Firefox Plugins

If you are running Firefox on a mobile device and sometimes need to use a proxy (like to get a secure connection on an open wireless network), but other times don't need said proxy, having to open up Firefox's preferences every time this change occurs will seriously inhibit your use of the proxy. Similarly, if you need to use a proxy only or certain websites (especially if you use multiple proxies) the challenge of manually switching proxies for every page you visit would be very arduous.

I often come across a long article that I want to read, but can't read it immediately. That's when the Firefox extension ReadItLater comes in handy. It puts a checkmark in the right side of the address bar, which can be selected for any page to save to the list. Although a bookmark folder would be able to serve the same purpose up to this point, the convenience comes from two things. The first is the button that is added to the toolbar, which allows you to access a drop down menu which has all the pages you have saved.

Although its no Internet Explorer, Firefox still has security holes. The thing is, many of these flaws come from the scripting support, such as support for javascript or Flash. The obvious way to fix this is to turn off scripting, but by default that happens to be an all or nothing proposition. That's where NoScript comes in handy. NoScript automatically blocks all scripts by default, which you can then manually white list by site.

After the 2.0 version of NoScript installed on my desktop, I began noticing a curious event repeatedly occurring in my Drupal access logs. Every few minutes I would get a hit on the main page of this site from my IP, despite the fact that I wasn't visiting the site in my browser.