Poking Firefox in the UI
One of my New Years Resolutions is to use Firefox more. Despite I’ve been firmly in the Safari camp for 2 reasons;
- I didn’t have to install Safari
- Safari is visually more subdued, less noisy.
On the other hand, I’ve been using the Developer Toolbar to debug a little CSS and wanted to play with AttentionTrust’s AttentionRecorder.
Each time I attempted to install or upgrade an extension, I’d get a seemingly helpful error message:
“Firefox software installation is disabled, enable it and try again”
Clicking the confirmation button opened up Firefox’s preferences, but without a clear indication of the next action.
Finally, did some poking around and found out that the ‘enable software installs’ existed in previous versions, but:
“Starting in Firefox 1.5 the option has been removed from the user interface”
Huh. That’s odd. So, how do I change it if the option has been removed from the UI?
Actually, it’s surprising easy - about:config and click the setting you want to change.
4 Comments
I’m sorry, Garrick, but that makes me laugh.
Perhaps it would be more accurate if you said it was “surprisingly easy” for Firefox geeks.
ah extensions… to paraphrase the immortal words of one Homer J. Simpson, they are the source of, and solution to, all browsing problems.
I love and HATE the idea of extensions. As you may or may not have gathered by now, I’ve been a LONG time Opera user (even paid for it early on!). You highlight the exact reasons I don’t like firefox all that much. It’s gotten MUCH better, and, if I had to choose from scratch, I’d probably lean towards FF now. But extensions- they are so cool because you can add whatever you want in there! They kinda suck because.. wait for it.. you can add whatever you want in there! There’s no consistency, the UIs aren’t integrated, the experience is a patchwork of development with little governing the guidelines. You certainly can’t get interaction between extensions, you get extensions that provide options for existing extensions, finding the right one is ALWAYS a pain for me since so many people code up the same basic idea but in slightly different ways. What’s worse, is that all these extension builders are usually not designers or market guys- so you get names like: abcTajpu 1.1.1, about:kitchensink 0.0.1.2005041901+ to name the first couple I saw. Tabbed browsing extensions- which do I install? basics? Will that cover everything? Do I have to install each piece of functionality? What is miniT? It’s information overload. Sure I can manage to dig though it- but good lord, where do I start? The most downloaded? Recommendations from friends? I can’t imagine the number of times where I’ve seen someone post something like “I wish FF could do X” and someone respond with “try this extension..” how does everyone know about them?
Then whenever get through all that- the biggest pain is upgrading. Everytime I’ve upgraded, all that work I put into extensions and configuration is gone.. at least until the developers update the extensions.
Oh well- Opera may not have an “Abe Vigoda” 411 update for me, but it’s got about 90% of what I want/need and about 95% less hassle. Also, it’s for being the “bloated” suite that it is, it’s funny that it’s still a smaller download than a bare bones FF install, it also has a smaller memory footprint too
Wow- that turned into a hell of a response. But what I really wanted to say is that I too am going to give FF another try this year. I’ts the new history caching that’s in the 1.5 that’s got me interested- that was the only thing that kept Opera in my hands. I’m Opera dedicated, but I like to see what FF can do and give it a good shake.
I’ve never used Safari- is there any way to get mouse gestures?
Fred, point well taken.