I don't use a lot of extensions, mostly because Firefox "just works" for me out of the box. There are a few nice ones that I use on occasion, like BugMeNot (though I can usually uninstall that after a few weeks of building up my password manager store) and LinkVisitor which I use to keep track of the articles I've read and not read at big aggregation sites like Google News or TheRegister.
Last week I started using Nightcap, a new extension that loads download status at the bottom of the browser window and I think I'll probably keep that one. Today I've discovered a new extension that I'm sure will be a keeper -- at least until we get similar functionality built in to Firefox. It's called Resizeable Textarea and it "just works".
If you use web mail, or blog with a web-based tool, or participate in forums, you can go hack up a user-stylesheet to resize most text areas you use regularly, but you'll still find yourself using other text areas and wish you had a simple way to resize. I used to use Jesse's bookmarklets for this, but this new extension is so much cleaner and more precise. I give this one two thumbs up. Good work, Raik!
Posted by asa at March 27, 2005 08:49 AMOh! Thanks for pointing to it! It's really amazing. I've installed it and found it quite useful!
Posted by: gass512 on March 27, 2005 09:27 AMSee that's what I like about Greasemonkey, instead of having hundreds of plugins you can have hundreds of scripts in GM. It even has a resizeable textarea script! http://www.stilleye.com/expandArea.user.js
Posted by: Arvind on March 27, 2005 09:52 AMGreasemonkey may be harmful. Who can guarantee scripts are safe? Especially for a novice at computers?
Posted by: gass512 on March 27, 2005 09:55 AMgass512: Extensions may be harmful. Who can guarantee extensions are safe? Especially for a novice at computers?
Posted by: Justin on March 27, 2005 10:04 AM2Justin:
Extensions... that's something different than scripts. You see, extensions are opensource (I know I sound funny cos scripts are naturally opensource) but nevertheless, extensions are usually tested by many people and posted to www.extensionsmirror.com, and anyone can find there almost all living extensions. If someone tries to convince you to install an extension from an untrusted resource (e.g. xxxbar from a pornosite), you see that one shouldn't trust it... Hmmm, and scripts are more obscure for a casual user (at least you can't comprehend what it does...... well, I'm confused.)
By the way, some people sound the alarm about Greasemonkey, why not about extensions?
Posted by: gass512 on March 27, 2005 10:49 AMgass512:
Extensions are not necessarily open source - in fact they can be more closed than scripts. The Yahoo toolbar has an EULA that prevents you from using their source; and FoxyTunes doesn't even have the source available as far as I can see. (Note: I do not believe there's anything wrong with that - it's totally up to the extension developer.)
I think what you're saying is that major sites for GreaseMonkey needs to develop where scripts are reviewed and controlled, in a manner similiar to UMO / TEM for extensions. In which case I would agree (havn't looked seriously at GreaseMonkey, so for all I know this may already exist.)
Posted by: Mook on March 27, 2005 11:16 AMGah! I'm halfway though writing an extension that does exactly that (and in exactly the same fashion too). Ah well, as long as someone's written it ...
Posted by: Tom Saddington on March 27, 2005 11:31 AMHow's Nightcap different from Download Statusbar? Better? Worse?
Posted by: painc on March 27, 2005 02:01 PMOh, I didn't know, Foxytunes was closed source. So, why is it listed at update.mozilla.org if nobody can check the code? I don't say the extension is harmfull, but I don't trust anybody without reputation in this regard and I know that many others do think so. Besides: nobody expects a closed source extension for an open source browser. This is a little bit disturbing :-/
Posted by: Abdulkadir Topal on March 27, 2005 02:26 PMWell, there's opensource as in you can read the source code, and opensource as in you can do what you like with the code. :)
Posted by: Pizbit on March 27, 2005 03:40 PM> So, why is it listed at update.mozilla.org if nobody can check the code?
Here's a clue. No one at UMO (or anywhere else) checks the code of extensions. All that happens is some surface-level testing, seeing that the extension isn't messing up in obvious ways, and that already takes ages (and is an effort for which the UMO people aren't applauded nearly enough). Beyond this, everyone is just trusting that no one is doing anything malicious.
The few people with the knowledge to check the code for security problems barely manage to keep up with reviewing the real mozilla/firefox code. They definitely don't have time for the ever-growing mess of extensions out there. (Note that several core developers don't use any extensions at all, precisely because of them not trusting the code.)
Woah, cool! Took me a while to work out how to resize, but it's a really smooth way of doing it :D
Doesn't seem to work on your comments box, though, asa.
Posted by: Phill Bryant on March 27, 2005 07:33 PMPhill, I have no problems resizing the comment box here. I wonder why it works for me and not you.
Posted by: Asa Dotzler on March 27, 2005 07:57 PMWorks for me too. And it is indeed freakin awesome. Cheers Asa.
"How's Nightcap different from Download Statusbar?"
Nightcap stacks all the downloads up on a row each, so if you are downloading several at once you start to lose screen space. And each row seems to hang around until you click 'remove'. Overall I would say Download Statusbar is much better, but each to their own. Nightcap is only 0.2 so it may get a lot better.
Am I the only one that finds it funny that UMO is so far behind on updates that Asa had to post a link to the extensionsmirror page?
Posted by: CFlakes on March 29, 2005 05:27 AM