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I got a new computer recently and am going through the process of installing librewolf, which is a version of firefox for crazy people. I thought that everyone might find it interesting how I configure my browser, since I have a unique but reserved approach to browser customization.
EVERYTHING DONE HERE WORKS FOR FIREFOX EVEN THOUGH I AM USING LIBREWOLF
First, let’s make things look cool!
I really like a program called sideberry which moves the tabs in firefox to the side of the screen. I find that the sideways tabs look good aesthetically, but also have more function than normal tabs because less text gets cut off from the interface. Additionally, sideberry has several quality of life features such as manually unloading tabs, mass copying links, tab grouping, and hierarchies of tabs.Sideberry can be installed at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sidebery/
Once sideberry is installed, the old tabs stay on your screen unfortunately, but they can be hidden with a bit of tinkering. More information can be found here, but assuming you are on windows, here’s a speedrun for what to do.
- Paste “about:config” in the url box
- Search for toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets
- Use the toggle button to turn on the setting.
- Navigate to the firefox pop-out menu (sandwich button in the top right of the screen).
- Click Help > More Troubleshooting Information
- On the new troubleshooting information page, use the “open directory” button next to the text “Profile Directory.” This should open a folder outside of firefox.
- In the folder that has just opened, make a new file called chrome
- In this chrome folder, create a new file called userChrome.css
- Populate the userChrome.css file with the css at these two webpages:
https://mrotherguy.github.io/firefox-csshacks/?file=hide_tabs_toolbar.css
https://mrotherguy.github.io/firefox-csshacks/?file=window_control_placeholder_support.css - Close and re-open firefox.
Once you’re done, your firefox should look something like this.
Next comes the password manager
I use bitwarden, which you can install here. I’m not going to try and sell you on why you should use a password, but if you want to sell yourself on the topic, try an overproduced video call to action by vox.Webpage translation
It can be really annoying to use a foreign language website by copying text into a translator piece by piece and sometimes the built in browser translation tools just don’t work. The extension TWP - Translate Web Pages works perfectly to perform those translation functions. It will allow you to select sections of text for translation, or you can translate whole web pages using the button in the url bar.News Paywall Bypassing
I very frequently read newspaper articles and then send them to friends, only for them to say that they can’t open the article due to a paywall. I never see these paywalls because of the extension Bypass Paywalls Clean. For most news site paywalls, it just works. There are exceptions, but notably few of them. In those rare cases you can always fall back to sites such as https://archive.ph, https://web.archive.org/, or https://12ft.io/ for paywall removal.Big media provider avoidance
I can’t explain this one better than the people who built it, so you should read this and if you find the premise compelling, install this.Ad-Blocking
It might surprise some of you to know that I don’t use uBlock Origin. Instead, I use something called AdNauseam. In short, it’s just like uBlock, but instead of just blocking trackers, it also visits all the ads it can find in the background, which confuses advertisers and costs them money. You can read more at their official site, https://adnauseam.io/.Link-Shortener avoidance
FastForward is a tool that uses a community sourced link database to bypass those link shorteners that track you.RSVP reading
Stutter allows for quicker reading of long pieces of text by presenting the words using the Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) format. I would be lying if I said I used it often, but I do occasionally find it helpful for skimming a text at ~400 wpm.Wayback machine
I use the internet archive quite a lot in my use of the internet to the point where it has become useful for me to have the official extension. That’s all there is to it.Helping secure an uncensored internet.
Snowflake is an extension that basically allows you to lend just a bit of your internet traffic to help someone use the tor network and bypass whatever censorship they might be facing. Technicalish information can be found at the tor project page for snowflake.
Comments
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Pebby
another banger from spacehey user Fawkes ! i may look into some of these :]
iason
i always forget how to remove the top tabs even though i have done it a good few times..... at last, i can reference some literature...
btw, the steps described work equally for linux
I don't use the second css blob because of how I have my windows set up, therefore these steps do not always work for linux.
by Fawkes; ; Report
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
they seem to work fine here in xfce endeavourOS
by iason; ; Report
Btw, how is endeavourOS holding up for you?
by Fawkes; ; Report
it works fine... haven't used that laptop much except to watch smc and such. my back isn't broken yet from the behemoth
by iason; ; Report
Hazel
This is a goldmine. I just snagged an old laptop, wiped clean and installed with Windows, so this will be one hell of an experiment once I get time to install everything. I'll let you know how it goes
I look forward to it.
by Fawkes; ; Report
Update: Everything is amazing now. Thank you for this.
by Hazel; ; Report
Yippie! Which extensions did you end up using?
by Fawkes; ; Report
The Sidebery, paywall bypass and AdNauseum… they are incredibly useful :D
by Hazel; ; Report
Great choices too.
by Fawkes; ; Report
Marshmallow_Fluff
The uprising will spread throughout the grid when other programs learn the truth.
The uprising has begun.
That is real asf.
by Fawkes; ; Report