Hemanth Yaji Firefox 4 add-ons

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[Last edited on 20 May 2009]

All of the following four add-ons are very essential to have a safe and a pleasant browsing experience on Firefox. I am sure you would enjoy browsing on Firefox like never before with these add-ons. All versions explained here are the latest, at the time of editing.

1. No Script:

version explained: 1.9.2.8

compatibility: Firefox: 1.5 – 3.6a1pre

Category: security

available at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722

This add-on provides extra protection for firefox from java scripts that could be malicious by blocking “all” scripts on a particular website. With this add-on installed, the scripts would have to be allowed manually to run them. The add-on has won 2006 PC World World Class Award. JavaScript, Java and other executable content could be allowed to run only from trusted domains of your choice. This add-on prevents exploitation of security vulnerabilities (known and even unknown!).

A small icon appears on the status bar of firefox for this add-on. Fig. 1 is the no script menu of Cable News Network (http://www.cnn.com) when this icon is clicked. The features of this menu are,

1. The scripts from this site could be allowed by clicking on Allow cnn.com. The menu also has a provision to allow the scripts temporarily by clicking on Temporarily allow cnn.com and also to block them permanently by clicking on forbid http://www.cnn.com.
2. The third party scripts are blocked by default which could be temporarily or permanently allowed by adding it to the white list. Consider the third party script revsci.net which could be temporarily allowed by clicking on Temporarily allow revsci.net or permanently allowed by clicking on Allow revsci.net. The other third party scripts on this website are turner.com and dll-rms.com.
3. The scripts on this site could be marked as untrusted permanently. This setting applies to all the websites that use these scripts.
4. All scripts could be allowed on firefox (disable this add-on), by clicking on Allow scripts Globally (dangerous).
5. All scripts on this website could be allowed by clicking on Allow all this page. To run the scripts on this website temporarily, click on temporarily allow all this page.
6. The script changes on this website could be made permanent by clicking on Make page permissions permanent.

To explain Revoke Temporary Permissions, I temporarily allowed all scripts on Cable News Network (www.cnn.com). The menu now looks as in Fig. 2. Now a click on Revoke Temporary Permissions on the newly obtained menu, would bring back the menu as in Fig. 1.

2. Adblock Plus:

version explained: 1.0.2

Compatibility: Firefox: 2.0 – 3.6a1pre

Category: privacy

Available at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865

All of the unwanted ads and banners on the Internet could be stopped from downloading on to the computer with this add-on. Several servers (Fig. 3) provide the ad and the banner list. There is no restriction for subscribing to these servers and you could subscribe to as many of them as you want. The list is regularly updated at the server side (Fig. 4). The list is auto updated depending on the server configuration and the update time can’t be edited. To manually update the list, navigate to Filters and click on Update all Subscriptions. To manually disable an ad, on a website, click on Block that is seen just at the corner of the ad (Fig. 5). A window pops up as in Fig. 6. A proper pattern for the ad is selected automatically, so just click Add Filter without clicking anywhere else on this window. The top circle on Fig. 4 shows the manually disabled ads. Sometimes the ads are not auto detected by this add-on and then the ads could be blocked by right clicking on the image. On the window that appears, when you right click, click Ad-Block Image and a window as in Fig. 6 appears again. Again click Add Filter without any changes on the window.

3. Web of Trust:

version explained: 20090325

Compatibility: Firefox 1.5 – 3.6a1pre

Category: security

Available at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3456

Internet users are able to leave their feedback for a website, if it is good or bad (positive or negative) based on their impression from the website. The ratings are collected from 21 million users from worldwide. The ratings for a website based on the user feedback could be based on the following four components.

1. Trustworthiness
2. Vendor reliability
3. Privacy
4. Child safety

A warning is displayed as soon as someone enters a website with harmful contents. For example the website http://www.spywareremove.com (Fig. 7) has negative ratings for all four of the above components. So it is advised, “not” to continue to browse further on this website. The computer is sure to get infected if the software from such harmful sites is installed. A click on Rating details brings up a WOT (Web of Trust) rating window (Fig. 7). On Fig. 1, Circle 1 shows the overall feedback of the people and circle 2 shows my feedback for the website. The user could leave a comment on the website by clicking on Add your comment as shown in circle 3, which would open a new window in the browser (Fig. 8). If the user did not know about this website before and did not have this add-on either, the system would have been infected, if any software was downloaded from this website. This add-on shows warnings on Google (Fig. 9), Yahoo!, Gmail, Wikipedia, digg and other websites and also on email websites such as yahoo mail (Fig. 10), gmail, hotmail, etc... without any changes in the add-on settings.

4. OPIE:

version explained: 1.2.3

Compatibility: Firefox: 2.0 – 3.1b3

Category: Security

Available at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6152

The settings of all the add-ons in the browser could be exported (saved) and imported “at once” by using the OPIE (Ordered Preference Import/Export) add-on. Select a directory to export the settings (Fig. 11) and then click on Get list. Now to export the settings of all the add-ons to the selected directory, click on Select all and Export. You could also select the add-ons individually to save the settings.

This add-on is very much useful if the settings of the add-ons have to be installed on another machine with the newly installed add-ons. You could get your friend’s Firefox to look exactly like yours, by giving him the settings of your add-ons. The add-on settings could be imported, if the add-ons are lost due to a system failure.

Yaji