension : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-tab-groups/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-tab-... I resisted upgrading for ages while there didn't seem to be a clear winning replacement.
- 0_gravitas 6y ago
  My only issue with Panorama is that it conflicts with Vim Vixens 'next tab' commands a lot, and will often send me to another tab group which is particularly distracting and jarring. If there was no conflict I'd love to go back 100%
- jayelbe 6y ago
  Thank you so much for sharing this! I used Panorama so intensively and thought it was one of Fx's killer features. I'd given up hoping there would be a suitable replacement - until now.
- Tagbert 6y ago
  I love Panorama. It lets me setup different tab groups for each project and I can switch contexts very quickly.
linhmtran168 6y ago
I use Sidebery for tab management and find it more lightweight than Tree Style Tab https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sidebery/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sidebery/ And LeechBlock NG has massively helped me gain back my wasted time browsing the web https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/leechblock-ng/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/leechblock-ng...
- wakkaflokka 6y ago
  Wow, this is awesome. Much more responsive than Tree Style Tabs from what I'm seeing, and the grouping mechanism is great. Thanks for the heads up.
djrogers 6y ago
These maybe / are great features and extensions, but I don’t see what any of them have to do with WFH?
gnicholas 6y ago
Humbly suggesting BeeLine Reader for Chrome [1] and Firefox [2], which has seen a strong uptick in interest during WFH and distance learning. There's a 2-week free trial, and it's currently free for students via our covid program. 1: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/beeline-reader/ifjafammaookpiajfbedmacfldaiamgg?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/beeline-reader/ifj... 2: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/beelinereader/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/beelinereader...
- kabacha 6y ago
  I've tried Beeline multiple times and I every time I come out with varying experiences. For example it's pretty much useless for reading code stuff as it colors in code blocks with no way to disable that. Also I'm certain it actually makes well formatted text harder to read. As in 60-70 character lines with healthy paragraphing and imagery. I'm kinda perplexed that they are charging 2$/month for this extension when it could be replicated in javascript bookmarklet or grease monkey script. All it does is blindly apply gradient to text. Not a fan of accessibility innovations like this being made propriatory like this either.
  - gnicholas 6y ago
    You're right about code blocks! We offer a domain blacklist feature so that folks can prevent it from running on sites they read that have a lot of code, and we are working on a smarter way to detect code blocks and not color them. If you're certain that BeeLine "makes well formatted text harder to read", then I'm pretty sure we're not for you! I'd be curious to know where you find it helpful? Just for text that is displayed too densely? We're doing a bit more than blindly applying gradients to text! The first thing to figure out is where the body text is on a page. It's not easy to avoid overcoloring (accidentally coloring captions or text that is on a different-colored background) and undercoloring (not coloring all of the main blocks of text). It's easy to do these tasks on a handful of websites, but it's hard to come up with algorithms that work across the entire internet (in many languages). But yes, what we do is something that is proprietary, and that makes it different than some accessibility techniques. There are other aspects of accessibility that are proprietary, for example high-quality TTS voices like Amazon Polly. But my goal is to have the technique that I invented, tested, and refined adopted into products so that users do not have to pay for plugins and such. There's good progress on this front, with major e-textbook platforms and big newspapers looking to integrate the tech. Once we get a couple of these larger licensees on board, there's a good chance we'll make the consumer tools free for individuals.
monksy 6y ago
The joplin extension and application. (https://joplinapp.org/ https://joplinapp.org/ - next cloud syncing functionality baby!) Duplicate tabs closer
dkthehuman 6y ago
If you want to be more intentional about how you use your time online, I launched Intention on HN a little while ago: https://getintention.com https://getintention.com Spent a lot of time getting privacy right: It only asks you for the sites you select (not all sites like most other extensions). HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22936742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22936742
- franky47 6y ago
  I've been using it since it launched, it's amazing, thanks a lot !
  - dkthehuman 6y ago
    Woo! Thanks Franky.
- jacek 6y ago
  I love that idea and I am installing it now! Thanks!
- pqdbr 6y ago
  Intention is awesome. I had a habit of unknowingly typing "g" in my Chrome's search bar and visit G1 (a Brazil's news site). It became something I just did that on a whim, multiple times along the day, and now Intention is saving me almost 50 minutes of productivity every day.
  - dkthehuman 6y ago
    Oh snap! That's awesome to hear.
  - jamesbvaughan 6y ago
    I just found your comment on another thread where you said that you wanted to find Ira Glass's video on "taste" but now it's been long enough that I can't reply to that comment, so I'm replying to this completely unrelated comment because I've also had trouble finding that video in the paste and decided to save the link the last time I found it. Here it is: https://vimeo.com/85040589 https://vimeo.com/85040589
Zardoz84 6y ago
Simple tab groups it's a game changer. At least, I can have separate my tab setup when I'm working, from the stuff that I have open when I'm with my side projects, or when I simply doing other unrelated stuff.
- Zardoz84 6y ago
  Also, the Private bookmarks, was a thing that I was feeling very necessary like many years ago. It isn't perfect (alpha stage) but does the work.
leppr 6y ago
I still miss the mouse gesture extensions from the pre-Web Extensions days. The suggested replacements only work on a loaded webpage, which limits their use as a replacement to keyboard shortcuts, especially when combined with a tab unloader extension[1]. [1] such as https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-discard/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-disc...
SidAI 6y ago
It's a good time for companies based on improving remote work/school...

531 points by joeyespo 6y ago

uBlock Origin needs to be on the list. It doesn't make remote work or school better, specifically, but it makes the whole web great (again).

nogabebop23 6y ago
yes - new computer/device for anyone in the family => install uBO. I've only had one complaint abouty a site that no longer worked properly (and it was both (a) garbage and (b) targeting kids specifically)

jyr0s 6y ago

A few of these have the "Access your data for all websites" permission and honestly, I can't shake the feeling that I'm giving away all data on all websites at all times if I install any of these

paulgb 6y ago
As an extension developer, I hate to say it, but you're absolutely right to feel that way. I've had people offer to pay me to put tracking or buy an extension outright, and my extensions aren't even that popular; I can only imagine what emails developers of extensions with 100k+ users get. If anyone from Firefox is reading these, I'd love a way to link an extension to a Github repository with a particular hash, and have users be able to verify that the code in the extension actually matches what's in the repo. Currently, even if an extension "lives" on GitHub, there's no way to know that what's in the extension library matches what's on Github.
- 0x262d 6y ago
  That's really interesting to hear, I had always wondered how bad things can really be. I guess the answer is "as bad as money can buy" which I should have expected. Thanks.
- _xander 6y ago
  That's terrifying. Is there any auditing done by Mozilla to get an extension published? Or is it a free for all?
  - paulgb 6y ago
    To their credit, Mozilla does have an approval process, but it's pretty opaque what actually happens during that process. They also have a "Recommended Extensions" program which does more thorough vetting, apparently. Chrome is more of a free-for-all.
    - unityByFreedom 6y ago
      > Chrome is more of a free-for-all Chrome is very strict, as of the last several months, about what they allow. There's even a sticky in the support group for people whose extensions have been stuck in review for more than 3 weeks: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!forum/chromium-extensions https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/?utm_medium=e...
  - kbenson 6y ago
    This is the flip side to Google and Firefox both making their extension much more locked down by removing some APIs entirely and requiring signing and approval. There are reasons to be upset that such practices hurt useful existing extensions that people like, but there's also reason to be relieved they are doing so.
    - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
      The old extension system while more powerful, was pretty flaky anyway. Every browser update had a good chance of breaking extensions. At least now there is a clear api that can be kept stable over updates.
  - SmallPeePeeMan 6y ago
    I’m an extension reviewer at adding.mozilla.org. Extensions that request certain permissions are manually reviewed. Others are automatically approved. Recommend extensions are ALWAYS manually reviewed for each update.
- euid 6y ago
  You can audit the code of a Firefox extension by unzipping the .xpi file in the extensions directory within your browser profile directory. Not ideal, but it's better than nothing.
  - jyr0s 6y ago
    Are you proposing to do that for every update that comes in, for every extension? Far from ideal.
    - euid 6y ago
      Oh, yes, it's far from ideal. I'm reminded of the ArchLinux AUR, which deals with a problem kind of like this. AUR managers show a diff of what changed in a package on each update. Perhaps one could make extension auditing easier by scripting together a Git repository from extracted xpis, and presenting updates as patches to that repository. This is probably only viable for high-security environments - it's not with it in the common case. Of course, the real fix would come from Firefox itself: it should provide signed extensions and a way to tie them back to Git repositories with source code, which would eliminate the need for the above automation, and allow people to crowdsource extension auditing.
  - Hitton 6y ago
    Since the rise of typescript and other transpilers to javascript, this isn't very feasible.
- diego898 6y ago
  Linking to a particular hash is a great idea. I encourage you to open a feature request as this could go a ways towards making users with extensions that require that kind of permission feel more secure
- 6510 6y ago
  User.scripts are cool for small tweaks but also for large ones with dubious access.
- davidzweig 6y ago
  We have 600k users, we get an email every few weeks from shifty 'investors' looking to buy the extension.
- LinuxBender 6y ago
  I would like to see a tab in about:addons that shows how much data each addon has received and transmitted and to what names/ip's/ports. Could Firefox be modified to do something like this? Perhaps an extension of about:networking?
bb123 6y ago
Any extension that asks for that sadly a complete no for me. That is way too broad a permission for something as sensitive as the contents of every site I browse. I’ve found recently it means pretty much all extensions are unusable for me.
- ghostpepper 6y ago
  I just installed tree style tabs at the recommendation of this article and it was refreshing the way they handled permissions: a first-use popup that explains some additional features and what permissions they will request if you want to use them.
nojito 6y ago
Extension devs are notoriously lazy in that they just build first without thinking about the bare minimum permissions that they need to function. I believe Pushbullet got caught using too many permissions recently.
- gowld 6y ago
  Browsers don't provide simple tools to audit permission needs.
kevingadd 6y ago
You are. Exercise caution. As a former extension maintainer that permission is as scary as it sounds.
kagbor 6y ago
This is a problem with how poorly extension permissions are handled by the browsers. There needs to be a way to gracefully ask a user for permanent (and configurable) extended permissions without it being an earth shattering event. My experience: I have a moderately popular extension that initially only supported a couple sites so I set the permissions accordingly. I would extend permissions every time I added support for another site. However, with each permission increase my extension gets completely disabled for every user with a very scary warning that suggests something nefarious is happening. With each permission update I would lose HALF of my users. My alternatives are activeTab (awful user experience) or just being greedy with my permissions. I went with the latter.
- EvilTerran 6y ago
  Could you not use permissions.request() [0] to ask for access to a given site on-the-fly, when the user actually visits it? That seems to be how, for example, Reddit Enhancement Suite goes about getting perms for all the various sites it supports embedding content from (imgur, twitter etc) - you get a prompt when you click to open an embed for a site you haven't granted the permission for already. [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/permissions/request https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
andrethegiant 6y ago
I feel exactly the same way. No one should blindly trust installing anything that runs on every page they visit.
gnicholas 6y ago
On Chrome, any extension that asks for permission to view/edit all your pages can be limited to a specific set of domains. I don't think Firefox has this feature, but would love to hear if it does.
vezycash 6y ago
Firefox should provide the ability to white list, or blacklist extension on certain sites. Chrome has it. I don't know why it's taking them forever.
thayne 6y ago
The problem is that scary as that is, as I understand, in order to interact with browser content itself, that permission is necessary. So it isn't possible to implement, say the Language Tool extension, or something that changes the appearance of webpages without that permission. I haven't looked at all these extensions to see if the permissions they ask are reasonable for what they do. Perhaps it would be possible to create more granular controls, although I don't think it would be a simple task. The current situation, is unfortunately bad for both users who must grant scary permissions to use useful extensions, and for extension authors who must ask for permissions that are more broad than what they really need, because it is the only option.

Someone1234 6y ago

> LanguageTool: By default, this extension will check your text by sending it to https://languagetool.org https://languagetool.org over a securely encrypted connection. No account is needed to use this extension. We don't store your IP address. Honestly I'd pay good money if someone invented a competitor to this, Grammerly, or Ginger that was all local (an actual usage for machine learning/NLP!). It doesn't need to be perfect just better than the bad spelling/grammar solution built into Firefox, and more private than these services.

zelly 6y ago
Language Tool which you linked to is open source, GPL licensed. It's "okay".
inglor 6y ago
Here is how you run your own languagetool server :] http://wiki.languagetool.org/http-server http://wiki.languagetool.org/http-server
- Someone1234 6y ago
  Thanks giving that a shot now. Edit: Alright this is pretty good. I'm going to stick with this for a while. It was super easy to get up and going (just spawn with "start javaw" for a background daemon). I installed the 14 GB n-gram data too, which makes it even better. Only tip is that the command line arguments are case specific for some reason (languagemodel vs languageModel matter).
  - coldpie 6y ago
    Don't forget to give the creators the "good money" you promised :) https://languagetool.org/#Price https://languagetool.org/#Price
curiousgal 6y ago
Antidote has been around for a while It supports both French and English. https://www.antidote.info/en/antidote-10 https://www.antidote.info/en/antidote-10

nilkn 6y ago

I'll vouch for Tree Style Tabs. It's a killer extension that changed the way I work and made Firefox into a serious productivity workhorse for me. I can easily manage 10x as many tabs as I could before without ever feeling like I'm getting lost in them.

mulmen 6y ago
I used to have an older extension that did this but it broke a few years ago. I have moved to a workflow where I open a new Firefox window for each of the branches in the tree. I combine this with multiple spaces in MacOS to group by task. This works very well for me because I can then have the browser grouped with iterm sessions and emails and other suporting documentation. The major drawback is that Firefox does not re-open windows in their previous space. They all open on a random space the next time Firefox launches. This makes Firefox updates and system reboots (frequent of late on MacOS) a pain. I have gotten good at moving the windows back to their correct spaces but if Mozilla fixed this so the windows restored to their previous spaces I would be delighted. e: Looks like Mozilla fixed this in FF 75: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=440895 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=440895 I generally run ESR releases for work but I might risk an upgrade to a later version to get this fixed.
- brigandish 6y ago
  I wish I’d had your success. I tried using Spaces for a while but they can’t be named (or couldn’t when I was trying it) so I’d end up cycling through similar looking spaces trying to recover my place all the time. Being sent back to another space when I go to open, say, a new terminal but it’s already open somewhere else was a pain too. If I’m in a space I want to be able to start apps there without doing a time wasting dance. I never have more than 2 spaces open now, and rarely. Feels like a missed opportunity to me from one more half-finished good idea by Apple.
  - mulmen 6y ago
    I had to fiddle a lot of defaults to make it work. > Being sent back to another space when I go to open, say, a new terminal but it’s already open somewhere else was a pain too. If I’m in a space I want to be able to start apps there without doing a time wasting dance. Take a look at your mission control settings and uncheck "When switching to an application, switch to a Space with open windows for the application". I put a lot of energy in to "getting" spaces a couple years ago and there was a learning curve for a couple weeks but now I have a model that works with the features that exist. The effort definitely paid off. I think spaces are a fairly polished idea from Apple actually. The problem is they create features that work well for a specific use case but then don't clearly explain what that use case is or how their solution works. You very much have to "hold it right" and it's up to you to figure out what "right" is. I figure MacOS is a tool, like a hammer, I should learn how to "swing" it. The lack of named spaces is ok for me, I can tell from context what each space is for and I consider them ephemeral. I do not let MacOS rearrange my spaces based on use (this is another option, "Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use") because I have them sorted by my own mental model of priority. The left most space is always a general desktop space with a browser and mail and IM, etc. The right most space is a "system" space with things like task manager, system preferences and a terminal window with homebrew commands and whatever invocation of jamf commands it takes to get back on the corporate network. Any time something in space #1 requires more than a couple browser tabs or an email I tend to throw it into a new space. I also arrange it somewhere in the existing stack by importance. This means I am almost always doing productive work in space #2. Before a meeting or call I will open up the relevant email thread(s), invite, browser tabs, etc in a new space so I have the full context without distractions.

cJ0th 6y ago

Learned about midnight lizard thanks to this post. like it a lot. some websites take a while till they are rendered in midnight mode. However, my laptop is not very powerful.

theboywho 6y ago

I fail to see how is this related to remote work and not just work in general. Does firefox really need this this kind of "jump on the hype" kind of marketing ?

867-5309 6y ago

If my kids are on Windows laptops I can use Microsoft Family settings to control OS lockout, app access and Edge restrictions. If they're on tablets I can use Google Family for a similar experience with Android and Chrome. If they're on Kindle Fires then Amazon offer similar Family settings. OS aside, what does Firefox have to offer in this respect?

gowld 6y ago
What's wrong with OS level control? Your kids can install alternative browser.
- 867-5309 6y ago
  Windows can only control Edge, so all other browsers have to be blocked. same story with other OSes and their respective browsers
  - rovr138 6y ago
    What kind of restrictions are we talking about?

duxup 6y ago

I wish they would let you hide Firefox accounts behind passwords so the browser just looks vanilla when you sign out. Rather it leaves bookmarks behind. Makes it hard to use with sharing devices like an iPad and etc.

Polylactic_acid 6y ago
Does iOS not have user accounts? Every other OS has this and it makes this feature useless.
- duxup 6y ago
  iPads behave as single user device, so they don't allow for multi users at the OS level. Personally I'd prefer both Firefox and iOS support multi user things ... even if just for my own convenience. I have "work" and "home" type profiles.
- sp332 6y ago
  Some Android distros also disable this feature. Samsung, for example.

jonny383 6y ago

I've found switching the user agent to Chrome to be the most effective solution for ensuring sites and platforms operate as expected, without degregaded experience. Yes, this includes non-Google educational platforms that block access based on user agent (not compatibility)

kirubakaran 6y ago

May I humbly suggest https://histre.com/ https://histre.com/ that I'm building? Not only can you bookmark and take notes, you can share collections of bookmarks with your teams and they can add theirs to the collection too. You can save all the open tabs in a browser window into a collection and either use it to restore that window later - perhaps even in a different browser or computer, or share that with your teams so they can open the same set of tabs. It has tree style web history too. The disjointed suggestions they have in this post is actually fully integrated in Histre, Emacs-style if you will. The core idea is that you generate a lot of signal as you go about your day doing stuff online and that can automatically be put to use for you. Unlike the Knowledge Bases like Notion and Evernote, where you need to capture and organize the information (which is useful in a different way), Histre strives to automatically organize it for you. I'd argue that this supports the "remote work and school" usecase better. Speaking of integrations, it has Hacker News integration too. Your upvotes are saved into a collection. You can then share that collection with just some friends or make it public (sort of your frictionless publishing page). I'm working on recommending articles based on your HN upvotes.

alexland 6y ago
This looks super cool, I'm very interested in trying it. It looks like the link to the Firefox extension is broken though, is there a workaround to install the extension?
- kirubakaran 6y ago
  Thanks! Sorry, I'm fixing this. The extension is actually open source, so you could install it from source from here: https://gitlab.com/histre/browser-extension https://gitlab.com/histre/browser-extension But then you won't receive updates. So please give me some time to fix it and then you can install from Firefox addons page.
valeriemettler 6y ago
I agree. Piecing together a bunch of extensions doesn't help improve my workflow. I love that it is all integrated here. Being able to share is great!

pncnmnp 6y ago

When I switched to Firefox, I found the lack of pop-up styled Google Dictionary to be a deal-breaker. So I created an extension - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/popup-encyclopedia/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/popup-encyclo.... It supports both the dictionary and encyclopedia words. Students may find this extension useful.

niftylettuce 6y ago

We're releasing our extension soon for all browsers. https://forwardemail.net https://forwardemail.net Here's extensions I use and my full setup: https://gist.github.com/niftylettuce/39597a7b3bc0660ffe1e09d77588bcf6 https://gist.github.com/niftylettuce/39597a7b3bc0660ffe1e09d... git clone https://github.com/zenorocha/codecopy git clone https://github.com/philc/vimium.git git clone https://github.com/OctoLinker/OctoLinker.git git clone https://github.com/ilGur1132/Smart-HTTPS.git git clone https://github.com/ovity/octotree.git git clone https://github.com/mrcoles/full-page-screen-capture-chrome-extension.git + https://github.com/jswanner/DontFuckWithPaste https://github.com/jswanner/DontFuckWithPaste + https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

geoelectric 6y ago

I'm unfamiliar with the Dark Mode extensions referenced in this article, but I've had pretty good luck with Dark Reader. It's not as performant on Firefox as on Chrome (and it really shows in Gmail in particular) but overall it's been very reliable and easy to customize when necessary.

saidajigumi 6y ago

I'd like to offer a recommendation for Zoom Tab Close[1]. It's an extremely simple extension that closes out the leftover tab when a zoom link received by the browser redirects to the desktop app. Just one bit of friction in my day ... gone. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/zoom-tab-close/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/zoom-tab-clos...

jedberg 6y ago

I didn't see multi-account containers mentioned: https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers#readme https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers#readme That one changed my life. It allows me to log into different AWS accounts at the same time. Also different Gmail accounts at once (like my kids' email and mine). Also it gives you a massive boost in privacy since cookies don't follow you around since they are restricted to one container. Combined with Container Tabs Sidebar: https://github.com/maciekmm/container-tabs-sidebar https://github.com/maciekmm/container-tabs-sidebar You get the tree style tabs with automatic organization by container.

voicedYoda 6y ago
Add in uMatrix and https everywhere and it's a whole new world
sp332 6y ago
This combined with Container Proxy helped me a lot WFH. I can have my Work tabs going through the proxy and let all my other tabs use my normal internet connection.
- gurjeet 6y ago
  For per-domain, or even per-subdoamin proxy routing, I highly recommend FoxyProxy[1]. It works with containers as well. It was broken by the Firefox Quantum update, by after a long and patient wait the original author rewrote the addon to work acceptably again. [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/foxyproxy-standard/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/foxyproxy-sta...
robotichead 6y ago
I heavily use this - it has made my work flow so much better as I can separate work/personal/NearBeach etc.
- tzs 6y ago
  Don't multi-account containers just separate cookies (and maybe other storage mechanisms)? I'd expect that a lot of people want separate bookmarks and extensions, too. I think you have to use multiple profiles to do that, which is kind of clunky. Anyone know of they have plans to make managing and using multiple profiles smoother?

musicale 6y ago

> Impulse Blocker is here to keep you away from those distracting, timesink websites ... which are the primary use case for Firefox (and all other web browsers.)

nine_k 6y ago

I can't describe in short how Tree Style Tab improves tab management. * You can logically organize tabs, very valuable when you researching something, or when you work on multiple related web pages. Say, issue tracker, a PR or two github for this issue, a couple of doc pages related to the code, etc. The beauty of it is that the tabs mostly self-organize based on the opening order. * You can expand and contract whole subtrees to keep current things in focus, and other things, readily available. * You can have 30 or 50 tabs and still actually read the captions of the tabs! * You can bookmark the whole subtree, or move it to a separate window, or close all of its tabs, or refresh all of its tabs, etc.

ShamelessC 6y ago
I love tree style tabs but it takes up a lot of horizontal screen real estate. It's great when my browser is in fullscreen but most of the time I have a terminal on the right half with my browser on the left. This winds up smooshing the actual website to switch to a mobile layout (if I'm lucky). Otherwise the website is rendered useless. Is it possible to make the sidebar float atop the webpage instead of pushing the content in? Then perhaps it could quickly autohide as you move your cursor near it.
- sp332 6y ago
  You can turn it on and off quickly with the F1 key. And I'm pretty sure the hotkey is configurable.
- nine_k 6y ago
  My situation is a bit different: I have a 4K display, so space is not at such a premium, but I have 70-100 tabs open, in several large subtrees, and smaller subtrees within them, etc. It is possible to make the tree pretty narrow if the screen is small, then the tabs begin to look more like the crowded top tab bar, but still allow for some structure.
- enraged_camel 6y ago
  My issue is that you can’t disable the default tab bar, so you end up wasting a lot of space by rendering each tab twice. It also makes the habit (of using the default horizontal tabs) a tough one to break.

ccktlmazeltov 6y ago

If you don't use tree style tabs to browse the web, you're probably doing it wrong.

yinyang_in 6y ago
Was using it extensively, have customised it with userchrome file. But then went to idea of having fewer tabs open and only w.r.t context I'm working on. Lesser number of tabs made things much more simpler for me. Have been both sides, and must way for people with lots of tabs, tree style tabs is seriously good.
- demosito666 6y ago
  I did the same. I was relying on tree style tab heavily and kept 30-40 tabs opened all the time. Obviously without the extension this would be a pain. But then I realized that most tabs I have opened hang there for weeks and months without me even looking at them, occupying screen and mental space. Now I made a simple habbit: once I've read the tab and don't need it right now, I just close it. Should I need to return to it later, it's trivial to re-open it from history. One might think it's kind of a konmari approach, and when you're doing it you don't need extra management tools anymore.

modzu 6y ago

speed dials! this one is open source and privacy conscious (i'm the author): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/yet-another-speed-dial/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/yet-another-s...

ww520 6y ago

Since we're talking about extensions, can I suggest my own Tip Tab [1] for visually navigate and manage tabs? Just updated it after a year of break. I mostly use it for quick search and keyboard navigation (ctrl-shift-F, type search term, Tab Tab Tab Enter to jump to the tab). Also use the predefined search terms like, mail, news, finance, etc, to quickly filter down the tabs. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tip-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tip-tab/

xcv58 6y ago
Suggest mine Tab Manager v2 too: it has VIM-like navigation (hjkl) and other features can be searched via Command+Shift+P. And Command+T (Alt+T for non-macOS) to toggle the popup window: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-manager-v2/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-manager-v...

neves 6y ago

My favorite extension is the "Tab reloader". I can set it to reload my work login page and it won't expire my session. And uBlock Origin and Tree Tab are fundamental for the web. Containers also nice, I can login at sites like Trello and GitHub with different accounts.

nevster 6y ago

Panorama Tab Groups is the best replacement for the old Tab groups extension : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-tab-groups/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/panorama-tab-... I resisted upgrading for ages while there didn't seem to be a clear winning replacement.

0_gravitas 6y ago
My only issue with Panorama is that it conflicts with Vim Vixens 'next tab' commands a lot, and will often send me to another tab group which is particularly distracting and jarring. If there was no conflict I'd love to go back 100%
jayelbe 6y ago
Thank you so much for sharing this! I used Panorama so intensively and thought it was one of Fx's killer features. I'd given up hoping there would be a suitable replacement - until now.
Tagbert 6y ago
I love Panorama. It lets me setup different tab groups for each project and I can switch contexts very quickly.

linhmtran168 6y ago

I use Sidebery for tab management and find it more lightweight than Tree Style Tab https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sidebery/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sidebery/ And LeechBlock NG has massively helped me gain back my wasted time browsing the web https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/leechblock-ng/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/leechblock-ng...

wakkaflokka 6y ago
Wow, this is awesome. Much more responsive than Tree Style Tabs from what I'm seeing, and the grouping mechanism is great. Thanks for the heads up.

djrogers 6y ago

These maybe / are great features and extensions, but I don’t see what any of them have to do with WFH?

gnicholas 6y ago

Humbly suggesting BeeLine Reader for Chrome [1] and Firefox [2], which has seen a strong uptick in interest during WFH and distance learning. There's a 2-week free trial, and it's currently free for students via our covid program. 1: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/beeline-reader/ifjafammaookpiajfbedmacfldaiamgg?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/beeline-reader/ifj... 2: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/beelinereader/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/beelinereader...

kabacha 6y ago
I've tried Beeline multiple times and I every time I come out with varying experiences. For example it's pretty much useless for reading code stuff as it colors in code blocks with no way to disable that. Also I'm certain it actually makes well formatted text harder to read. As in 60-70 character lines with healthy paragraphing and imagery. I'm kinda perplexed that they are charging 2$/month for this extension when it could be replicated in javascript bookmarklet or grease monkey script. All it does is blindly apply gradient to text. Not a fan of accessibility innovations like this being made propriatory like this either.
- gnicholas 6y ago
  You're right about code blocks! We offer a domain blacklist feature so that folks can prevent it from running on sites they read that have a lot of code, and we are working on a smarter way to detect code blocks and not color them. If you're certain that BeeLine "makes well formatted text harder to read", then I'm pretty sure we're not for you! I'd be curious to know where you find it helpful? Just for text that is displayed too densely? We're doing a bit more than blindly applying gradients to text! The first thing to figure out is where the body text is on a page. It's not easy to avoid overcoloring (accidentally coloring captions or text that is on a different-colored background) and undercoloring (not coloring all of the main blocks of text). It's easy to do these tasks on a handful of websites, but it's hard to come up with algorithms that work across the entire internet (in many languages). But yes, what we do is something that is proprietary, and that makes it different than some accessibility techniques. There are other aspects of accessibility that are proprietary, for example high-quality TTS voices like Amazon Polly. But my goal is to have the technique that I invented, tested, and refined adopted into products so that users do not have to pay for plugins and such. There's good progress on this front, with major e-textbook platforms and big newspapers looking to integrate the tech. Once we get a couple of these larger licensees on board, there's a good chance we'll make the consumer tools free for individuals.

monksy 6y ago

The joplin extension and application. (https://joplinapp.org/ https://joplinapp.org/ - next cloud syncing functionality baby!) Duplicate tabs closer

dkthehuman 6y ago

If you want to be more intentional about how you use your time online, I launched Intention on HN a little while ago: https://getintention.com https://getintention.com Spent a lot of time getting privacy right: It only asks you for the sites you select (not all sites like most other extensions). HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22936742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22936742

franky47 6y ago
I've been using it since it launched, it's amazing, thanks a lot !
- dkthehuman 6y ago
  Woo! Thanks Franky.
jacek 6y ago
I love that idea and I am installing it now! Thanks!
pqdbr 6y ago
Intention is awesome. I had a habit of unknowingly typing "g" in my Chrome's search bar and visit G1 (a Brazil's news site). It became something I just did that on a whim, multiple times along the day, and now Intention is saving me almost 50 minutes of productivity every day.
- dkthehuman 6y ago
  Oh snap! That's awesome to hear.
- jamesbvaughan 6y ago
  I just found your comment on another thread where you said that you wanted to find Ira Glass's video on "taste" but now it's been long enough that I can't reply to that comment, so I'm replying to this completely unrelated comment because I've also had trouble finding that video in the paste and decided to save the link the last time I found it. Here it is: https://vimeo.com/85040589 https://vimeo.com/85040589

Zardoz84 6y ago

Simple tab groups it's a game changer. At least, I can have separate my tab setup when I'm working, from the stuff that I have open when I'm with my side projects, or when I simply doing other unrelated stuff.

Zardoz84 6y ago
Also, the Private bookmarks, was a thing that I was feeling very necessary like many years ago. It isn't perfect (alpha stage) but does the work.

leppr 6y ago

I still miss the mouse gesture extensions from the pre-Web Extensions days. The suggested replacements only work on a loaded webpage, which limits their use as a replacement to keyboard shortcuts, especially when combined with a tab unloader extension[1]. [1] such as https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-discard/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-disc...

SidAI 6y ago

It's a good time for companies based on improving remote work/school...