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Good Firefox 11.0 setup for safer web browsing.

Good Firefox 11.0 setup for safer web browsing.

The Firefox web browser truly is a very good and safe browser for everyday use, but with the addition of some extensions, the browsing experience can be made even more secure. Firstly, the Noscript extension is the best and most useful extension for blocking web scripts that can perform malicious actions against your browser.

Secondly, the Ghostery extension will further block tracking code embedded in the HTML code of web pages, as well as the 1×1 pixel tracking images that are sometimes embedded in web pages to track user visits. This extension will pop up a small purple dialog that will display the blocked content on a website. This extension as with Noscript allows you to whitelist a domain that you trust whilst automatically blocking tracking code as you browse the Internet.

The Adblock extension allows the Internet user to block web ads they find annoying. This extension has drawn some criticism from web masters for a reduction in ad revenue caused by the blocking of Adsense advertisements on web pages, but if someone is blocking ads, they were not interested in clicking the advertisement and making a purchase anyway, so that is a moot point. This extension may also be used to block certain elements on a web page, such as an Iframe or large annoying logos on the website, making subsequent visits faster. A very useful plugin indeed.

[My Firefox 11.0 toolbar. Showing the extensions I have installed.

The LinkExtend extension for Firefox gives you a Google toolbar styled toolbar that displays the pagerank of a website and the SiteTraffic rating as well. Above you may see a screenshot of this toolbar in action, you can also see the Ghostery popup and the icons for Adblock and Ghostery on the Firefox 11.0 toolbar. I can not get the Google toolbar to install with Firefox 10.0 or Firefox 11.0, so this is a good alternative.

Flashblock is another good extension that is invaluable when you are browsing a PHPBB message board and someone posts a long post with about 30 Youtube embeds in it, that can really slow down the page. With this extension installed, you do not need to worry at all about all of that loading at once. This will replace all of those video embeds with a button that will allow you to enable the flash embed and play the video if you want, putting control back in your hands. and it will block those annoying hidden flash embeds that play repeating music when the website loads. Some imageboard websites are notorious for that.

Firefox eating the competition.
Firefox eating the competition.

Internet Explorer 9.0 has a good script blocking feature built into the browser, you have to add some Tracking Protection Lists to the web browser using the inbuilt tracking protection system in the web browser. But since I am no longer using Windows it is strictly Feuerfuchs for me. Even the old Mozilla 1.7 web browser was better than Internet Explorer 6.0, that is still being used these days even though it is totally insecure. Firefox with these extensions installed is far more secure and reliable. The Ghostery extension will block facebook tracking as well as other nasty stuff. Just whitelist some blocked elements if the website you are using appears to break.

Finally Downloadhelper is an extension that allows the user to download video content from Youtube and other video sharing websites. This can be useful if you wish to download the video you are watching to enjoy later on. I do not see the downside to talking about this extension, what is the difference between watching a music video online and being able to download it for your personal use? This extension also allows you to download pictures from a website as well.

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