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Making the web usable again

or, a perhaps poorly-titled list of extensions for better web interfacing

While I really like the ideas solderpunk puts forth in their

"Progress toward offline first" article,

the fact remains that I'm stuck in front of an internet-connected computer for about 8 hours a day at minimum, at work. I spend as much of that time as I can writing stuff for personal projects (don't tell my boss, lol), like this capsule, my www site, and cetera, but I still end up wasting a lot of time doing things like

playing Minesweeper

and whatever (I was going to make a big list of posts, but hey, this ain't the web; we don't need clickbait). Since I'm out in the World Wide Web so much, there are certain quality-of-life improvements in the form of Firefox extensions that I use. This is a list of those extensions.

Yes, this is One Of Those Posts. Seems like everyone has a Firefox Extension page somewhere these days.

Yes, I still use Firefox. I think of them like I think of voting for Biden: this choice has real problems, and I'm disappointed they're the best choice, but the alternative is really really bad. So.

The list

I'm putting these in order of Inability to Live Without -- in other words, how soon will I install these on literally any browser I use.

uBlock Origin

If you're reading this article, you probably know about uBlock Origin. More than likely, you have it installed. It's simply the best adblocker that exists. I do not hesitate to install this addon on any computer I use, even the semi-public ones out behind the reference desk at the library. If someone lent me their computer and they didn't have it, I'd probably pop it on there just to improve their lives a little bit. The Web without this add-on is pure shit, honestly. Did you know NPR has ads now?!

Reddit Enhancement Suite

Look, I ain't proud of this one, but I browse Reddit a lot. And it's not very usable without the RES (and old-mode, of course). So this gets installed pretty quickly.

Add URL to Window Title

I install this add-on to my personal computer, because I use KeePassXC, and KeePassXC auto-types based on the URL in the window title. This add-on does just that. There's a bunch of similar ones that all do the same thing; this is the one I have now, but if I have to reinstall it I just do a search.

HTTPS Everywhere

The EFF's security enforcer. I'm assuming many of you reading this have HTTPS Everywhere installed as well, since you're using TLS-enforcing gemini.

Facebook Container

Amazon Container

Google Container

LinkedIn Container

Twitter Container

All these containers keep cookies away from my actual life. I wish the generic "Container" extension would be flexible enough to automatically open sites in their own containers, and then leave those containers when leaving the domains, like these do. Because this is a lot of addons that just do the one thing each.

uMatrix

uBlock's bigger sibling. I only really care if this one is installed on my personal computer, and it usually takes me until I hit a really paranoid streak to install it, because honestly it breaks more of the web than it fixes. But it's the Good Kind of Breaking, or rather it's the Web that's broken, not me.

LocalCDN

This is like, a fork of Decentraleyes? Or something? I don't know why it forked or anything -- oh wait:

Differences between LocalCDN and Decentraleyes
LocalCDN contains a big collection of frameworks and useful functions.

Okay, so that. Whatever. I ~sort-of~ get why this is a Good Thing, so I install it when I think about it. It's there now.

OverbiteWX

Before using elpher, this was way more important -- but it's still nice to have. It opens gopher:// links in Floodgap's Overbite proxy automagically. I tried to write one like it for gemini://, but I didn't get very far. Turns out you can't write a protocol handler for just any random protocol -- there's a whitelist.

Redirect AMP to HTML

Because Fuck Google, that's why. Seriously, I forgot I even installed this one until now. But I'm glad I did -- I don't really know what AMP even is but I don't like it, dag-nab it. Get off my lawn.

Stylus

Honestly, I only have this installed to make portal.mozz.us

prettier.

Now that I use elpher, I could probably remove it.

Awesome RSS

Whenever I get around to reading RSS feeds again, this is going to come in Really Handy. I just know it.

Hide Fixed Elements

Because sometimes there's some really annoying fixed elements I want to hide. And I like this icon better than having "Kill Sticky" in my bookmarks bar.

Yet another xkcd substitution

I just installed this one, but it's actually the reason I'm writing this now. I keep forgetting I installed it and then I see 'spaaace' all over my pages. It's hilarious and I love it.

That's all folks

That's it for now. I'd love to hear what everyone else around NQ2 uses on their web machines!