Extension Bukkake

February 27, 2006 9:39 AM

Firefox really is amazingly extendable, but perhaps too much so.
posted by mathowie (59 comments total)

What, doesn't everyone's Firefox install look like this? I jest.
posted by lowlife at 9:45 AM on February 27, 2006

Sweet Christmas!
posted by Anonymous at 9:49 AM on February 27, 2006

you're so right, I just can't control myself from adding hundreds of extensions.
posted by wumpus at 9:51 AM on February 27, 2006

Accompanying Blog post, from the guy who installed them all.
posted by Navek Rednam at 9:52 AM on February 27, 2006

I coulda swore there was an actual article attached to this image (this single, lone image...) that explained everything the dude installed, and how all of the extensions more or less got along.
posted by boo_radley at 9:53 AM on February 27, 2006

Where's the coffee pouring button?
posted by AwkwardPause at 9:54 AM on February 27, 2006

If every icon in that picture mapped to a link to the extension, well, that'd be something.
posted by sohcahtoa at 9:54 AM on February 27, 2006

hmm. 101 extensions. And he has greasemonkey .

I wonder how many greasemonkey scripts he runs.
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 9:55 AM on February 27, 2006

That is awesome (in the true meaning of the word).
posted by JeffK at 9:55 AM on February 27, 2006

posted by Tlogmer at 9:57 AM on February 27, 2006

that is the best right click menu ever.
posted by mathowie at 10:02 AM on February 27, 2006

So this guy voluntarily seeks to install the top 100 extensions and ends up with this bloated, ridiculous interface. Too much of anything usually ends up bad, gorging on extensions is no different. What I fail to see is how this compares to an IE user who has 8 toolbars, that as far as they are concerned, appear to have "installed themselves".
posted by prostyle at 10:03 AM on February 27, 2006

My Eyes!
posted by Richard Daly at 10:04 AM on February 27, 2006

I just wonder what the I am afraid! (H) button does.
posted by Tlogmer at 10:07 AM on February 27, 2006

Can I just download that guy's copy? I bet it zips right along on his machine.
posted by fenriq at 10:08 AM on February 27, 2006

Just researching the interesting looking entries on that context menu is gonna take me the better part of a (work) day.
posted by bashos_frog at 10:09 AM on February 27, 2006

I thought that it was bad that I had 17 extensions and 10 Greasemonkey scripts installed.
posted by octothorpe at 10:09 AM on February 27, 2006

*turns from image, weeps a single tear*
posted by milquetoast at 10:09 AM on February 27, 2006

Great post title.
posted by OmieWise at 10:10 AM on February 27, 2006

Lol! It's funny because it's true!
posted by thirteenkiller at 10:13 AM on February 27, 2006

Cruelly, the hundredth was the XPI delay remover.

Heh.
posted by eyeballkid at 10:13 AM on February 27, 2006

Wow. I'm annoyed when there are just 3 or so toolbars because it reduces my viewing space too much. If it doesn't provide a damn good use, I get rid of it. I was ecstatic when they made it possible to move the search box to the menu bar so I could get rid of the nav bar.
posted by gauchodaspampas at 10:14 AM on February 27, 2006

On the other hand though, I have definitely been guilty in the past of a right click menu that's a bit bloated.
posted by gauchodaspampas at 10:16 AM on February 27, 2006

Don't forget the Friends Don't Let Friends Use IE image.
posted by brownpau at 10:20 AM on February 27, 2006

The tragedy of the commons.
posted by LarryC at 10:22 AM on February 27, 2006

Maybe he's using this monitor setup.
posted by mathowie at 10:22 AM on February 27, 2006

I challange anyone reading this to give us discriptions of every extention there is (bonus points if you link to every one.)
posted by wheelieman at 10:25 AM on February 27, 2006

Can we see this guy's homepage too?
posted by fenriq at 10:32 AM on February 27, 2006

Can I just download that guy's copy? I bet it zips right along on his machine.

It's probably still faster than IE...
posted by mkultra at 10:34 AM on February 27, 2006

Heh, I use 15 extensions in my copy of FF...

ForecastFox, Adblock, IE View, Adblock Filterset G Updater, Venkman JS debugger (the most valuable software ever written for AJAX developers), SessionSaver, Reveal, Add/Edit Cookies, DOM Inspector, Web Developer, MeasureIt, Colorzilla, Firebug, EditCSS, Cookie Crumbler

Its not too bad, FireBug is nice, and Venkman is extremely useful as a Javascript debugger - no more alert(obj); lines. Plus my computer has 2GB of RAM so I'm not worried about mem usage.
posted by SirOmega at 10:40 AM on February 27, 2006

Re: I am afraid! (H)

It's Anti-Paranoia... How can your extension help me? It will pop up calmative messages for you to feel relaxed while browsing the web. Don't Panic, specifically.
posted by adzm at 10:41 AM on February 27, 2006

This totally should be deleted. A generic mozilla link with a single link to an image file? Ban it! Kill It!

Oh, wait, who posted it? Oh... umm.. ok.

Thanks Mathowie for bringing Metafilter back to its roots!
posted by blue_beetle at 10:44 AM on February 27, 2006

I like how the actual browser window is just kind of an afterthought down in the corner.
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:45 AM on February 27, 2006

That screenshot is hilarious. Me and my 18 Firefox extensions feel humbled.
posted by Zinger at 10:47 AM on February 27, 2006

Another example of how too much of a good thing can be bad. Everything in moderation. OTOH, my own FireFox install doesn't have any extensions at all.

Cute experiment. Now I wonder how smoothly his uninstalls will go?
posted by raedyn at 10:51 AM on February 27, 2006

He's missing the Abe Vigoda status extension.
posted by Fat Guy at 10:55 AM on February 27, 2006

just safari, thanks
posted by The Jesse Helms at 11:13 AM on February 27, 2006

Out of curiousity, I counted my extensions. I'm running 23. I don't get any slowdown at all.
posted by eyeballkid at 11:31 AM on February 27, 2006

Firefox extensions I couldn't live without
posted by matteo at 11:49 AM on February 27, 2006

Any idea what that blue frog face on the bottom is?

(I want that. Greasemonkey needs a friend.)
posted by team lowkey at 11:55 AM on February 27, 2006

I just tried configuring my browser like that. It's a little slow but it works.

Though, I'm pretty sure I just accidently started a global thermonuclear war. I wasn't really in the mood for chess, sorry.
posted by loquacious at 11:58 AM on February 27, 2006

Oh, I found it. Blue Frog Security spam reporting for webmail clients. Well that's useful.
posted by team lowkey at 12:18 PM on February 27, 2006

Fat Guy - that's exactly what I thought when I saw it.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 12:27 PM on February 27, 2006

happy now?
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 12:32 PM on February 27, 2006

At least it has much more sensible plugin system, compared to IE's DLL/COM binary mess that leaves crap all over your registry.

God windows sucks.
posted by delmoi at 12:57 PM on February 27, 2006

Well, it's not windows so much as COM, which in theory could run on any OS.
posted by delmoi at 1:01 PM on February 27, 2006

My question is, how do they get all those extensions into the scanner?
posted by tr33hggr at 1:07 PM on February 27, 2006

This is only half the story. If you really want to be a Firefox fiend, you have to have a gazillion bookmarklets.

My favs (in the regular bookmarks):

(1) List all the links on this page:

javascript:LnkW=open(','LnkW','width=600,height=300,scrollbars,resizable,menubar');sLFw=window.name;if(!sLFw){sLFw=window.name='sLFw'};sLFd=document;DlnK=document.links;with(LnkW.document){write('+DlnK.length+' total links from:
'+sLFd.title+'
'+sLFd.URL.link(sLFd.URL)+'

---

');for(lNK=0;lNK'+DlnK[lNK].text+'
'+DlnK[lNK].href.link(DlnK[lNK]))};close();LnkW.focus()}

(2) View all the "******" passwords on this page:

javascript:void((function(){var a,b;b=%22< %22+%22html>\nPasswords in this page:\n%22;(function(c){var d,e,f,g,h;for(d=0;d\n%22;}}})(top);b+=%22\n\n%22;a=window.open(%22%22,%22%22,%22width=200,height=300%22).document;a.open();a.write(b);a.close();})())

(3) Clear all the cookies given to me by this webpage:

javascript:void((function(){var a,b,c,e,f;f=0;a=document.cookie.split(%22; %22);for(e=0;e<a.length&&a[e];e++){f++;for(b=%22.%22+location.host;b;b=b.replace(/^(?:\.|[^\.]+)/,%22%22)){for(c=location.pathname;c;c=c.replace(/.$/,%22%22)){document.cookie=(a[e]+%22; domain=%22+b+%22; path=%22+c+%22; expires=%22+new Date((new Date()).getTime()-1e11).toGMTString());}}}alert(%22Expired %22+f+%22 cookies%22);})())

***Note, from here on down, the bookmarklets are on the Bookmarks Toolbar, using a single FF extension that allows you to select their icon, along with no text "name" to save space***

(4) Bugmenot popup:

javascript:void(window.open('http://bugmenot.com/view.php?mode=bookmarklet&url='+escape(location),'BugMeNot','location=no,status=yes,menubar=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,width=385,height=450'))

(5) IMDb popup:

javascript:Qr=document.getSelection();if(!Qr){void(Qr=prompt('What do you want to search for in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)?','))};if(Qr)location.href='http://www.imdb.com/Find?for='+escape(Qr)

(6) Wikipedia popup:

javascript:(function(){q=document.getSelection(); if(!q){void(q=prompt('Wikipedia keywords:','))}; if(q)location.href='http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?search='+escape(q)})()

(7) Onelook dictionary popup:

javascript:void(str=prompt(%22define:%22,%22%22));if(str){window.open(%22http://www.onelook.com/?ls=a&w=%22+escape(str).split(%22%20%22).join(%22+%22),%22newWin%22);newWin.focus();document.location.href = document.location;}

(8) Thesaurus.com popup:

javascript:{void(q=prompt('Thesaurus.com%20Search','))}if(q)location.href='http://thesaurus.reference.com/search?r=1&q='+escape(q)

(9) Secure password generator:

javascript:void(location.href='http://www.winguides.com/security/password.php?length=8&phonetic=on&alpha=on&quantity=1&guide=security&generate=true?url='+location.href)

posted by kablam at 2:18 PM on February 27, 2006

i installed all the developer extensions on one browser instance just to check them out. the right click menu would not fit on my monitor. but i discovered some hellacious tools i never knew i couldn't live without.
posted by 3.2.3 at 2:51 PM on February 27, 2006

Wow. And I thought my right-click menu was getting unwieldy!

But now I need that 'don't panic' add on.....
posted by CunningLinguist at 2:54 PM on February 27, 2006

Tlogmer, that was some seriously eggregious image hotlinking.

Two thumbs up.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 4:25 PM on February 27, 2006

er, egregious.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 4:26 PM on February 27, 2006

Nice. I've managed to cut my necessary extensions down to 10. Of course, when I was an extension whore I never enabled all the friggin' toolbars. That is insane.
posted by Fezboy! at 4:33 PM on February 27, 2006

I'm at 17 (down from 26 yesterday, when I tried to slim it down).

Extensions I couldn't live without:
Bugmenot, CuteMenus Crystal SVG (really, it improves the user experience), del.icio.us, Flashblock, ForecastFox (did you know you could get alternate icons? The originals suck), IETab (Internet Explorer inside the Firefox window), Optimoz Mouse Gestures, Slim Extension list (small and simple, but essential for managing extensions), and the Web Developer Toolbar.
Extensions nice to have around:
BetterSearch (page thumbnails, Amazon prices/ratings, Internet Archive links, etc on Google, del.icio.us, etc results), Greasemonkey (the inline mp3 player is the best script), NYTimes Single Page Format, Sage.
Extensions I'm just trying out:
Firefox Showcase, FireFTP, PDFDownload (I might need to bump this one up to can't-live-without).

posted by rafter at 5:16 PM on February 27, 2006

I've got about 19, but the ones I use the most are Firefox Showcase, All-in-One Sidebar, Gmail Space, Download Statusbar, and Tab Mix Plus.

I'm curious how much memory that Firefox with 100 extensions uses. Right now Firefox is using 250MB+ for me (probably cuz I have 35-40 tabs open - somewhere around 50 it really starts to lag).
posted by mrgrimm at 5:45 PM on February 27, 2006

Oh yeah, rafter got a few of the other good ones - Greasemonkey, PDFDownload, Sage, IETab.
posted by mrgrimm at 5:46 PM on February 27, 2006

Oh man, that image makes me dizzy. I tried clicking on the back button in the picture a couple times before I realized my mistake.
posted by A dead Quaker at 6:09 PM on February 27, 2006

A dead Quaker: "I tried clicking on the back button in the picture a couple times before I realized my mistake."

We have detected that your computer may not be optimized! Download Web Optimizer Pro now!
[OK] [CANCEL]
posted by rafter at 6:33 PM on February 27, 2006

Before we kicked roaming profiles I used to see students with IE interfaces that looked like that all the time. A class of 30 would have at least one or two.

I've got 19 extensions installed. The ones I couldn't live without are AdBlock Plus, FlashBlock, SessionSaver, Tab Mix Plus, Metafilthy, Greasemonkey, NoScript and Mozilla Archive Format. Oh and TargetAlert and Download Status bar.

But Stop-Or-Reload Button should count as -1 because it actually removes something from the interface.

Most of the bloat in my greasemonkey install is from scripts to make phpBB sites more bearable. Why the hell is phpBB so popular? Do they pay people to use it or something?
posted by Mitheral at 7:46 AM on February 28, 2006