b9AcE/PaleMoon_Addons.md

## PaleMoon_Addons.md

      
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              PaleMoon_Addons.md
            
          
    Pale Moon web browser add-ons recommended by b9AcE (on Mastodon and Twitter)

Revision 2018-11-25.

Since Firefox has decided to migrate itself into becoming a watered down version of Google Chrome, with similar telemetry and other anti-privacy nonsense included by default,
I have looked through many of the alternatives and found that to me Pale Moon seems the best option available.
Therefore I will now share my list of which add-ons I use, so that new users might use that as some inspiration for which ones they might want to consider using as well.
Some parts are the same or very similar to the equivalent list I did for Firefox a while ago.
The listing order is an approximation of how important I personally consider them right now.


uBlock Origin
Blocks ads, tracking and whatever else you want.
Uses few resources and works as desired "out of the box" for most people, while allowing lots of configuration if you want to.


uBlock Origin Updater
Automatically checks for updates to "uBlock Origin" at the official GitHub-page and installs the appropriate updates found.


Cookies Exterminator
Many sites require allowing cookies for access, opening for undesired tracking.
This one lets you take every cookie, then spit them out when you leave... unless you want it and whitelist the site with two clicks before leaving.
This is a Pale Moon-compatible replacement for Self-Destructing Cookies on Firefox.


Decentraleyes
Uses local copies of files used by very many web pages instead of the ones otherwise served by Google, Microsoft, CloudFlare, etc.
This prevents tracking... and also increases speed.
This is the Pale Moon version of Decentraleyes...


Pale Moon Commander
Graphical interface for configuring a LOT of security, performance, graphical and other options.
Mostly, the default configuration seems good to me, but not everything... and this is a better interface than the about:config page.


FlashGot Mass Downloader
Why Firefox doesn't include the capability of resuming broken downloads and doing segmented downloads yet is a mystery.
Of all programs filling that missing functionality, I consider this easiest to use while allowing most configuration and functionality.
Best used in combination with a download manager of your choice from this list like for example uGet, wxDownload Fast or Free Download Manager.


Context Search X
Lets you just highlight text on web pages, rightclick and choose from ALL installed OpenSearch providers,
instead of the one you happened to have used the previous time, making searches MUCH faster.
Like Context Search, but this one is Pale Moon compatible and has more configuration options.


Menu Wizard
A lot of add-ons like to add a lot of stuff to the menus in our browsers. A lot of options included by default in the menus are useless or weirdly organized.
Sometimes this can even lead to delays just to load icons for entries in e.g. the right-click menu, that you never use or need anyway.

This add-on lets you edit all your menus, making them your menus, as they should be.


Expose Noisy Tabs
For e.g. when web pages decide they should auto-play videos with audio just because you open them in a tab for later, especially when it is many such pages, this add-on puts a configurable icon on the tab(s) that generate audio output and lets you just click that icon to mute the tab in question.
Thus, you can easier silence all the multitude of tabs that decided to interfere with your music or livestream audio just for wanting to see/hear their content later.


Active Stop Button
Lets you unmerge the stop/reload button and move the result to where you want it to be, because merging them never made sense.
Also gets you an option to stop all tabs at once, including or excluding AJAX-content loading stuff in the background otherwise.
Not important, but I use it, so I list it. Same goes for the next two ones.


Google search link fix
Removes some of the hidden tracking-rewrites in the search results from Google.
Version 1.4.9.1 is the latest version compatible with Pale Moon (for now) and while it doesn't do it as well as Google Redirects Fixer & Tracking Remover did it in Firefox, this at least does something, until someone creates something better.


YouTube Lazy Load
Since YouTube has decided it by default is allowed to just keep playing next video and next and next, with audio enabled, just because you open a link to them, you may want to prevent them from this disruptive behavior.
This add-on does that.


Dismiss The Overlay
Some web pages nowadays throw up layers blocking the actual content on the page from the visitor's view, sometimes even without any apparent way to dismiss that obstructive layer.
Clicking this add-on can then just attempts to remove the overlay layer.


Downloads Window
Long ago, Firefox decided to move the list of ongoing and completed downloads from the convenient specific downloads-window to instead potentially get lost among all the web page-tabs. This add-on restores the more convenient previous behavior.


Add-ons that I used in Firefox and listed in that edition of the list, but don't now:


Status-4-Evar
Because restoring a proper status bar was deemed so important, that this is now included in Pale Moon.


EPUBReader
Recent versions now focus on compatibility with future Firefox versions and therefore dropped compatibility with Pale Moon,
so version 1.5.0.12 is the latest working one at this time.
Should work just as well as it did on Firefox, but I haven't tested it (yet).


Youtube Subtitle Downloader
I use youtube-dl to export videos from both YouTube and most other sites nowadays and that can also get the subtitles,
but if you want something which fully integrates into Pale Moon and includes subtitles downloading, have a look at Pale Moon specific Complete YouTube Saver.


Something I still don't currently use but but have in the past and thus would recommend, to only very advanced users is uMatrix.
It is like the ultra-strength version of uBlock Origin, but if you install it without knowing how to configure it, almost everything will be broken.
It is however, fully compatible with Pale Moon.
Only install this if you are sure you need it and understand how it works.
I am sure that if I don't mention it, people will ask why I didn't mention these:

The EFF has decided to support the (now) privacy-invasive Firefox and Chrome for "HTTPS Everywhere" while actively refusing the much easier and less time consuming maintaining of their old code which continued to work on the much more privacy friendly Pale Moon, while their developing support for those privacy-invaders now broke that compatibility.
Someone else forked it into Encrypted Web, but since that has been abandoned some have said they will look at maintaining another replacement, but haven't yet.
You can configure options using Pale Moon Commander to refuse loading mixed SSL-content and much more to work around any problems you may feel this results in.
No, "Privacy Badger" by EFF isn't compatible either, by their choice.
Since using "Cookies Exterminator"+"uBlock Origin", recommended above, breaks less of the web by default and gives a better result anyway in my opinion... use those.
No, I didn't list "NoScript".
The reason is similar to the previous:
Without fiddling around for every new web page, this one risks breaking too much without the user knowing that it is supposed to work/look differently,
therefore people tend to just leave the add-on disabled after a while...
and you should in general not have add-ons installed that you don't use, as they consume resources and may introduce security flaws.
Many of the things that NoScript does a very good job of protecting against can just be blocked by configuring features included in Pale Moon itself or the add-ons previously listed.
If you want this anyway, the version 2.9.5.3 linked to above is the latest compatible... or you could use the direct opposite, YesScript.


Revision 2018-11-25:

Updated URLs.
Added "uBlock Origin Updater", "Dismiss The Overlay" and "Downloads Window".
Now as a GitHub gist instead of privatebin-paste, to make finding the current revision easier.
More minor edits.