Switching from Opera to Firefox

Discussion of general topics about Mozilla Firefox
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FrankLZ
Posts: 4
Joined: July 11th, 2008, 3:06 pm

Switching from Opera to Firefox

Post by FrankLZ »

Hey guys, I never thought I'd do this, but I'm thinking about permanently switching from Opera to Firefox. I've used Opera for years and still love it, but Firefox 3 is faster and the Linux version is nicer than Opera for Linux.

Anyway, I have found extensions that basically take care of a lot of the features that are exclusive to a native install of Opera like

    Mouse Gestures
    Bookmark Sync
    Speed Dial
    etc
But what I can't find for Firefox is a decent way to edit the right click menus. I know there is Menu Editor 1.2, but it only lets you enable/disable certain features. In Opera, you can basically create your menus from scratch and I added a lot of really nice features to my menus. Most notably I added all of my search engines to the right click menu, this way all I had to do was highlight text that I wanted to search, then right click on it and I would have a bunch of different search sites to choose from. Once I picked one, the search results would end up in a new tab right next to my window. It worked exactly like the Google search from the right click menu does in Firefox, but I had the option to choose one of many different search engines right from the right click menu.

Do you know of an extension that would allow me better control over the right click menu?

Also, another big thing that I did in Opera was assign single keystroke shortcuts for a lot of great features. I don't see a good way to do this in Firefox. There was an extension that would allow me to switch tabs by pressing a single keystroke, but that hasn't been updated for Firefox 3. Is there a way to edit the keyboard shortcuts for Firefox? In Opera I had a=close tab, s=save as bookmark, d=switch to tab at left, f=switch to tab at right, then I had a bunch of other things like

    c="Execute program, "iexplore","%u"" to open in IE
    x="Execute program, "firefox","%u" & close tab" to open in firefox and close the current tab
    v=Duplicate page
    b=New page
I just like editing the shortcuts because I'm a computer nerd and honestly two-keystroke shortcuts are just annoying if you can instead do it with just one.

Another feature I'd like is the ability to save a website as an MHT file. This saves the website and all the images etc. in one file so it is easy to archive.

Can anybody help me out with this?
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alterna
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Location: Big Apple

Re: Switching from Opera to Firefox

Post by alterna »

FrankLZ wrote:. Most notably I added all of my search engines to the right click menu, this way all I had to do was highlight text that I wanted to search, then right click on it and I would have a bunch of different search sites to choose from. Once I picked one, the search results would end up in a new tab right next to my window. It worked exactly like the Google search from the right click menu does in Firefox, but I had the option to choose one of many different search engines right from the right click menu.



try Context Search 0.4.3 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/240
"So it goes" - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
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Gingerbread Man
Posts: 7735
Joined: January 30th, 2007, 10:55 am

Re: Switching from Opera to Firefox

Post by Gingerbread Man »

FrankLZ wrote:I added all of my search engines to the right click menu

Context Search that alterna recommended, or termBlaster which I use. It has to be customized and it doesn't automatically list your installed search engines, but it has the added advantage of working in text input areas (at least the last time I checked, no other extension offered this feature).
FrankLZ wrote:Is there a way to edit the keyboard shortcuts for Firefox?

Keyconfig.
FrankLZ wrote:Another feature I'd like is the ability to save a website as an MHT file.

UnMHT.
FrankLZ
Posts: 4
Joined: July 11th, 2008, 3:06 pm

Re: Switching from Opera to Firefox

Post by FrankLZ »

Thanks!

I'm surprised these addons weren't advertised as 'Opera features' so that they can easily be found by people like me.
MilesAhead
Posts: 30
Joined: March 8th, 2005, 8:00 pm

Re: Switching from Opera to Firefox

Post by MilesAhead »

FrankLZ wrote:Thanks!

I'm surprised these addons weren't advertised as 'Opera features' so that they can easily be found by people like me.


Another extension that mimics an Opera feature is Secure Login.
If you enable the "automatically search for login data and highlight
form fields" then logins you have stored are outlined similar
to Opera Wand.

The main Opera features I still miss are bookmark toolbar wrapping
and Wand form filler.

Still no smooth way to wrap the bookmarks toolbar in Firefox so I have
all folders on my bookmarks toolbar to fit more stuff on.

So far none of the form filer extensions I've tried work as well
as Wand.

But then again Firefox has lots of extensions you can't do easily
in Opera. The idea of quadruple clicking to copy a line of text
to the clipboard is asking for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. :)
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alterna
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Location: Big Apple

Re: Switching from Opera to Firefox

Post by alterna »

By rapping, do you mean Multirow Bookmarks Toolbar
for 3.0 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6937

for 2.0 see http://firefox.geckodev.org/index.php?W ... %20Toolbar
"So it goes" - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
MilesAhead
Posts: 30
Joined: March 8th, 2005, 8:00 pm

Re: Switching from Opera to Firefox

Post by MilesAhead »

alterna wrote:By rapping, do you mean Multirow Bookmarks Toolbar
for 3.0 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6937

for 2.0 see http://firefox.geckodev.org/index.php?W ... %20Toolbar


Don't know about v 3 but for v 2 if it's the chrome hack, been there done that.
It "works" in that when you resize firefox and open it again, your bookmarks toolbar
will wrap... but it breaks the horizontal scrollbar.

I tried another gizmo but to put on a bookmark you had to use the button customize drag drop method... plus it was buggy.

Opera you resize and it wraps... period.
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alterna
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Re: Switching from Opera to Firefox

Post by alterna »

Both are extensions, and both work well in their respective versions
"So it goes" - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
FrankLZ
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Joined: July 11th, 2008, 3:06 pm

Re: Switching from Opera to Firefox

Post by FrankLZ »

I've got Firefox doing almost everything that Opera does now, but there is one thing that I'd still like to have better control of in Firefox. I'd like to be able to Add customized commands to the right click menu. Menu Editor (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/710) will let me move commands around and also hide some, but it won't let me add things like "Open in Internet Explorer" or "Open in Opera". Of course I can get "Open in IE" from a separate plugin, but then I would also have to get a separate plugin for "Open in Opera" and also "Duplicate Tab" etc. and I want to minimize the number of plugins that I use.

Does anybody know of an extension that would allow me to add Javascript commands to the right click menu? Something that is basically the equivalent of Firegestures and Keyconfig, only for the right click menu.
dorando
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Re: Switching from Opera to Firefox

Post by dorando »

MenuManipulator might help.

For "Open in" you could use (as the oncommand attribute)

Code: Select all

if(!gContextMenu.onLink) return;

var program = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/file/local;1"]
                        .createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsILocalFile);
program.initWithPath("__PATH__");

var process = Components.classes['@mozilla.org/process/util;1']
                        .createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsIProcess);
process.init(program);
process.run(false, [gContextMenu.linkURL], 1); 
(Replace __PATH__ with the path to the exe but replace any \ with \\)

For Duplicate Tab use

Code: Select all

gBrowser.duplicateTab(gBrowser.mCurrentTab);   
or

Code: Select all

gBrowser.selectedTab = gBrowser.duplicateTab(gBrowser.mCurrentTab);   
Anonymosity
Posts: 8779
Joined: May 7th, 2007, 12:07 pm

Re: Switching from Opera to Firefox

Post by Anonymosity »

With Windows, you can change tabs with <Ctrl-PageUp> to go backward, and <Ctrl-PageDown> to go forward. With Mac, it is <Cmd-Option-left arrow> to to backward and <Cmd-Option-right arrow> to go forward. I do not know about Linux.
FrankLZ
Posts: 4
Joined: July 11th, 2008, 3:06 pm

Re: Switching from Opera to Firefox

Post by FrankLZ »

I think I love you dorando!

I have a general question. How safe are keyconfig and MenuManipulator? Why aren't they on the Firefox addons site?

Distributing an extension that way seems to be the perfect way to add in some sort of spyware or a keylogger or something.
dorando
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Re: Switching from Opera to Firefox

Post by dorando »

Valid concerns too few people actually raise.

I've not submitted any of my extensions yet to Mozilla Add-ons because of current and many past events which let me consider it as harmful to developers and users (some of my general concerns have been mentioned in the keyconfig and undoclosetab threads). Note that someone else submitted keyconfig and MenuManipulator a while ago, but they have been removed by now.

FrankLZ wrote:Distributing an extension that way seems to be the perfect way to add in some sort of spyware or a keylogger or something.
Yes, but I hope that the mozillaZine moderators would remove threads and/or lock authors trying to advertise those here.

The sandbox system makes it harder to get those onto Mozilla Add-ons, but it might still be easy enough since binary component are allowed (according to Basil Hashem about 10% include a binary component). Even if the source of that component is available, it doesn't seem like it is checked if the binary matches the source (nor does it seem like the source is checked at all most of the time, but that might have changed).

While I do think Mozilla Add-ons mostly got better over time (but still does things that let people wonder "What happened to AMO!!!!") I still stumble often enough about something which simply shouldn't happen.
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