Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with firefox and browsing

Can I make Firefox 3.5 ignore my visits to certain domains?

joshrholloway — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:19:49 -0800

Can I make Firefox 3.5 never remember history (but still save cookies and cache pages) for certain domains automatically but remember history normally for everything else? Basically I'm looking for a seamless and automatic way for Firefox 3.5 to simply not save history information when I am browsing on certain domains that I specify, but act normally on all others. For example, if I could enter a domain filter like *.facebook.com*, it would never save any history info from Facebook, any Facebook subdomains, or any Facebook pages. However, I don't want it to affect cookies or caching. Is there an extension or a hack I can do to make this happen?

internet self-discipline

a womble is an active kind of sloth — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 07:39:25 -0800

Is there a way to ensure that firefox can only access specific sites for a specified period of time? I need to use the internet for my research but I find it easy to get distracted. Usually when I work, I try to be somewhere that has no internet connection, but some of my work requires me to browse through papers and references online.

I looked at answers to previous questions, such as this and people suggested OpenDNS and LeechBlock. I'm more interested in specifying five sites that I can have access to for a fixed amount of time (and ideally in a password protected way) rather than a list of things I want to block. Perhaps this is possible in OpenDNS - from looking at their website I couldn't tell.

I'm using firefox on windows.Thanks.

What could possibly cause MySpace to kill my internet connection?

cheero — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 20:30:53 -0800

What could possibly MySpace to kill my internet connection? Hi all,

Before anything, I fully understand the unfortunate and stupid nature of this problem because it deals with MySpace but I've had this problem for two years and NO ONE seems to know whats wrong with it.

Secondly, I would love to hear anything other than 'lolz, its cos MySpace sucks!' -- Yes, I'm with you on the MySpace hate, but here is my issue.

I have my music on MySpace and I receive between 15-20 new messages/comments per day from fans around the world who take the time to listen to my music so I want to be respectful and respond to all of them. The issue is that whenever I view more than 2-3 profiles/accounts, my internet connection completely dies (I'm unfortunately with bastards from Comcast because Verzion FiOS is not available in my area). Whats really weird about this issue is that only my web browsing works, but mIRC and AIM work just fine.

What could be the cause of this extremely stupid and unbelievably annoying problem? Could some software be causing this problem? I use Firefox and have tested this out on Opera, Flock and IE and the same thing happens. If I simply click on more than 2-3 accounts, internet web browsing connection dies and I am forced to unplug my router (Netgear FVS 114) from the wall, wait 5 minutes and plug it back in again.

I've called Comcast and of course, they never know anything so I wasted time talking to them.

If anyone has any solutions I really would love to hear it, I seriously feel bad not being able to interact with my fans who take time to check out my work and I can't even respond to them without wanting to punch a hole in the wall because of this annoying problem.

I thank you all very much in advance.

Weird Lines in Firefox

edbyford — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 10:40:48 -0800

Strange lines/boxes appear in Firefox when scrolling or mousing over web items Firefox problem

Above is a picture of the problem I am having with Firefox. it seems that lines have started appearing when i mouse over certain objects (buttons, links, some pictures and when I type. For example, right now a line is appearing underneath this sentence. Also when I scroll down a page lines appear on the parts where I have scrolled past.

Has anyone come across this problem before? Any solutions?

I have tried turning on/off Caret Browsing.

I am running Win XP SP2 and Firefox v 2.0.0.8.

How does one commission a Firefox Extension/ Greasemonkey script?

Smarson — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 10:04:11 -0800

How does one go about hiring someone to create a specific Greasemonkey script or Firefox extension for them? As per a previous post, I'm in the market for a web browser with gray-scaling abilities (a la ghostzilla). Ghostfox wasn't the answer and searching through numerous Greasemonkey scripts and Firefox extensions yielded nada. So how does one go about commissioning a script or extension from the developer community? Anyone have experience contracting or being contracted to work on a such a project? What kind of fee is associated with this kind of labor? Does it matter that I would want this script/extension to be available to everyone?

Download secured content to read later?

tiamat — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 13:47:46 -0800

How can I download/cache web pages that require cookies and/or a login for later reading in Firefox (or IE). Is there a spider plugin for either browsers, or a stand alone program that will support authentication? I'm going away to somewhere I likely won't have internet access full time. I'd love to be able to download my livejournal friends page and some other pages for reading offline. Say, the root page plus 1 level of links deep, for articles and content not on the main page.

The hard part: many of the pages I want are password or login protected. NYT premium content, private livejournal pages, etc.

IE6 used to be able to do this, but it looks like they've dropped the feature in 7. I've tried HTTrack, Getright, Flashget and wget, but can't get around the cookies/login issue.

I think I need to do this from inside IE or Firefox, so that I can take advantage of pre-existing cookies, but I can't seem to find a way. Please help.

Otherwise, is there a way to use getright, flashget or some other caching-downloader to authenticate before downloading?

This is on Vista Ultimate with FF2 or IE7.

I'd even be willing to pay for software if it does a good job, so free is not a requirement.

SoftwareFilter: help me find a good way to view Firefox pages offline for MacOSX.

rmm — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 12:58:50 -0800

SoftwareFilter: help me find a good way to view Firefox pages offline for MacOSX. Hi folks,

A long time ago, I used a great Mac app called Netscape History (which sadly I can't find - it was back in the day when people used Navigator). It was a handy application - it would download pages for offline viewing using a page's cache. Is there an equivalent of something now for MacOSX and Firefox that people use? This question previously kind of addressed the same problem, but again I'm looking for an automated thing for MacOS.

I'm trying out the DownThemAll extension, and it's handy, but not exactly what I'm looking for - I'd like an app that would automatically save the HTMLs and images from, let's say, x number of days. I've also got the Work Offline extension, and use that to browse through my history, but I'd really like an actual separate application that does this automatically, if possible. Sometimes the Work Offline extension works for some sites, sometimes not for others.

Any ideas? This is probably a pretty easy problem to solve - I'm obviously overlooking something here, so I appreciate the help.

Thanks!

Short cut to "Printer Friendly Format" on news sites?

de void — Mon, 09 May 2005 10:17:09 -0800

I'm really tired of all the advertising and dancing crap that clutters up most news/magazine web articles. I find myself constantly searching for a "Printer Friendly Format" link so that I can read the article in a column wider than 1 inch and not paginated in such a way as to maximize ad views. Is there any utility, web site, firefox extension, something, that can take me to the "PFF" right away?

Firefox at Work

Tin Man — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 07:16:32 -0800

I really love using Firefox instead of IE as my browser, but I'm having problems with Firefox at work. About half the time I try to use it at work, it won't load anything. It tells me that the page timed out. Whenever this happens, I have to browse with IE instead until Firefox starts working again, several minutes later. I have no problems with Firefox at home. I've heard this is a firewall-related issue, but I don't really understand. Is there a way to fix this?

How do I keep virus-infected java class files from infecting my browser?

srboisvert — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 17:47:07 -0800

Norton AV keeps finding java class files that that have viruses and trojans: byteverify, backdoor.Hacarmy, Js.Exception.Exploit. How do I keep them off my system?

I use both IE and firefox/firebird