Extensions and custom buttons for UXP browsers - Corrections, modifications, adjustments, and special recommendations

[AstroSkipper]

21 minutes ago, Saxon said:

The best site [in my opinion] to check. 

https://browserleaks.com/javascript

Browserleaks is a great website. I always use https://browserleaks.com/tls to check the used TLS protocol and its cipher suite. Very good service! 

[AstroSkipper]

Hello @VistaLover (and of course all others interested in extensions for our beloved UXP browsers)!

In the next post, I provide an update for my fork Check My IP Address & Location. I added four further time intervals, all less than 1 min. If you are still using my extension, then you should update to the new version and use the 1 sec interval for checking IP changes. If you use this interval, the detection of an IP change takes place without any significant delay (at most 5 seconds for VPN connections, almost no delay for direct connections).

Edited September 11, 2023 by AstroSkipper
Update of content

[AstroSkipper]

Update notification!

My fork Check My IP Address & Location has been updated from the version 1.2 to 1.3. I added four further time intervals for checking IP changes: 1 Sec, 5 Sec, 10 Sec and 30 Sec. Here is a screenshot:



And here is the download link for Check My IP Address & Location 1.3: 
https://www.mediafire.com/file/xvmk2ntk0f4i2e7/Check_My_IP_Address_%26_Location-1.3-pm.xpi/file
All about Check My IP Address & Location can be found on its homepage: 
https://msfn.org/board/topic/183923-extensions-and-custom-buttons-for-uxp-browsers-corrections-modifications-adjustments-and-special-recommendations/?do=findComment&comment=1250308

Cheers, AstroSkipper 

Edited January 26 by AstroSkipper
Update of content

[VistaLover]

On 9/11/2023 at 2:00 PM, AstroSkipper said:

If you are still using my extension

... I am, thanks (in Serpent 52) ...

On 9/11/2023 at 2:00 PM, AstroSkipper said:

then you should update to the new version and use the 1 sec interval for checking IP changes

... I have done so just now ; yes, very handy when going through various VPN nodes! But, in order not to abuse the IP-checking service, I set it back to "45min" or, even, "Never" when I'm done using my VPN ...

Regards .

[UCyborg]

There's an old Ant Video Downloader in Classic Add-ons Archive, for downloading videos off various sites.

You may replace original yt.js, located in /chrome/content/grabber/prov/yt.js, with this one, may make it work for YouTube again:

https://gist.github.com/UCyborg/318f4e28fc94b6c7b4735592be038935

The extension changes tab bar appearance for some reason, also back-forward cache will be disabled even on sites where it usually works, means no instant-navigation with back/forward buttons when it normally occurs, unless handled specially like YouTube. Also downloading off YouTube is still finicky, maybe it shows the wrong video title, maybe it doesn't show it, just navigate forward/backward, should get something, even if you have to rename it in the end since it picked the one you viewed before.

[AstroSkipper]

Custom MSFN Search Engine Plugins by AstroSkipper

The Mycroft Project is a collection of over 27 thousand OpenSearch & Sherlock Search Engine Plugins, especially for Firefox-based browsers. It is a perfect service to add search engines to supported browsers in a very simple way. I guess most of you already know this project. On the one hand, there are many search engine plugins created by Mycroft itself. Furthermore, many people have contributed there and provided different, custom search engine plugins. I did the same and created my own, custom search engine plugins for MSFN long time ago which I have recently corrected due to problems in converting spaces in the search string and therefore updated. One is for searching the Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes subforum and another for searching the Windows XP subforum.

Here is a screenshot:



With these plugins, the user can directly search the corresponding subforums by using the browser's search bar.

Here are the links for installing them:

MSFN - Browsers working on Older NT-Family OSes

MSFN - Windows XP

My custom search engine plugins can easily be modified for searching other MSFN subforums.

Cheers, AstroSkipper

Edited October 26, 2023 by AstroSkipper

[VistaLover]

Greetings ; back in the glorious days of "proper" Mozilla Firefox, one of your compatriots had created the stupendous extension called "Add to Search Bar":

https://firefox.maltekraus.de/extensions/add-to-search-bar

The extension's XPI file (last version for Serpent 52 is 2.9)  can be found inside the CAA ; since years ago, I had created myself specific MSFN Forums search engines via that nice extension - e.g. for this very forum:

A popup appears, where you have to approve or edit the proposed SE name (and optionally add a keyword for that engine):

and then you have your new MSFN SE:

Best regards.

Edited October 25, 2023 by VistaLover

[AstroSkipper]

47 minutes ago, VistaLover said:

Greetings ; back in the glorious days of "proper" Mozilla Firefox, one of your compatriots had created the stupendous extension called "Add to Search Bar":

https://firefox.maltekraus.de/extensions/add-to-search-bar

The extension's XPI file (last version for Serpent 52 is 2.9)  can be found inside the CAA ; since years ago, I had created myself specific MSFN Forums search engines via that nice extension - e.g. for this very forum:

A popup appears, where you have to approve or edit the proposed SE name (and optionally add a keyword for that engine):

and then you have your new MSFN SE:

Best regards.

Greetings back! Very interesting extension! I have installed it, and it works perfectly. Thanks for the hint! Of course, if I had had this extension on hand, everything would have been much easier. I put everything together myself, and creating my MSFN Search Engine Plugins was not the easiest thing to do. You have to know about GET and POST commands, and all relevant parameters for searching in the desired forum. In contrast when using the extension Add to Search Bar, you have to know nothing about search engines. Only a few clicks and the search engine is added. Great!

Cheers, AstroSkipper

[AstroSkipper]

@VistaLover I have linked your post about Add to Search Bar https://msfn.org/board/topic/183923-extensions-and-custom-buttons-for-uxp-browsers-corrections-modifications-adjustments-and-special-recommendations/?do=findComment&comment=1254575 to my second post Alphabetical list of all posted extensions. I think that such an extension should get its due attention and not be lost. 

Best regards, AstroSkipper 

 

Edited October 26, 2023 by AstroSkipper

[AstroSkipper]

On 2/25/2023 at 4:09 PM, AstroSkipper said:

My German language pack for New Moon 28 - Fixed - Part 1

For New Moon 28, I use the German language pack from here: https://github.com/JustOff/pale-moon-localization/releases/download/28.10.0_RC1/de.xpi which I modified and corrected myself a long time ago in terms of the dev tools. Here is a screenshot of the Web Developer menu (Web-Entwickler) of New Moon 28.10.6a1 (32-bit) (2023-01-19) with my fixed German language pack already installed:



My modified language pack is fully working, and all has been translated. If you are German like me, or German is your native language, you are lucky and can use my already modified language pack file de-mod-content-dev.xpi. Here is the link: https://www.mediafire.com/file/99riihhfrxrju2k/de-mod-content-dev.xpi/file 

Cheers, AstroSkipper 

My German language pack for New Moon 28 - Fixed - Part 2    

In the German language pack from the quoted post above, I found another issue under Einstellungen -> Inhalt -> Farben months ago. Here is a screenshot to demonstrate this issue:



I had already fixed this problem at that time and the language pack got the version number 28.10.0rc3. This fixed version wasn't offered by me, though. Here is a screenshot of the fixed version:



Yesterday, @roytam1 reported a new problem in the preference menu under Einstellungen -> Datenschutz due to changes of some entities.

On 10/27/2023 at 3:42 AM, roytam1 said:

Notice: NM28 users that is using custom language packs have to update your language pack with changed strings, or you will get a blank preference dialog.

changes details: https://github.com/roytam1/UXP/commit/591a887bf3b30ed366fa6738e02acdc5ce491d98#diff-4b8bab15a795abe78067a97a684a5bbcbf8fda5ef5a76423d7cb52f72590afba

Here is a screenshot of this new issue:



Today, I have fixed this issue in version 28.10.0rc3 and have assigned the number 28.10.0rc4 to the new, corrected version. Here is a screenshot of the fixed version:



And here is the download link of the updated, German language package in version 28.10.0rc4 for New Moon 28 from 2023-10-19 and up: https://www.mediafire.com/file/6f7jyk6fldmzihh/de-28.10.0_RC4.xpi/file

Greetings from Germany, AstroSkipper

Edited October 28, 2023 by AstroSkipper

[UCyborg]

There's an archive of old add-ons, but lightweight themes were forgotten about. Some hints to get at least some of them back are in this thread I started on PM forum. To the point, they're not installed as one would expect, metadata about "installed" themes is stored in JSON in lightweightThemes.usedThemes pref on about:config page. Images from themes are merely stored in browser cache (!!!) when theme is applied, the same cache that is used for caching other content from the web. Delete the cache and they're gone, so they'd have to be fetched again from the URL specified in the metadata.

Resources still seem to be hosted on addons.thunderbird.net, addons.cdn.mozilla.net is the old one that used to be valid and the themes installed back then could have that as the source URL for particular theme's resources (images).

In any case, unminification tool is useful to get the string from the mentioned pref in a more easily readable form, for currently installed themes, domain substitution addons.cdn.mozilla.net->addons.thunderbird.net in appropriate fields will make them appliable again. For discovering new ones, it seems trying luck with old archived Mozilla Add-ons pages is the only way. On old enough pages, there will be link that can trigger install in UXP browsers, but post-install, correction of mentioned domains in the pref with metadata will still be required. On very old Mozilla Add-ons pages from 10 years ago, even search might work, but I haven't tried that yet.

[AstroSkipper]

FYI, I already listed many sources for extensions together with corresponding links in the first post of this thread:

On 9/18/2022 at 11:02 PM, AstroSkipper said:

Last not least, some additional sources where legacy extensions and custom buttons can be found:

1. Pale Moon Add-ons - Extensions – Link: https://addons.palemoon.org/extensions/
2. Basilisk Add-ons - Extensions – Link: https://addons.basilisk-browser.org/extensions/
3. Classic Add-ons Archive – This catalogue contains 93,598 versions of 19,450 Firefox add-ons created by 14,274 developers over the past 15 years using XUL/XPCOM technology. To access this archive, you have to install the extension ca-archive. Link: https://github.com/JustOff/ca-archive/releases/tag/2.0.3
4. Extensions for Pale Moon, Firefox & SeaMonkey made by JustOff – Link: https://justoff.github.io/
5. LegacyCollector - Link: http://web.archive.org/web/20191110173006/https://legacycollector.org/firefox-addons/index.html
6. RealityRipple Software – Pale Moon Extensions – Link: https://realityripple.com/Software/XUL/
7. Custom buttons – Link: http://custombuttons.sourceforge.net/forum/index.php
8. AMO archived – Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20171004160834/https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/extensions/
9. Thunderbird.net – Link: https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-us/firefox/
10. TarekJor - Firefox 52 ESR legacy addons - A curated list and XPI files of Mozilla Firefox browser extensions, addons, themes from addons.mozilla.org, before XUL-based purge blackout – Link: https://github.com/TarekJor/Firefox-52-ESR-legacy-addon/tree/master/xpi

Cheers, AstroSkipper 

Edited October 31, 2023 by AstroSkipper

[VistaLover]

On 10/31/2023 at 6:06 PM, UCyborg said:

There's an archive of old add-ons, but lightweight themes were forgotten about.

FWIW, the same stands true for pre-Quantum Firefox Complete Themes, too :

https://github.com/JustOff/ca-archive/issues/28

https://github.com/JustOff/ca-archive/issues/63

and some later comments on the matter:

https://github.com/JustOff/ca-archive/issues/58#issuecomment-1278351039

https://github.com/JustOff/ca-archive/issues/58#issuecomment-1283141327

FWIW, I've never been a "persona" person myself (pun intended ), but had since the very start opted for Complete Themes - Mozilla hunt them down even before they removed the "legacy" lightweight ones; at first, personas were dubbed "themes", whereas the real "themes" were dubbed "Complete Themes" and made harder to locate on AMO; ultimately, Complete Theme authors practically gave up even before the advent of Quantum, because every newer Fx release broke, in several ways, the latest (complete) theme version, which then had to be reworked extensively to remedy the Mozilla inflicted breakage ...

Edited November 3, 2023 by VistaLover

[UCyborg]

1 hour ago, VistaLover said:

FWIW, the same stands true for pre-Quantum Firefox Complete Themes, too :

https://github.com/JustOff/ca-archive/issues/28

I see, well the link to archive.org there, I can't seem to download any theme there. Shame...

Seems when it comes to theming in software, it's not unusual for the theme to have to be updated to continue working, then the author might not be interested in keeping it updated indefinitely and in case of Firefox, big underlying changes with newer versions.

The most I used back then was GlassMyFox extension, which is technically a bunch of knobs for controlling specific CSS tweaks for the glassy Aero appearance supported by the window manager, but since I eventually landed on the Windows version that doesn't do transparency that way and solution with its re-implementation doesn't exist, other themes became more interesting.

I noticed one curious thing with complete themes, they're not picked up by the browser, at least not on official Pale Moon, if they're placed in the folder with other system-wide installed extensions. Yes, I did name the XPI file after extension ID in its install.rdf.

[Mathwiz]

On 8/18/2023 at 12:35 PM, AstroSkipper said:

User Agent Status - An extension to control the useragent for the currently loaded website

In order for our legacy UXP browsers, which are regularly updated by @roytam1 and adapted to the modern web, to function properly with certain pages, the user agent used must be changed more and more frequently. This can be done via about:config or much more conveniently with the help of an extension. My favourite is User Agent Status. Here is a small screenshot:

This extension lets you set a new site-specific user agent override (SSUAO) or reset it to its default string. Everything is displayed in the status bar and done by clicking on the corresponding button. There are five different actions when middle-clicking on the status bar icon: Reset the UA (default), Set the UA, Show the current website's SSUAO preference in about:config, Cycle between UA compatibility modes, and Nothing. You can set what action the middle-click does either via the context menu or the preferences manager in about:addons! In the status bar, you can see additionally three icon colours. Blue means no SSUAO, purple means a vendor-provided/default SSUAO, and red means a user-set SSUAO was assigned for the currently loaded web page.

Here is the link to User Agent Status where you can find more detailed information: https://addons.palemoon.org/addon/ua-status/

Cheers, AstroSkipper 

Looks like a great extension! Unfortunately there's another theme compatibility problem: I'm using the FT DeepDark 14.3 theme and almost nothing is visible!

I could give up on the theme, but first I thought I'd ask: is there any way to adjust the add-on's color scheme to accommodate a black background?