== My Firefox 12 extensions and addons

In light of [[yesterday's entry about my failed Firefox Nightly
experiment FirefoxNightly-2012-05-13]] and the potential that some of
my extensions are the root cause of my Firefox problems, I'm going
to run down the current set of Firefox extensions that I use in my
main browser (updating [[previous Firefox7Extensions]] [[discussions
Firefox7ExtensionsII]] from the Firefox 7 era, which alarmingly was less
than a year ago). This time around I'm going to group them by purpose:

Safe browsing:

* [[NoScript https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/]]
  to disable JavaScript for almost everything. I browse with JS blocked
  and only enable it selectively on sites when I have to (and almost
  always temporarily). I consider this more an issue of safety than of
  performance; I simply don't trust most JavaScript from most sites to
  not do things that will make me unhappy.

  ([[NoScript]] also takes care of blocking Flash, Java, and so on.)

* [[CookieSafe 3.0.5
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookiesafe-ff-4-compatible/]],
  with the actual addon [[here
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/cookiesafe/files/3.1/]]. I browse through
  a filtering proxy and it blocks ordinary cookies, but it can't
  do anything about cookies I get over HTTPS or via JavaScript. I
  use CookieSafe to block those (there's some more explanation [[here
  FirefoxExtensions]]).

  (For me, CookieSafe 3.1a10 has an explosive interaction with NoScript
  that hangs Firefox in some sort of infinite JavaScript loop, so I am
  still on 3.0.5 aka the 2011-12-10 version of CookieSafe.)

User interface:

* [[All-in-One Gestures
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/all-in-one-gestures/]]
  (specifically [[my tweaked version of it
  ../programming/AllInOneCustomization]]). I turn off A-i-O autoscroll
  because the native Firefox autoscroll is better (and has been for
  years). A-i-O hasn't been updated in ages but still seems to be the
  best, most reliable gesture extension in my brief experimentation.

  ([[FireGestures
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firegestures/]] is
  actively developed but the last time I tried it there was an odd
  bug with changing font size settings; however, that was a while
  back. It would be my leading alternate here.)

  ~~Update~~: All-in-One Gestures seems to have been a major cause
  of my Firefox memory bloat problems. I've now replaced it with
  [[FireGestures]]; see [[this update Firefox12Gestures]]. I can no
  longer recommend it.

* [[Status-4-Evar
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/status-4-evar/]]
  restores the old Firefox bottom status bar so that I can see the
  full display of link targets and have a useful page load status
  display.

Fixing annoying websites, especially Google's:

* [[GreaseMonkey
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/]]
  combined with the [[Google Link Cleanup
  http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/95092]] user script to remove
  Google's tracking links from search results. I hate these tracking
  links with a burning passion for two reasons; first, I have no
  interest in letting Google know what search results I've followed
  and second, Google's tracking links screw up my history so that I
  can't see which search results I've already read and which are new.

* [[Stylish
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/stylish/]]
  combined with a number of mostly personally written styles to fix
  various website misdesigns. The most important is [[a version of
  this user style
  http://userstyles.org/styles/29712/google-search-disable-left-option-sidebar]]
  to disable the left option sidebar in Google searches (because I hate it
  and I use Google all the time). I also have [[Compact Google Reader
  http://userstyles.org/styles/55666/compact-google-reader]] in the Firefox
  instance I use with Google Reader, for similar reasons.

  ([[This entry FixingGoogleRedesign]] and its comments have a bunch of
  discussion about ways to fix Google's layout issues.)

  I could probably replace my use of [[Stylish]] with more [[GreaseMonkey]]
  user scripts, but I started with [[Stylish]] and I prefer fixing things
  with CSS alterations than with JavaScript (even if the JavaScript just
  inserts CSS alterations). Certainly there seem to be plenty of 'fix
  Google stuff' GreaseMonkey user scripts, eg [[this one for Google Reader
  http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/116931]] (which I have not tried).

Improving my life:

* [[It's All Text!
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/its-all-text/]]
  handily deals with [[how browsers make bad editors
  BrowsersMakeBadEditors]]. The more I have it available the more I
  use it (and the longer comments and so on I wind up leaving, because
  I can actually edit them sensibly; this may not be a plus, all things
  considered).

Modern versions of Firefox also give you a JavaScript based PDF viewer
addon for free. I have not done much with this and in fact currently
have it turned off.

Of these extensions, I consider [[NoScript]], [[All-in-One Gestures]],
[[GreaseMonkey]], and [[Stylish]] to be completely essential. I can sort
of live without the others, so as an experiment I am trying that to
see if it makes a difference in Firefox memory usage and the number of
zombie compartments that build up. If I am serious about this, I probably
should migrate away from [[Stylish]] to [[GreaseMonkey]] for everything
on the grounds that the latter is probably more actively used and maintained
and so any leaks it has are more likely to get fixed promptly.

(Unfortunately I suspect that A-i-O is a likely candidate to be a leaky
extension, since it hasn't been updated in ages.)