Firefox, Greasemonkey, RemoveImage, Adblock Plus, Google Reader
Wednesday, April 4th, 2007Hello Everyone,
I wanted to tell you about my web surfing experience of late. After I installed Linux Ubuntu on one of my PCs, I thought I’d experiment a little with the Firefox web browser. I had it installed on my Windows PC, but due to being so used to using Internet Explorer, I didn’t use Firefox too much.
Ubuntu comes preloaded with Firefox, so I started using it more and more and have gotten used to it. It’s great- and it’s best selling point is the way you can extend and personalize it. It’s really changed the way I surf the web.
First, I installed something called Greasemonkey. It allows you to add things to Firefox that users have created. I installed a bunch of stuff that would modify the way Gmail looks and acts and was hooked on Greasemonkey.
I installed something called “Adblock Plus” which pretty much removes ads from every web site that I go to. Cool!
Then, I installed something called “RemoveImage” which removes images from every site that I go to. It doesn’t speed things up at all, but I just want to read sites, not look at pictures (for the most part). I know many Christian men will agree with me.
Both of these scripts can easily be modified to include some sites that you want to see ads for or images in. It’s kind of hard to work in Wordpress without images!
To me, the neatest scripts are modifications to Gmail. “Gmail Super Clean” makes the site look “super clean.” “Gmail Spam Count Hide” hides the number of Spam emails that you have (who needs to see that?), and “Gmail+Reader” allows you to look at your Google Reader feeds in Gmail. This one is my favorite.
Don’t be intimidated by the word “scripts.” They are “1-click” easy to install and you get an easy interface to deal with specific sites if necessary, such as RemoveImage. You don’t have to know how to do computer programming!
Greasemonkey can be found at http://www.greasespot.net/.
All the above scripts can be found at www.userscripts.org.
Firefox can be downloaded at www.mozilla.com
Gmail and Google Reader can be found at www.google.com