ExtendFirefox2

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Extend Firefox

Please feel free to add to this list if you have ideas for Firefox add-ons by clicking on the "edit" link. Developers interested in entering the Extend Firefox competition will be looking here for inspiration.

Some Ideas for Firefox Add-ons

  • change site's favicon - to distinguish frequently used sites without unique icons (like my university's catalogs or Google different searches: books, articles etc. who have all the same favicon).
  • Link URL in full statusbar or addressbar - when hovering a link, use the all statusbar to display it in full, hiding the buttons, or show it in the addressbar instead of the current URL, to show it in full.
  • "open image in new tab" contextmenu item - to view scaled images without leaving the page.
  • Colored Context Menu - an option to select different colors to the right-click context menu lines (or other menus as well), for easy recognition and fast use. This would be a valuable addition to menu customization extensions like MenuManipulator.
  • (Javascript) links in mirrored tab - as for now, no "javscript link to regular link" extension or Greasemonkey script works for all links to be opened in new tab. The idea here is that when opening any link in new tab, the original tab will be fully duplicated in its exact condition with all its parameters before going to that link, so that even links like "javascript:function(1)" can be opened in new tab when middle clicking on them (currently "open link in duplicate tab" won't work for javascript links).
  • display a gallery to load the largest image from all linked pages.
  • For long pages or simply a preference to load a page below a blocked banner ad or other annoying wasted space: An add-on or extension which would allow the scroll of a page opened to anchor any point other than the top for pages which do not have that feature built into them. It could store a list of web pages which, after being set to load a certain distance from the top the first time, would, after restarting the browser, open to the preferred point.
  • 1). An add-on that changes the color of links you don't plan on reading on a page by mousing over or dragging a box around so your eyeballs don't need to continually scan them when they appear on a different location on the same page [i.e. Drudge] and; 2). As in other add-ons (but do not work with Drudge), changes the color of the links already viewed.
  • An Extension to make users could send current page(link and message) to friends or groups of friend's browser directly, see [1]. It do that very better.
  • A function to right click on a TAB and show the function "move to its own window".
  • A function that would allow tabs to have a different profile associated so that a user could log into the same site under two accounts. Similar to IE Tab, but instead of rendering in IE, continues to render in Firefox under a different user profile.
  • A function ideally the same as the already existent add-on "Show Picture," only with a better interface and a way to be integrated into Firefox 3.
  • A history extension that exports all sites visited and time spent on each site to spreadsheet form. Ignores ads, etc.
  • Advanced find functionality: A find tool bar that would be able to find what you type in on other web pages, so you would be able to select how deep in the links on the page the search will go. It will find the search terms you put in -- if there is any -- and will return the URLs that contains the search you have implemented.
  • Tab Scroller: scrolls the opened tabs using the Shift+ Mouse wheel, the opened tabs will appear on a menu on the left side, showing the current tab, and highlighting the tabs as you scroll. I have made an image using Photoshop, here, and will be pleased to help, contact me at mohajami1984@yahoo.com
  • Youtube Download Accelerator - a add-on that work like SpeedBit Video Accelerator.
  • Title Tool bar Element - display the title as a tool bar element, so the top title bar could be permanently hidden and not take vertical space (an Exit, Minimize/Maximize and Restore buttons are available in other extension as buttons or in the status bar, but it would be nice to include them as well). Minimum and maximum display length of the title should also be set in pixels, so one can choose if he wants it to take fixed space in the tool bar or resize (which doesn't seem very convenient to me as I like my search box and URL box in fixed width).
  • Chronological Search box History - for recent searches in the built in search box to be sorted in the order you searched for them (like Google Tool bar does), plus the ability to choose them from the drop down list (using the now hidden drop marker) without running the search automatically.
  • Tab Scroller Everywhere - scroll between tabs in the tab bar even when hovering on other tool bars (like the navigation, address and menu bars) and so move quicker without the need to put the mouse pointer on it exactly.
  • Bookmarks with current search terms and address parameters - actually merging the search plugins system into the bookmarks, enabling to use the better bookmarks organizing system for the search engines and so adding to them things like folders (that currently "Organize Search Engines" provide) and Open All in Tabs (to run the same search in several engines, which no extension does so easily so far). The current URL parameter is to run searches inside the current website (like Google Site Search) which strangely the search plugins doesn't have even now! Of course the intension is not to turn the bookmarks into thousands of little files like IE favorites (and the current search plugin system) but rather to use the same single file for them as well with the same system. All is needed is those two parameters for the bookmark's URL and changing-icon feature that "Favicon Picker 2" already provide, and later the equivalent of "Context Search" for the bookmark system.
  • Find Toolbar and Searchbar Merger - use the power of the find Toolbar inside the searchbox to find and highlight the searchterms in the page(a bit like SearchWP does, but with quickfind using the same textbox)
  • AllTabs - A clean and simple extension to view all tabs opened in Firefox in a single tab as thumbnail view, like the IE7 "Quick Tabs (Ctrl+Q)". Firefox currently has only hover-preview extensions like cooliris and tab preview. There is already foXpose which is actually where IE7 got the "Quick Tabs" Idea.
  • ClearLens - A simple zoom-on-hover (mouse over) feature for images. Just mouse over a image for few seconds or simply shift+click to zoom-in, ctrl+click to zoom out, alt+click to reset to 100%. Image Zoom Look up
  • AutoComplete - Like the spell check option, I was thinking of a good extension, that would work the same way, but as you start to type it would give you word suggestions. So it would suggest the right word before you misspell it.
  • Like the spell check option, a grammar check would be just as helpful.
  • Firefox has the ability to underline misspelled words, but you can only fix them by manually looking for underlined words, right-clicking on them, and fixing them. It would be useful to have a function that automatically takes all underlined words and spell checks them in a pop-up box, similar to the way that Microsoft Word does it.
  • The Bookmarks tool bar would be great to type in with my IGoogle page. is there any way someone could make it happen?
  • Web Content Aggregator: an extension that retrieves several parts of pages on the Web, putting all of them on a single custom page (a kind of Netvibes in a more generic way).
  • Tab Grouping Extension Ideas
  • Jesse Ruderman's Extension Ideas
  • Toolbar Switch - Switch between various tool bars by substituting one for another always using the same space. For example: by pressing a button it would substitute the bookmarks tool bar by the web developer tool bar putting it where bookmarks tool bar was. (note this already exists as Custom Buttons button - the toolbar Manipulator Button - User, however, has to insert toolbars directly into the code himself...)
  • Shared Tab - implement a web service and extension that allows you to open a tab that is followed and changed by all the people granted access to it.
  • Web spell checker - extends spell checker to work on the text of an HTML page. This would be useful as a development tool.
  • Map helper. Extends existing mapping tools (Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, etc), allowing to create custom location and route sets, which can be stored locally or even shared remotely.
  • Podcast player. Adds a sidebar where live bookmarks in a specific folder are displayed and considered as podcasts (a la Sage). Lockup.
    • Three sections: podcasts, a play list area, play controls, and currently played episode tag, if available.
    • It could use the default media plugin (Windows Media Player, QuickTime, etc.) or embed an open source player like XSPF.
    • Episodes can be downloaded automatically.
    • The podcast list will show which episodes are being downloaded and which have completed if it's the case.
    • Bonus: export as m3u list.
  • Unified wysiwyg text editing environment on popular web platforms (gmail, yahoo, mediawiki, wordpress, others?). When a user edits a wikipedia page or writes an email in gmail (i.e. on a supported web platform) he is:
    • presented with the same (pretty!) interface
    • preferable keyboard commands for bold, italic, underline are the same across sites
    • interface expands with the web platforms abilities. Wikipedia has a large set of tools (that we all know from text editing applications), others less so
    • Users can (relatively) easily script their own rule sets for new, unsupported platforms
  • Drag to download. Ctrl-drag a link to a file system folder to download the target. Ctrl+drag a selection to download all targets.
  • Audio recorder. Grabs any audio coming from the current tab to a .wav/.ogg/.mp3 file. If support for <audio>/<video> tags land, the necessary codecs may be already available.
  • Add On Synchronizer:: We should have an add-on which besides synchronizing the bookmarks, cookies, passwords etc can also synchronize the add ons. This way a user will not have to configure the Firefox every time he installs it on a different machine.
  • Adobe Flash Action scripting search bar. It could search sites like dreamincode.com and the official adobe sites. i know this would save me hours (literally) if i had one. And please add a way to select your version of action scripting. (or at least in a later version)
  • IE cloak. At my school, Firefox isn't really aloud. Maybe someone could make a button that when pressed it will hide all extra tool bars and icons as well as disguise the browser to look like IE 6.0 or 7.0.... so it would look exactly like IE. but after the press of a button or key combination it will bring it back.
  • Developer extension to emulate different bandwidth speeds. Perhaps implemented as a Firebug extension
  • Define rules for custom context menu items. Would have a little console to write little javascripts or define bookmarklets to execute. These are defined for different DOM elements so when I click an image, for example, give me the option to add it to my Photobucket account".
  • Don't play sound coming from one tab when I'm viewing a different tab, especial with flash sounds
  • Pre-Fetch Content -> Let Firefox fully utilize your hi-speed ADSL connections. Let browser intelligently or manually prefetch online content for ultra-fast browsing. Prefetch YouTube Videos, Flicker Photos, Google Search, News, Images, Photos, RSS Feeds, search results. Many users have multi-MBps connections however they will never use it.
  • LOTTERY. create an add-on to search lottery results for a specified lottery number set and present a pop up or an alert for a winning ticket.

Ken Saunders Extension Idea

  • Scrolling Text Extension
  • Fun for everyone but highly beneficial and useful to persons with poor eyesight, dyslexia, color blindness, and other visual impairments.
  • Its purpose is to display and scroll web page text content at the top of a page with various customization options available to the user such as;
    • Scroll speed and direction
    • Font size
    • Text color and background color on the scroll bar
    • settings should always persist

This concept has been researched and it is has been determined to be doable due to the existing technology that lies within extensions like Click Speak and Accessibar.

Some Idea: [anala[dot]sridhar at gmail[dot]com]

  • Timed Tab
    • Opens a website (configured) in a new tab at a configured time of the day/week. Basically, this is for absent-minded people like me who forget to enter their time-sheets :-( on a daily basis . Right now, Outlook (grrr..) is helping out but still would be a nice feature on Firefox.
  • multiple proxy server settings
    • Though there are many extensions providing similar features, this add_on could have proxy server settings assigned for a group of websites.
  • Fully Functional Search on XML or WSDL files
    • Like Text Based Search, It would be nice if FF allows text search (forward-backward) in XML files too (XQuery included?)
  • Print View
    • Provide a Print View option of every page viewed, by stripping out contents not directly linked (from the same host?) to the page under purview (advertisements etc). I guess this idea is somewhat similar to Aardvark Add-On (?!)
  • Cursor Style or Tool tip for JavaScript Links
    • Usually i right click to open links in a new tab (hope it is not only me!), but links using javascript (pop-up) opens a blank page instead. If there's a tool tip or change in cursor style denoting that, we can avoid opening the javascript links (pop-up) in a new tab.
  • A nice option in IE, wish to see the same in FF too
    • When there are add-ons to be installed from a site, security options appear to enable installation form the site. As soon as the user enables it, IE automatically reloads the page again whereas FF does not do so. It is kind of confusing to new users, they kind of keep staring at the page. Probably not an idea for an Add-on but i guess FF must consider this.

My idea for Firefox would be to have some kind of internal demon to do ram garbage collection to prevent the thing from gobbling memory, and also to monitor CPU usage, so it stops locking up my machine if I leave it open for too many hours. [W2Ksp4] The little demon might also note whether the system is running Thunderbird concurrently, and keep an eye on him, too. Both products seem very intolerant to networking errors, locking up for long periods following channel errors. Any add-on that might turn the reliability knob up, or resource know down, or both, would be a winner in my view.

My idea is for Thunderbird (not sure if it counts here). The idea is to be able to add an individual note to each recipient of an e-mail. This would be especially useful if BCC-ing an e-mail, then you are able to place a footnote to further explain why they have been included on the e-mail.

By jmkovey

My top add-on would be having a to-do list that could come up as a sidebar. It would be nice if this could have a form that you could automatically add an event to Google calendar. I would like the to-do list to be stored so that no matter what, it will be there when I start up. Obviously it'd be nice to be able to set priority or due date and be easy to add/delete entries.

  • Stacked Tickers: Instead of having all your feeds scrolling in the same ticker space, have several tickers stacked at the bottom of the screen, with different feeds in each one. These could be arranged by themes, so that one displays "News", another for "Tech Updates" etc., according to the user's preferences. -Dimatrix
  • Date awareness for news sites: When a news article is displayed, a small box could pop up in the bottom corner stating "This was published on {date}". My gripe is with the BBC on this one; their "Related Articles" list often links to OLD NEWS, but this isn't made apparent. You could click twice and be staring at years-old material: not ideal if you are searching for current information. -Dimatrix
aamir_raza60@hotmail.com
  • Windows-Live plug in': Compact mode of Windows Media Player in status bar.

[Teet Eomäe] add-on ideas

  • Software for Firefox and plugin-s settings - like "foxettings" :)
  • Also is good to have "company rules for settings and plugins" on install
  • "Send Page via email" is still missing - this is not new idea :)


  • Windows Vista has not been the greatest performing OS but it had some good ideas. Anyone know how they do the window select where all your windows turn sideways and you can scroll through them? Is it possible to put that into an add-on for tabs?
  • Opera web browser has a neat feature called speed dial. You can put your favorite websites into 9 boxes and when a blank tab is created or there are no tabs, the speed dial page shows up. Also if you are browsing and you don't want to open a new tab to access it you can type in the number of the web page you want to go to (1-9)into the address bar and it will take you there as well. Can something to that effect be put into add-on form?

-Roboticmayhem

[keen101's idea]

  • I think it'd be cool to have a "major news" add-on...
  • ... where when something major happens like 9-11, the add-on is connecting to multiple news sites, and when the same "title" or subject appears in all or multiple, it selects a video to automatically open and stream.
  • Therefore you get to see major news WHEN it happens.
  • The ability to move tabs from one already open window to another, allowing you to split several tabs off at once into a new window and merge multiple windows without having to manually reload everything.


Next Generation E-mail System (no pop or other settings required) Web Based E-mail SCAN System (MS Killer) [avallee's idea]

What I would love to see is the ability to have e-mail tabs like in Opera but even better. What I mean by better is behind the scenes setup so I don't have everybody that doesn't know how to setup pop accounts and such bother me anymore.

Overview Example: If a user wants to setup his browser so it also acts as a mail program all he would do is click the “ADD MAIL” in the tools menu (new menu option) then a new tab would open and they type in the web address such as www.google.com, www.hotmail.com or what ever. and then log into their web mail then select a OCR scan zone which would grab the mail and put it in a designated mail tab for that web mail account. It would then be formatted in proper columns and those people out their who don’t know anything about setting up pop accounts ect. won’t have to know. Benefits of such a add on is the OCR really only has to be a ASCII scan as all web based e-mail is ASCII and not a picture thus making it many times faster then doing true OCR. Plus people are not blocked out of web based e-mail that is or might become Proprietary at some point such as hotmail and others are now. This would be the ultimate mail front end with the users not having to worry about settings. Just a simple screen built in macro catcher to allow Firefox in the background to log in and Capture the mail.

Setup training example: User would right click over the web based e-mail username field and select from the right click menu the “LEARN”. They would then type their user name in and do the same for the password field. Then right click and select “LEARN CLICK” to enter. Once logged in they could then Right click and select “MAIL ZONE” then with the left mouse button scan the first message fields then click on the message to open it. Once it is open they then just right click the mouse and “LEARN OFF” this then trains the browser in what steps to take in order to grab web based e-mail without pop account settings required etc… of course behind the E-mail scan it would keep track of the last date and time message grabbed so it doesn’t grab messages twice the next time it checks.

Such a program would piss off the likes of MS and others but oh well the setup choice is the end users and not infringing on any patents or copyrights. Other benefits of such a program because it is scanning the ASCII codes it could also allow in helping block spam with a key word list that is setup by the user. Images could also be brought in and stored in a database where they are indexed to the messages and displayed only if the user wants images on. Another great feature would be to add Text to speech so the mail could be read out or the web page read like Opera does.


Fastest portable Browser in the World

Run in Flexable RAMDRIVE Option with Compression Option also.

[avallee's idea]

To be ready for the future Firefox should have a built in option in the options menu setup that upon loading the startup config will allow the option of booting to and running from a adjustable RAMDRIVE. This would allow for many benefits such as.

People that want full speed while on the go and using a USB drive won’t be bogged down by the slow speed of Flash memory after firefox is loaded. Many users that use a thumb drive on the road are not so much worried about history of surfing so much as when not on the go. If a power failure were to happen it is not a big deal.

Upon closing the browser the option of history of websites visited can be dumped back to original drive or just dumped back every so many minutes that is set by user.

Also allows for better spam control which could be filtered upon saving options at closing browser.

Should also allow user to have a keycode in settings to enable 128 or 256 bit encryption for any information floating around in the RAMDRIVE thus maybe just make the ram drive a encrypted drive that won’t run or access with the USB out of the port. Maybe even have it run compressed in some segments for History caching etc…

Possible flexibility would be to have a compression setup screen tab in the setup options that allow the users to decide what parts they would like to run compressed such as Caching history by date etc…

How to speed up the load time of Firfox from a USB drive.

Allow it to have a copy of the main app as Compressed on the thumb drive and have a small decompression app load into memory that will read the app compressed and expand it on the fly in memory for running it. It is much faster to have a 10 MB file load from the USB and expand in memory then it is to load a 30MB file and run. I have a feeling that is exactly what Opera has done in order to get their app running from a 4 meg file with more features then Firefox and IE combined.



Syncing Bookmarks & or History using E-mail account.

[avallee's idea]

The ability upon loading to go online and grab the e-mail with the compressed and encrypted bookmark/history file using pop settings that were setup by the user. Also must give the option to send updated file to e-mail if any changes or additions were put in the bookmarks during the users session at the closing of firfox.

Firefox would scan e-mail using the subject field looking for a user set keyword such as “Bookmarks” all e-mails with the words Bookmarks at the beginning would show up in a selection list which allow s the user to choose from the list with dates and time.

It is importing that the word can be set by the user for the Subject search inorder to avoid the risk of malicious attachments that could be sent as spam using a embeded word that is hard coded and not changeable in the program which would effect all firfox users if that was to happen. Thus reducing the risk by allowing the user to select the word in the settings for the message in message out subject line for the compressed files coming in from and going to the e-mail.

This would work great with the thumb drive ramdrive system also.


Outlook Style Side Bar like Opera

[avallee]

I would love to see the same side bar like in Opera but to get around the Patent all one has to do is make it so it is moveable from side to side or the bottom. And as an extra precaution make sure at the top of it contact is not made between the side bar and the bar horizontal at the upper part of the browser maybe have a couple pixels spacing.

I also agree with the above mentioned about the speed dial features in Opera maybe do one upman ship over Opera and allow the user to set a letter for each dial. CTRL+ G could equal = Google or Gloabeandmail.com what ever.


[Atomicrockerdude's idea]

Your average person doesn't know how to design plug-ins or add-ons. In light of this, I think some sort of easy to use, graphic interface for designing extensions would be great. This is so that your average person would be free to customize their browser even more.

[Atomicrockerdude]

I took a look at the songbird and flock projects. Instead of just having multiple browsers or a browser dedicated toward one thing. Why not combine these projects or their aspects all into one browser. Given this, you could give your browser the possibility of having multiple purposes or designated uses all in one. You could even possibly tab to or switch to the kind of designated use in the browser if you want to. That or make an extension that interconnects these three... but then it would probably be too heavy on the RAM usage.

[Atomicrockerdude]

Social Networking is a great idea first of all. If somebody made a way to improve that and make it so you could discover and meet people not just on a website, but on the web through their browsers, the result would be pretty darn interesting.

[USAF2E1X1]

An e-mail scheduler. You can write e-mails and schedule them to be sent at a predesignated time.

[Don't Ruin News] by l####u#k###e#m###h@@@@@@@@@@gmail[dot]com (ignore #'s and only use 1 @)

A DIV or WEBPAGE blocker that blocks any news about sports scores / sports wins / any news from keywords you specify, so you don't accidentally ruin something you wanted to watch on tv later while browsing the web.

Tab Tracking

[ thiago :: [thiago-dp[at]bol[dot]com[dot]br]

Motivation: When we are browsing, we click in a lot of links that open in new tabs or sometimes we type the url directly in the address edit box. After opening a lot of tabs, web get confused about which tabs were opened where. Each tab has its own history so that we can click Back and Next to see this information. But we have no way to see this for multiple tabs. Even the History doesn't show this information.

Overview: FF could have a Tab Tracking option in its History to show, in a tree view or list view, the sequence of navigation. URLs typed in new blank tabs, from Favorites menu or RSS feeds become new items in the tree. Links opened from these tabs become sub items.

For instance:

  1. In new blank tab, I type www.google.com. This URL become a item (1) in the Tab Tracking. So I and make a search for "Firefox".
  2. The page with the results become a new sub item (1.1) in the Tab Tracking. So I click in the "Page 2" to see the next results.
  3. The Page 2 become a new sub item (1.2). I decide to click in a link that takes me to www.getfirefox.com.
  4. The new (external) link is now a new sub item from Page 2 (1.2.1).
  5. I decide to go to Favorites and click YouTube. The site open in a new tab and a new item (2) is created.

And so on...

Tab Tracking would be something like 

    [-] Google
    |   |
    |   --  Page 1
    |   [-] Page 2
    |       |
    |       Firefox web browser
    [-] YouTube

Some options:

  • Each item could be shown with enumeration (i.e. "1- Google", "1.1- Page 1")
  • Each item could be shown with date and time (i.e. "Google [01-mar-08 09:21:47]")
  • Each item could be shown with the URL (i.e. "Google [www.google.com]")
  • It could have a Expand All and Collapse All option, like History has.

I think that is easy to implement and good to control as a log inside (or outside) History.

HOT FEATURES:

  • Back and Next: Allow Back and Next buttons to navigate using the Tab Tracking order. This is a very useful feature that would give a better sense for these buttons. As I said before, today you cannot go "back" when you open a new tab from a link. With Tab Tracking you will back to where you have clicked.
  • Home: Allow Home to take you to the first page you have accessed, instead the one that appear when you open the browser. I mean, when your Home is a blank page, that is not the page you have first accessed.

OTHER FEATURES:

  • Colorful Tabs: Each tab could have a different color, depending on where it came from. First level items could randomize the color and sub items could be a little lighter. For instance, Google (1) could be blue. Page 2 (1.2) would be a lighter blue; Firefox (1.2.1) still lighter. And so on (lighter and lighter). This way we could know, visually, which tabs where opened from where.
  • Enumeration in Tabs: Each tab could show its item number (i.e.: "1.2.1- Firefox web browser")
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