Kittycatcrackhead - The Ramblings Of A Cat

So You've Finally Switched to Firefox: a Brief Guide to a Some Very Useful Add-Ons.

This post is inspired by two things, the first being the announcement by Google that the long delayed Manifest V3 which will kill robust adblocking will finally roll out in June 2024, and the second, a post written by @sexhaver in response to a question as to what adblockers and extensions they use. It's a very good post with some A+ information, worth checking out.

I love Firefox, I love the degree of customization it offers me as a user. I love how it just works. I love the built in security features like DNS over HTTPS, and I love just how many excellent add-ons are available. It is a better browser than Chrome in every respect, and of the many Chromium based browsers out there, only Vivaldi comes close.

There are probably many people out there who are considering switching over to Firefox but are maybe putting it off because they've got Chrome set up the way they like it with the extensions they want, and doing all that again for Firefox seems like a chore. The Firefox Add-on directory is less expansive than the Chrome Web Store (which in recent years has become overrun with garbage extensions that range from useless to active malware), but there is still a lot of stuff to sift through. That's where this short guide comes in.

I'm presently running 33 add-ons for Firefox and have a number of others installed but disabled. I've used many others. These are my picks, the ones that I consider essential, useful, or in some cases just fun.

Adblocking/Privacy/Security:

uBlock Origin: The single best adblocker available. If you're a power user there are custom lists and scripts you can find to augment it.

Privacy Badger: Not strictly necessary if you're also running uBlock, but it does catch a few trackers uBlock doesn't and replaces potentially useful trackers like comment boxes with click-to-activate placeholders.

Decentraleyes: A supplementary tool meant to run alongside uBlock, prevents certain sites from breaking when tracker requests are denied by serving local bundled files as replacement.

NoScript: The nuclear option for blocking trackers, ads, and even individual elements. Operates from a "trust no one" standpoint, you will need to manually enable elements yourself. Not recommended for casual users, but a fantastic tool for the power user.

Webmail Ad Blocker: The first of many webmail related add-ons from Jason Saward I will be recommending. Removes all advertising from webmail services like Gmail or Yahoo Mail.

Popup Blocker (Strict): Strictly blocks ALL pop up/new tab/new window requests from all website by default unless you manually allow it.

SponsorBlock: Not a fan of listening to your favourite YouTuber read advertisements for shitty products like Raycons or BetterHelp? This skips them automatically.

AdNauseam: I don't use this one but some people prefer it. Rather than straight up blocking ads and trackers, it obfuscates data by injecting noise into the tracker surveillance infrastructure. It clicks EVERY ad, making your data profile incomprehensible.

User-Agent Switcher: Allows you to spoof websites attempting to gather information by altering your browser profile. Want to browse mobile sites on desktop? This allows you to do it.

Bitwarden: Bitwarden has been my choice of password manager since LastPass sold out and made their free tier useless. If you're not using a password manager, why not? All of my passwords look like this: $NHhaduC*q3VhuhD&scICLKjvM4rZK5^c7ID%q5HVJ3@gny I don't know a single one of them and I use a passphrase as a master password supplemented by two-factor-authentication. Everything is filled in automatically. It is the only way to live.

Proton Pass: An open source free password manager from the creators of Proton Mail. I've been considering moving over to it from Bitwarden myself.

Webmail/Google Drive:

Checker Plus for Gmail: Provides desktop notifications for Gmail accounts, supports managing multiple accounts, allows you to check your mail, read, mark as read or delete e-mails at a glance in a pop-up window. An absolutely fabulous add-on from Jason Saward.

Checker Plus for Google Drive: Does for your Google Drive what Checker Plus for Gmail does for your Gmail.

Checker Plus for Google Calendar: The same as the above two only this time for your Google Calendar.

Firefox Relay: An add-on that allows you to generate aliases that forward to your real e-mail address.

Accessibility:

Dark Reader: Gives every page on the internet a customizable Dark Mode for easier reading and eye protection.

Read Aloud: A text to speech add-on that reads pages with the press of a button.

Zoom Page WE: Provides the ability to zoom in on pages in multiple ways: text zoom, full page zoom, auto-fit etc.

Mobile Dyslexic: Not one I use, but I know people who swear by it. Replaces all fonts with a dyslexia friendly type face.

Utility:

ClearURLs: Automatically removes tracking data from URLs.

History Cleaner: Automatically deletes browser history older than a set number of days.

Feedbro RSS Feed Reader: A full standalone reader in your browser, take control of your feed and start using RSS feeds again.

Video Download Helper: A great tool for downloading video files from websites.

Snap Link Plus: Fan of Wikipedia binge holes? Snap Link allows to drag select multiple hyperlink and automatically open all of them in new tabs.

Copy PlainText: Copy any text without formatting.

EPUBReader: Read .epub files from within a browser window.

Tab Stash: A no mess, no fuss way to organize groups of tabs as bookmarks. I use it as a temporary bookmark tool, saving sessions or groups of tabs into "to read" folders.

Tampermonkey/Violentmonkey: Managers for installing and running custom user scripts. Find user scripts on OpenUserJS or Greasy Fork, there's an entire galaxy out there of ingenious and weird custom user scripts out there, go discover it.

Browsing & Searching:

Speed Dial 2: A new tab add-on that gives you easy access to your favourite sites.

Unpaywall: Whenever you come across a scholarly article behind a paywall, this add-on will search through all the free databases for an accessible and non-paywalled version of the text.

Web Archives: Come across a dead page? This add-on gives you a quick way to search for cached versions of the page on the Wayback Machine, Google Cache, Archive.is and others.

Bypass Paywalls: Automatically bypasses the paywalls of major websites like those for the New York Times, New Yorker, the Financial Times, Wired, etc.

Simple Translate: Simple one-click translation of web pages powered by Google Translate.

Search by Image: Reverse search any image via several different search engines: Google Image, TinEye, Yandex, Bing, etc.

Website Specific:

PocketTube: Do you subscribe to too many YouTube channels? Would you like a way to organize them? This is your answer.

Enhancer for Youtube: Provides a suite of options that make using YouTube more pleasant: volume boost, theatre mode, forced quality settings, playback speed and mouse wheel volume control.

Augmented Steam: Improves the experience of using Steam in a browser, see price histories of games, take notes on your wishlist, make wish listed games and new DLC for games you own appear more visible, etc.

Return YouTube Dislikes: Does exactly what it says on the package.

BlueBlocker: Hate seeing the absolute dimmest individuals on the planet have their replies catapulted to the top of the feed because they're desperate to suck off daddy Elon sloppy style? This is for you, it automatically blocks all Blue Checks on Twitter. I've used it to block a cumulative 34,000 Blue Checks.

Batchcamp: Allows for batch downloading on Bandcamp.

XKit Rewritten: If you're on Tumblr and you're not using whichever version of XKit is currently available, I honestly don't know what to say to you. This newest version isn't as fully featured as the old XKit of the golden age, but it's been rewritten from the ground up for speed and utility.

Social Fixer for Facebook: I once accidentally visited Facebook without this add-on enabled and was immediately greeted by the worst, mind annihilating content slop I had ever had the misfortune to come across. Videos titled "he wanted her to get lip fillers and she said no so he had bees sting her lips", and AI photos of broccoli Jesus with 6000 comments all saying "wow". Once I turned it on it was just stuff my dad had posted and updates from the Radio War Nerd group.

BetterTTV: Makes Twitch slightly more bearable.

Well I think that's everything. You don't have to install everything here, or even half of it, but there you go, it's a start.

A test comic page about my ocs, Alfie and Arjun

Idk if I'll color it, but I kinda like how it turned out

I made it in procreate, and used my own custom font (it still needs work lol)

I need to draw this omg

Kyle Hyde is six feet tall

Bradley is canonically taller than him

Do you think he’s spent the last four years before the events of Hotel Dusk being like “I’m looking for a man who’s an ex-cop

With mafia ties

Six five

Blue eyes”

Rachel appreciation post

lowkey feel there was some voter fraud going on. People were saying it was going to take AT LEAST a week to count all the ballots, yet it was called in a night? and he got all the swing states? something is up and i feel like M*sk did something horrendous. The math for his votes doesn't add up.

First things first, if you voted via absentee ballot you NEED to log onto your voting portal through your Secretary of State's website and make sure your ballot was accepted. This is primarily impacting young voters and people in swing states, but absentee ballots are being incorrectly rejected due to problems with the signatures. If you ballot was not accepted, you should see a pop-up similar to this. Do as the instructions tell you and ensure that your vote is counted!

But to answer your ask, there is absolutely voter fraud going on, and they need to demand an immediate recount. Harris should not concede. I've been following this quite closely as I am about to get a degree in journalism and there are insane levels of bullshit and fuckery happening.

I find it very hard to believe that this is a "record election" yet there are somehow less votes than there were in 2020. Trump won with LESS total votes than he LOST WITH in 2020.

Additionally, there was all sorts of election interference happening, especially in swing states. Ballots were set on fire in several states. Over 3,000 votes in Democrat counties in GA were not sent to voters on time, and the GA Supreme Court rejected an extension, heavily impacting those people's ability to vote.

Russian bomb threats were called into majority Black precincts in various swing states, especially PA and GA, both of which interestingly enough are now red. These polling stations had to be evacuated due to the threats, impacting people's ability to vote. I've already mentioned the issue with the absentee ballots, but now Centre County in PA is saying they are having issues with their ballot scanners and that the mail-in ballot data is "not being recognized when uploaded to the elections software."

I'm not going to lie, I don't have a lot of faith in this situation right now, but I do fully believe that this is bullshit. Something is going on, the math is not mathing, and something needs to be done about it right fucking now.

Olive by the fire...

hi hi i really enjoyed your oneshot "Amber Waves," and it's inspired me to write my own stan x reader fic :)

if it's alright, i'd like to credit you for the idea (if i ever end up publishing it lol)

This literally warms my heart to bits. Of course you can! 💜

litter box warning

spreading this person's PSA here onto tumblr bc this seems very important for everyone to know if you're not on Twitter: here's the link to their full post.

i wanna draw chonky shane

So i did a fanart challenge thingy and drew shane, and i've decided that i'm gonna draw him more pudgy than what i usually do

i've been trying to be more diverse with the bodies that i draw, (since up until recently, it's been skinny twinks and beefed up guys (absolutely nothin wrong with that ofc, i just wanna get better with different body types, and different characters in general)), and i feel like shane would be a good starting point

like the guy lives off of beer, pizza, and pepper poppers, he's probably gonna have a dad bod lol

and ig this is also a way for me to come to terms with the fact that i'm not skinny, and probably will always be a lil chonky. by drawing people with bodies more like mine, it kinda helps me to hate myself less, if that makes sense.

thank you for coming to my ted talk

you will be rewarded with chonky shane