10 Firefox addons to avoid?
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ComputerWorld has published a list of Firefox extensions to avoid but some of their recommendations leave me very puzzled.
The extensions they don’t recommend are:
- Fasterfox
- NoScript
- Adblock and Adblock Plus
- PDF Download
- VideoDownloader
- Greasemonkey
- ScribeFire (formerly Performancing)
- TrackMeNot
- Tabbrowser Preferences
- Tabbrowser Extensions
If you’re a Windows user, NoScript absolutely keeps you safer when used properly. You never want to allow questionable sites to run JavaScript as it’s power can sometimes get you into trouble. It also speeds up your surfing on some times. While it’s not without its drawbacks it’s certainly not one that should be completely avoided.
I also question their experiences with VideoDownloader. I haven’t ever encountered the problems they mentioned.
[Top 10 Firefox extensions to avoid]
[tags]firefox, firefox extension, firefox extensions, noscript, fasterfox, adblock, pdf, videodownloader, greasemonkey, scribefire, trackmenot, tabbrowser[/tags]
3 Comments
subwolf
April 11th, 2007
at 8:01pm
An interesting list, especially as I have AdBlock and Greasemonkey installed.
On AdBlock - I would have to agree with their argument, however, it’s my browsing experience, not theirs, and as the pay-for-click-and-purchase (Whats the correct term, sorry) technology ramps up, people clicking ads to say “thanks” is gonna become useless. True, thats not always why people click - sometimes it’s because they see an ad for something they’re interested in purchasing, but for me, in the majority of cases, I prefer to read renowned blogs for info on products I might be interested in… know what I mean?
On Greasemonkey - Same kinda rules as any extension or script you download and install, and if you don’t know what you need it for, I wouldn’t recommend it anyway.
Still, a useful perspective.
Wladimir Palant
April 12th, 2007
at 2:14am
Interesting to see that the one extension where you disagree with the article is NoScript - I think it is the one where they are really dead on. I wrote two articles on why NoScript does not keep you safer (rather the opposite because it makes you careless):
http://adblockplus.org/blog/blacklists-whitelists-and-security
http://adblockplus.org/blog/usability-vs-security
They seem to be correct about TrackMeNot and TBE but rest of the article is very questionable. E.g. they give the wrong reason why one shouldn’t use Fasterfox (the prefetching feature mentioned is no longer switched on by default), the reasoning behind listing Adblock/Adblock Plus is pretty lame (you can come up with lots of good reasons but recommending Nuke Anything Enhanced instead shows that they don’t mind people hiding ads as long as the advertisers don’t know about it and still pay them). And then they list a few “useless” add-ons - as if there is a point in enumerating all the add-ons people do not need.
Winter
June 23rd, 2008
at 8:25pm
Err, it seems like they’ve picked all of the really good ones and then given some suspicious reasoning… Adblock, for instance: advertisers have already tried to turn internet ads into nuclear war. Don’t you fucking lecture ME about “being a good citizen”.
That said, i’ve had nothing but trouble (and serious trouble at that) with tabbrowser preferences/extensions… actually, any extension that starts with “tabbrowser” seems to be a complete disaster for me.