I’m a big fan of Open Source Software, and naturally, that means that I’m a Firefox user.
These days, Firefox is really the only open viable alternative browser to Google Chrome (although even Mozilla seem to have lost their focus over the last few years). Sure, there are projects like Ladybird, but when I need something that works for my job, it’s gotta be FF. Everything else is basically Google Chrome with in a different package.

But, when I say they’ve lost their way… Jesus. For reliable software, I always adhere to the KISS principle. And given that the web browser these days is basically a small OS unto itself, it had better be dead simple and reliable. Instead, Firefox is obsessed with adding dumb features that no one wants. Pocket, Mozilla VPN. And don’t get me started on the UI changes. The latest Nova with bubbles everywhere? Man how far they have fallen from the XUL days where you could literally skin EVERYTHING. To thier credit, I will say that they’re one of the only apps that still let’s you have a proper titlebar which means alot. 

sidenote: you can disable the dumb nova interface by putting “about:config” in your address bar. Then, searching for ‘browser.nova.enabled’ and setting it to false. You can also disable nova for the built-in PDF browser with ‘pdfjs.enableNova’ = false

What I want is a simple EXTENSIBLE web browser, and you CAN get that in FF. So, in the spirit of extensibility, I’ve created a few Firefox extensions that fit in my workflow.

another sidenote: One of the other “features” that Mozilla has introduced to Firefox is a hard requirement on extensions being “signed” by only Mozilla. Very stupid and annoying. It’s MY browser and MY plugin running on MY computer. BUT you can’t install the plugin without jumping through many hoops OR submit it to Mozilla for their approval!

1. Sort Tabs by Domain
If you’ve always got a ton of tabs open, like me, its easy to get lost. Also having 4 Google tabs spread throughout the tab bar makes my eye twitch. This plugin does nothing until you click it in your toolbar. Then, it will sort all your tabs by domain alphabetically. That’s it. Dead simple.

2. URL in Title
AGAIN, as an opensource enthusiast, I use Keepass instead of the retarded MacOS passkeys feature. BUT for Keepass’s autofill to trigger accurately for web forms, you need the URL in the window title for matching. This plugin does nothing but append the URL of your current page to the title in your titlebar. Nothing to configure or click, again super simple.

3. Group Tabs by Domain
The newcomer to these is my latest plugin. This is very similar to #1, except that it will group the tabs instead of sorting them. So all of your *.google.com tabs will merge under a Google.com group. If there is only a single tab for a domain, then it does nothing unless a group already exists. Then it will merge into the group. This one DOES have a single setting, and that’s the level of subdomain to use for grouping. I.E. do you want jira.atlassian.com and confluence.atlassian.com tabs to merge into a single *.atlassian.com group? Or do you want them separate?

Wow, I manged to make it through this without going off on a rant (I was sooo close). Well, enjoy, and here’s to hoping that my writing improves in the future! 🍻

-Ian