Mozilla Suite

Notes about the Mozilla Suite


Firefox

Language Pack extensions / Locale Switcher

Alternatively to the localized full builds it may be better to install language packs in addition to the basic (usually English) install. This allows several users to choose the interface language independently of each other. Download the appropriate language pack XPI. You need to restart Firefox for the extension to work.
Notes:
(1) the XPI is OS independent but dependent on the version of Firefox (at the time of writing 1.5.0.2). Newer versions can be found in the corresponding parallel directories.
(2) it is easiest to change the interface language with the locale switcher extension. On a more technical level the behaviour of the language extension is controlled via two config settings. You can either choose Firefox to inherit the OS settings for its interface language (the so called locale) or you can tell it to have a fixed locale and then set it to one you have installed. Currently, there seems to be no preferences dialog so you have to set it via the about:config URL. (example for German settings)
intl.locale.matchOS: true
or
intl.locale.matchOS: false
general.useragent.locale: de-DE
(3) the default seems to be different for different OSes. Linux will inherit its locale from the OS and MacOS X will not. (At the time of writing, I haven't checked how this is under Windows). You can always set it the way you like.
(4) If you just want to start Firefox in another language once, without changing the preferences, you can set the LANG environment variable (works for Linux/Unix):
LANG=de_DE firefox

Google Toolbar

To make better use of Google and find out the (rounded) page rank you may download the official google toolbar for firefox. The google toolbar is localized for some languages.

Netcraft Toolbar

The netcraft toolbar allows you to judge the reliability of a particular site most of all, it will help identify phishing sites.

Firebug

Firebug is a great tool to develop and debug web pages with CSS, DOM, JavaScript, and all the typical web components nicely laid out.

NoScript

NoScript will prevent scripts from being executed unless allowed by the user. Among others this will protect against many scripting-related attacks.

HTML Validator

This HTML validator will show a small icon on the lower left of the browser window. This provides a convenient quick way to keep your pages standards conformant.
Note: as this extension actively parses web pages it may hang or crash while visiting web sites that would otherwise display without problems. There is always a slight possibility of a problem like this occuring with an extension, but the HTML validator seems exceptionally picky. I would still not miss it.

Web Developer

The Web Developer Firefox extension gives a few extra menu entries work with CSS, outline components of web pages and display general information about these components.

Adblock

With the Adblock extension you can define patterns for firefox to suppress specific elements from a web page. A typical use (and name giver) is to block advertisments. However, any other unwanted element can be suppressed likewise. This can be useful for javascript which has the potential to make a web page crash the browser or drive the CPU usage up.

del.icio.us

del.icio.us is a collaborative bookmark manager, which (1) allows me to keep my bookmarks online and within reach whenever I am on the internet and (2) incidentially lets me share my bookmarks with anyone who cares to look at them. With this firefox extension managing bookmarks on the net becomes as easy as doing it locally on any one of my computers.
Note: of course, there are at least two caveats: (1) anyone can look at your bookmarks, so make sure that you do not include confidential information (like passwords in URLs) — even if you are careful, you will give away some of your personal preferences, and (2) this service is at the mercy of the provider that runs the infrastructure — that's just part of the deal. If this bothers you, stay away from the service.

Thunderbird

Mail Redirector

There are two ways how mail can and shall be sent to someone else: forwarding and redirecting (also called bouncing). Forwarding is built into the standard Thunderbird. The new recipient obtains the original mail either as a MIME-Attachement or as a quoted mail. Redirecting is provided by the mailredirect Extension. The new recipient will then get the original mail including all headers with some added "Resent-" headers.

about:config

Due to the fact that there is no "location" toolbar for the thunderbird mail client (like there is in firefox) there is no easy way to call the about:config url. This extension adds a menu under "Tools" for about:config.

Proper Quoting

There are old traditions for quoting mails that stem back to command line mailers. This extension allows to use thunderbird to display quotes in a similar way (enhanced with coloring).

Mail User Agent Display

A nice little add-on that displays the mail user agent (MUA) of the sender of the mail.

Enigmail

Encryption and/or for sending and receiving mails.
Elmar Heeb, 2008/05/16 11:19:6.318166 GMT+2