this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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Firefox

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[–] [email protected] 75 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

Usability

  • Kill Sticky: Kill off the annoying floating things blocking the website you're trying to see.
  • Tranquility Reader: Like native "reader view" but compatible with other addons and more options.
  • Scroll Zoom: Zoom web pages with the left or right mouse button and the scroll wheel.

Image / Video

  • Image Max URL: Finds larger/original versions of images (supporting 8800+ websites), including a powerful image popup feature
  • Invert Image: The add-on inverts color of an image or color of any part of a page. Changes white color to black, for comfortable night time reading.
  • Save webP as PNG or JPEG: Convert any image (WebP, AVIF, etc.) to PNG or JPEG (with choice of quality) for downloading.
  • TinEye Reverse Image Search: Click on any image on the web to search for it on TinEye.
  • Video Speed Controller: Speed up, slow down, advance and rewind any HTML5 video with quick shortcuts.
  • Enhancer for YouTube™: Take control of YouTube and boost your user experience!

Tools

  • EPUBReader: Read ePub files right in Firefox. No additional software needed!
  • WebStickies: (Persistent) Sticky notes for the Internet

RSS

  • RSSHub Radar: RSSHub Radar is a spin-off of RSSHub that helps you quickly discover and subscribe to RSS and RSSHub for your current site.
  • RSSPreview: Preview RSS feeds in-browser

Customization

  • Stylus: Redesign your favorite websites with Stylus, an actively developed and community driven userstyles manager.
  • Tampermonkey: Tampermonkey is the world's most popular userscript manager.

Advanced

  • Request Control: An extension for controlling requests. See also Redirector, not as powerful, but much more user friendly.
  • Modify Header Value (HTTP Headers): Add, modify or remove a header for any request on desired domains. I use this one to force sites to load only the image when opening images in new tabs.
  • Cookie AutoDelete: Control your cookies! This WebExtension is inspired by Self Destructing Cookies. When a tab closes, any cookies not being used are automatically deleted. Keep the ones you trust (forever/until restart) while deleting the rest. Containers Supported
  • uBlock Origin: Finally, an efficient wide-spectrum content blocker. Easy on CPU and memory.
  • uMatrix: [EDIT-WARNING: as pointed by @[email protected], uMatrix it's not longer maintained since 2021] Point & click to forbid/allow any class of requests made by your browser. Use it to block scripts, iframes, ads, facebook, etc.
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Use ViolentMonkey it's open source and actively developed for Firefox, while TamperMonkey is originally developed for chrome

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Thanks for the advice!

Sadly, I knew about that too late and I'm a heavy user of Tampermonkey. It would be painful to migrate now :(.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Thanks for adding the links, you the mvp

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What's the difference between uBlock origin and uMatrix?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I cannot answer that properly, I don't really understand them enough. I will add some copy-pasted answer on bottom. But, from a user perspective my experience is:

  • uBlock origin: blocks a lot of (but not all) unwanted stuff without breaking (almost) anything. When some page does not work, tt's very uncommon that uBlock origin is the cause.
  • uMatrix: blocks (almost) all unwanted stuff, but it breaks many pages by default. If a page does not work, the first thing I look at is uMatrix.
  • NoScript (and similar): It's been some time since I used it (so those who are more familiar, please correct me if I'm wrong). What I remember is that it was even more strict than uMatrix. Something like uMatrix allows by default everything from the same domain as the URL but NoScript does not.

So I would recommend uBlock origin always and uMatrix only if you are ok with some micro-management page-by-page.

Here it's a copy-paste of the answer from the first link in the google search ublock umatrix differences:

Chris's Wiki :: blog/web/UBlockOriginAndUMatrix

While it's true that uMatrix and uBlock Origin have overlapping functionality (and are written by the same person), they have different purposes and focuses. uBlock Origin's focus is blocking ads and other undesired things as an out of the box experience with little configuration needed. uMatrix's focus is on exerting tight and highly specific control over what resources a page is allowed to load and use, including Javascript and cookies (and requires a lot of configuration).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

People still use uMatrix? gorhill archived the uMatrix repo/stopped maintaining it in 2021.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Oh, I had forgotten, I'm going to add a warning to my comment thanks for noticing!

When I was aware of that, I expected it to break at some point. But I didn't find a proper replacement... and it still seems to be working fine.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Thank you for this list! I found several add-ons I never knew I was missing

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Thanks! These seem useful. I've only used a couple add-ons from your list. Time to try them out now.

Your are awesome for adding links too!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Since you helped me with Image Max URL, I will suggest some too.

  • Bazzacuda Image Saver 2 Plus: saves all images from opened individual tabs and auto closes them, is different from DownThemAll in that it bulk saves images opened individually instead of bulk downloading from each webpage

  • Save All Tab URLs: lists all open URLs of all windows as a text file list

  • Open Multiple URLs: copy paste URLs in a line by line text format, and you can choose to open them all at once or delay opening when you switch to each tab

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Thanks!

Links for convenience:

I will definitivaly use the last 2 ones. I don't usually need to mass download images, but it's good to know the Bazzacuda one exists!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Bazzacuda is truly unique in what it does, and its very useful when you want to open dozens of images from a webpage or site, that you cannot conventionally batch download, since they may have cookies or expire tokens for each image URL. Many such sites exist, where you can use this. Keep it in your toolbox ;)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

One question... do you know if it works with videos?

I don't see anything on the addon page, but it seems weird because the use case is very similar.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Unfortunately, no. Your only options are video grabber extensions or software.

Software is IDM on Windows and XDM cross platform. Both work on just about any video, but for rare videos for which they will not work... extensions are VideoDownload Helper and Ant Video Downloader (both need their native plugin software on system). The software is easier, extensions are a secondary option, and if these do not work, nothing will, other than screen recording.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think I don't undestand it properly.

What I meant is: if I have some tabs with one video URL* in each of them, it seems trivial to just automate a "click download" for each one of them.

* I mean plain MP4 normal URLs with no tricks, like imgur MP4 URLS:

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You have only one option, then. Video grabber utility in IDM/XDM. I think you can feed multiple links for batch download in them, and they auto fetch video files from website to download without browser. IDM on Windows is a lot more robust, if you do use Windows. Get it from Lrepacks, its safe.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think there is some misunderstanding... there are a lot of ways of downloading a list of URLs. For videos I use yt-dlp.

I didn't know about IDM/IDX, I asume they are Internet Download Manager and Xtreme Download Manager, right? From what I see those are independent programs and not Firefox add-ons (correct me if I'm wrong).

What I find weird is that, what Bazzacuda can achieve if I have multiple tabs with i.imgur.com/.../...jpg URLs does not work if I change the jpg extensions with mp4. But I'm probably missing something (or not explaining myself properly).

Thanks!

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I know what you are saying, exactly same way videos instead of tabs. There is nothing like Bazzacuda for it. Its a very unique tool. You either use yt-dlp or IDM/XDM for batch videos. (Yes you figured correct names.) Gallery-dl exists for image galleries btw, on that note, exactly like yt-dlp.

Bazzacuda is just built different. Its the reason why I shared it, since that Image Max URL you told about is intriguing. It makes the job easier than reverse searching image with Yandex (which is the best method I use).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Got it, thanks for the patience :)

It makes the job easier than reverse searching image with Yandex (which is the best method I use).

Regarding reverse image search, this is the bookmarklet I use to lauch 5 different searches at once. On firefox you can set a keyword so I just type rev on the navbar on a tab with an image.

If the page has more than 1 images, it tries to print a number on each one so you can specify which one you want to search... but that feature doesn't work very well. Removing that, the script would be much more simpler.

pretty-print reverse image searches bookmarklet

(function() {
    var url;
    var args = '%s';
    var imgs = document.getElementsByTagName("img");
    var imgIdx = undefined;
    if (imgs.length == 0) return;
    if (imgs.length > 1) {
        if (args.length > 1) imgIdx = parseInt(args[1]);
        if (imgIdx === undefined || isNaN(imgIdx) || imgIdx < 1 || imgIdx > imgs.length) {
            numberImgs();
            imgIdx = parseInt(prompt(`There are ${imgs.length} images, select index:`, 1));
        }
        if (isNaN(imgIdx) || imgIdx < 1 || imgIdx > imgs.length) return;
        url = imgs[imgIdx - 1].src;
    } else {
        url = imgs[0].src;
    }
    if (!url) return;
    url = encodeURIComponent(url);
    window.open("https://saucenao.com/search.php?url=" + url);
    window.open("https://lens.google.com/uploadbyurl?url=" + url);
    window.open("https://www.bing.com/images/searchbyimage?cbir=sbi&imgurl=" + url);
    window.open("https://www.tineye.com/search?url=" + url);
    window.open("https://yandex.com/images/search?rpt=imageview&url=" + url);

    function numberImgs() {
        var imgs = document.getElementsByTagName("img");
        for (var img = 0; img < imgs.length; img++) {
            var parent = imgs[img].parentElement;
            if (!parent) continue;
            var numberDiv = document.createElement("div");
            numberDiv.innerHTML = 1 + img;
            numberDiv.className = "tmpImgNumberDiv";
            numberDiv.style.position = "absolute";
            numberDiv.style.padding = "2px 9px 2px 6px";
            numberDiv.style.background = "#f00";
            numberDiv.style.color = "#fff";
            numberDiv.style.zIndex = "9999";
            numberDiv.style.lineHeight = "normal";
            parent.prepend(numberDiv);
        }
        setTimeout(function() {
            var imgNumbers = document.getElementsByClassName("tmpImgNumberDiv");
            var idx = imgNumbers.length - 1;
            while (idx >= 0) {
                imgNumbers[idx].remove();
                idx--;
            }
        }, 5000);
    }
})();

 

One-liner:

javascript:(function() {var url;var args = '%s';var imgs = document.getElementsByTagName("img");var imgIdx = undefined;if (imgs.length == 0) return;if (imgs.length > 1) {if (args.length > 1) imgIdx = parseInt(args[1]);if (imgIdx === undefined || isNaN(imgIdx) || imgIdx < 1 || imgIdx > imgs.length) {numberImgs();imgIdx = parseInt(prompt(`There are ${imgs.length} images, select index:`, 1));}if (isNaN(imgIdx) || imgIdx < 1 || imgIdx > imgs.length) return;url = imgs[imgIdx - 1].src;} else {url = imgs[0].src;}if (!url) return;url = encodeURIComponent(url);window.open("https://saucenao.com/search.php?url=" + url);window.open("https://lens.google.com/uploadbyurl?url=" + url);window.open("https://www.bing.com/images/searchbyimage?cbir=sbi&imgurl=" + url);window.open("https://www.tineye.com/search?url=" + url);window.open("https://yandex.com/images/search?rpt=imageview&url=" + url);function numberImgs() {var imgs = document.getElementsByTagName("img");for (var img = 0; img < imgs.length; img++) {var parent = imgs[img].parentElement;if (!parent) continue;var numberDiv = document.createElement("div");numberDiv.innerHTML = 1 + img;numberDiv.className = "tmpImgNumberDiv";numberDiv.style.position = "absolute";numberDiv.style.padding = "2px 9px 2px 6px";numberDiv.style.background = "#f00";numberDiv.style.color = "#fff";numberDiv.style.zIndex = "9999";numberDiv.style.lineHeight = "normal";parent.prepend(numberDiv);}setTimeout(function() {var imgNumbers = document.getElementsByClassName("tmpImgNumberDiv");var idx = imgNumbers.length - 1;while (idx >= 0) {imgNumbers[idx].remove();idx--;}}, 5000);}})();

The 5 searches it launches are (replacing XXXX with the image URL):

  • Google: https://lens.google.com/uploadbyurl?url=XXXX
  • Bing: https://www.bing.com/images/searchbyimage?cbir=sbi&imgurl=XXXX
  • TinEye: https://www.tineye.com/search?url=XXXX
  • Yandex: https://yandex.com/images/search?rpt=imageview&url=XXXX
  • SauceNAO: https://saucenao.com/search.php?url=XXXX
[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

An extension that does this with over 30 image search engines is Search By Image, a Mozilla recommended extension. Check the developer's GitHub (dessant). On the one off occasion, I also use ImgOps.com, but almost always, I never need to go beyond using Yandex. They are the only search engine that, unlike Google and Bing, did not cripple theirs. Although I am starting to see them putting up captchas more frequently (less than Cloudflare or Google) with any searches that might be related to adult or piracy content.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

An extension that does this with over 30 image search engines is Search By Image, a Mozilla recommended extension

I don't know how I missed that until now, thanks!! I will try it right now.

I also use ImgOps.com

Yeah, that's what I was using for a while and what motivated me to write the bookmarklet to avoid going through it every time.

Regarding the different searches, I found that they cover very different needs:

  • TinEye: usually the best when you want (almost) exact matches.
  • Yandex: probably the stronger as a general search
  • Google: in my experience, the best to "understand" the image and identify the object / subject even if there are no real matches for that image
  • Bing: you sometimes get lucky with it when the others fail
  • SauceNAO: the most convenient to find the original pages for DeviantArt, ArtStation and Twitter images.