Review des extensiones
Wed Oct 14, 2009 22:38 (UTC -5)Two months ago, I wrote about some Firefox extensions I had installed. Now it’s time to check back in and see if I’m still using them!
- BetterPrivacy: I’m still using this one. It’s one of those set-it-and-forget-it extensions, and it’s doing its job well.
- Ghostery: I uninstalled this extension and subscribed to the EasyPrivacy filterset for Adblock Plus instead. The filterset is updated regularly, and I was already using ABP anyway.
- Perspectives: This one hasn’t come in handy yet, but I like to think it will be useful sometime.
- Targeted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out (TACO): I uninstalled this extension for reasons I will explain below.
Since then, I’ve installed the following security-related extensions:
- CS Lite: A simple extension that lets you manage your cookie settings from the status bar and offers more options than Firefox does by default. I have it set to block all cookies except from sites I’ve specified. For some of those sites (e.g., Wikipedia, The World of Stuff), I’ve allowed cookies to remain till they expire. For others (e.g. Facebook, my bank), I allow their cookies to stay until my browser session ends. CS Lite also lets you allow cookies from a site for the current session only, which can be useful for sites like nytimes.com (which still makes you register to read certain articles) or my high school’s web site (which ingeniously redirects to itself if cookies are disabled). Since I now use CS Lite and EasyPrivacy, I don’t feel TACO is necessary.
- NoScript: One of the most popular Firefox extensions, it blocks JavaScript on all sites and allows you to set exceptions for sites you trust. It takes a little while to set it up if you visit a lot of script-heavy sites regularly, but after that, it’s not too much trouble. In fact, it makes many sites zippier, particularly blogs that are weighed down by tons of crap scripts. NoScript contains a lot of other security features like protection from cross-site scripting attacks. It also lets you block plugins like Flash and Java on untrusted sites, which makes sites like my high school’s web site a whole lot more bearable. I never installed this extension before because I thought it was incompatible with Greasemonkey, but NoScript now allows most Greasemonkey scripts to run.
I could probably get used to using CS Lite and NoScript, but some web sites that rely on JavaScript or cookies don’t tell you to allow them, and that can be annoying at times. Web designers shouldn’t just assume that visitors will have JavaScript and cookies enabled.
I haven’t actually tried this, but it sounds interesting: Omegle lets you chat with a random stranger. Exciting?
This is pretty epic: a non-traditional visualization of Beethoven’s Fifth, showing each note and instrument. Of course, there’s audio too. (Via The Presurfer)
5 comments
#1 by Joshua: Thu Oct 15, 2009 01:53 (UTC -5)
Omegle lets you chat with a random stranger.
A random stranger who has also signed up for Omegle, and, it can be presumed, wants, in turn, to talk to a random stranger. That’s a good filter right there.
Except, aargh, I generally don’t care enough about the people I care about to chat with them.
Will this degenerate into virtual toothing? Maybe it has already?
Yet — will try.
#2 by Jordon Kalilich: Sat Oct 17, 2009 11:10 (UTC -5)
Okay, I use the term “random” very loosely.
#3 by Joshua: Sat Oct 17, 2009 18:57 (UTC -5)
I wasn’t correcting your grammar. I was correcting theirs. :-)
#4 by Fan: Mon Oct 26, 2009 13:45 (UTC -5)
That score animation is awesome, but sometimes I feel that because I’ve played this piece and looked at the full score so many times, it ruins the effect.
#5 by Jordon Kalilich: Mon Oct 26, 2009 18:57 (UTC -5)
That makes sense. It’s no replacement for actual musical notation, after all.