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New laptop part 6: Firefox extensions

Posted on 2023-07-25

I mostly use firefox as my main browser. I say mostly because I open chromium from time to time on website that refuse to work on firefox. The main reason I'm using firefox is because it isn't based on webkit / blink… Yes that really why… It is more a militant act fighting against Alphabet/Google dictating their low about web standards[1] (they already do but they will do worse and worse the more people use their web engine). If that wasn't for this main reason, I'd probably use [qutebrowser] a lot more.

This is why I'm always sad when I see news from mozilla I don't like. Their latest change allowing them to silently block add-on on specific site is not only very scary in term of security, it is also a direct attack to users freedom and a clear breach of trust (once again)… But there is no real alternative without giving up to webkit / blink based browser. I use 2 version of firefox, nightly for my day to day browsing and stable for my work related web browsing. Each use a specific profile. While [reinstalling my laptop] earlier this year, I thought it would be an interesting short blog post to talk about the different extensions I use.

Before that, just a quick tip to unsure nightly is the default browser used (chromium changes that config after installing it):

xdg-mime default firefox-nightly.desktop x-scheme-handler/https
xdg-mime default firefox-nightly.desktop x-scheme-handler/http

The above 2 commands should do the trick.

Regarding extensions, I'm using the following ones:

• [SideBery]: The best add-on (IMHO) to manage tabs if, like me, you are a tab addict! Not only it has a clean and slick vertical UI, but it works perfectly (and better than my experience with [Tree Style Tab])
• [uBlock Origin]: Famous add-on to block adds
• [HTTPS Everywhere]: To force traffic to https on all sites. Nota: As nice reader shared with me, this is actually not needed on desktop version of firefox anymore as the option is in Firefox UI now. See their [blog post] for more information.
• [LibRedirect]: To use alternative website to GAFAM ones
• [Privacy Badger]: Block trackers
• [Wallabager]: Allow sending web pages to [wallabag], a read-it-later opensource service
• [Linkding Injector]: When doing a web search, this add-on will also look into my bookmark library (managed via [linkding]) to show me matching results if any.

I'm not sure if this is too much or not, but that's what I've been using since I moved to this new laptop. What about you?

• TIPS*: If you use sidebery and want to hide the default horizontal tab bar, you need to write a small css file.

Edit ~/.mozilla/firefox//chrome/userChrome.css (or create it if it doesn't exist yet) to add:

#TabsToolbar {
  display: none;
}

#sidebar-header {
  display: none;
}

And voilà! Just for fun, a quick screenshot:

=> qutebrowser | reinstalling my laptop | SideBery | Tree Style Tab | uBlock Origin | HTTPS Everywhere | blog post | LibRedirect | Privacy Badger | Wallabager | wallabag | Linkding Injector | linkding

Footnotes

[1] Just the latest example: [Web Environment Integrity]

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