Ok so I mentioned this before, but I highly recommend NoScript as a plugin for Firefox.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722
I use Firefox as my primary browser, even though I have to look at everything for my work, I use it for most of my first looks, and as my personal browser. I do this because it’s become as close to industry standard as you can get on a Mac which my primary computer is. Interestingly my primary browser on my PC is Google’s Chrome. I test on IE8 of course, but I really don’t like that browser for numerous other reasons I may or may not go into someday.
Anyway… Firefox has it’s problems, and generally the problems aren’t even with Firefox. It’s with all the scripts that people put on their pages these days. Scripts, more fully called ‘Javascripts’ are programming code that live in web pages.
Ok let me take one step back.
Ok no two steps back.
I’m going to simplify this for the layman a little bit, so if you’re a technogeek and you start sputtering at this, just relax. I’m not teaching a college class here, I’m trying to explain something to someone who knows nothing technical, so why confuse them…
Ok So lets have two things “Markup” and “Code”.
Markup is like…. well if you use a word processing program like Word and you highlight a word and hit the “b” button to make it bold. Back in the file itself it makes marks around that letter so that it will be displayed as bold. In HTML it goes from looking like this…
I took the bolder route to Boulder.
to this…
I took the <b>bolder</b> route to Boulder.
Now when your browser, or word processor, comes along and sees that it knows to make it look bold for you. It doesn’t really think, it’s all just interpreting how to display the file.
I took the bolder route to Boulder.
That’s what HTML is. It’s a Markup language. Hypertext Markup Language. All it’s doing is throwing in those tags into the text document that tells the browser how to display the text. You can add images, tables, layers, and lots of other words that make no sense, but most of what appears on the web is essentially just a text file that has markup in it that describes how to display things.
Ok so that brings us to the second thing, which is Code. That is, it’s programming language. In the case of browsers it’s Javascript. This is stuff that isn’t just display, it’s asking your browser to actually think, and run things with logic and different reasoning. It can be as simple as checking to make sure the email address you entered is actually formed like an email address, or it could be incredibly complex.
It could be thousands of lines of code, running massive mathematical computations in order to do something ‘cool’ on the page.
Or it could be something usefull.
Or it could be something that tracks you on the web and invades your privacy without you even knowing it. For instance some banner ad companies put a cookie on your computer, and then track it via scripts in the page to watch where YOU go across the web from one site to another.
But more often than not these scripts are written by, gasp, humans, and they’re not infallible and their code can be bad. I’ve seen it frequently. And when this happens your browser gets slower and clunkier and worse off. Scripts, particularly in Firefox, can slow down your browser, and even cause it to crash.
Now on top of this we have Flash. It’s ubiquitous on the internet thanks to Adobe, but it’s really just a piece of bloated crap. It’s bad on so many levels, and it hogs up your browsers system resources. Like code, it can be written so poorly as to bog down your browser, computer, and even crash the browser entirely. Plus it does annoying things like force music upon you when you go to a site, and it’s terrible for people who want Search Engine Optimization (I don’t care what Adobe says, I’ve never seen a Flash site with as good SEO as one without).
So Noscripts..
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722
It’s an addon for Firefox, that blocks all flash and scripts from loading on a page until you give it permission. You can whitelist scripts, or pages, and block other ones entirely.
You get something at the bottom of your browser that tells you how many scripts were blocked, and what they are, and you can allow them line item or you can allow all temproarily, or you can permanently whitelist entire pages, or entire scripts. It also stops flash from working automatically on a page. It puts the flash in place, but it doesn’t load it, and you can click it individually to load it up.
It takes awhile at first. Trusted sites you go to you can just whitelist, or cherry pick one script at a time until it loads the way you want. Even just whitelisting whole sites is good, because then if you click on a bad link, or get shunted somewhere you don’t want to go, the scripts don’t function, and you’re much safer. Ever get a popup you didn’t ask for? Ever go to a site you couldn’t get off of? This prevents that from happening.
Since I enabled this addon my Firefox has been 100x more stable, and I’ve felt more secure in using the web, and I’m pretty much at expert level.
I highly recommend this addon to anyone using firefox. It’s easy to install and use, just go to that link and follow the directions and then you’ll be good to go. It’ll be a little bumpy at first as you whitelist your regular sites, but after that you’ll be in great shape.