Hi, I’m Erika Rowland (a.k.a. erikareads).
Hi, I’m Erika. I’m an Ops-shaped Software Engineer, Toolmaker, and Resilience Engineering fan.
I like Elixir and Gleam, Reading, and Design. She/Her.
← Constellation Webring →
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Tools I Use: firefox
Firefox is my daily use browser. I’ve tried a number of browsers over the years, but I keep coming back to Firefox. Here’s a bunch of tools and features I use in Firefox:
Bookmark Keywords
Firefox allows me to add keywords to bookmarks. I can type these abbreviated shortcuts into the address bar instead of the full link. I can add keywords to bookmarks from the bookmark manager.I learned about bookmark keywords from this excellent blog post.Here is a brief note in the documentation on bookmark keywords.
For example, I’ve set the shortcut e for my website (erikarow.land), since I use my own website as reference notes.
Now I can type e in the address bar and go directly to my website.I often use the ctrl+l shortcut to quickly access the address bar. On MacOS the shortcut is cmd+l.
Text substitution
In addition to setting a keyword for a static bookmark, I can also use %s in the bookmark url for text substitution.
For example, I can set a bookmark for
https://bookshop.org/search?keywords=%s
with a keyword of bk. Then I can type bk data feminism in the address bar to search for that book.I own Data Feminism in physical copy already. You can read it online for free here.And download an open access pdf here.Check out the research the Data Feminism lab is doing now at their website.
While working on a project, I could use bookmark keywords and text substitution to search through tickets or code forge issues.
Address bar search (tab search)
The Firefox address bar can be used to quickly access a search engine. But Firefox also has alternate search shortcuts that can be used to narrow the suggestions that the address bar gives as autocompletions.I first heard of these from this article.
The autocomplete search I use most often is tab search. If I open the address bar and type % followed by a space, it autocompletes on only my open tabs. It’s often easier for me to search for an open tab than to manually scan for it, especially if I have a large number of open tabs.
There are a number of these built in:List retrieved from the firefox documentation.
-
Add
^to show only matches in your browsing history. -
Add
*to show only matches in your bookmarks. -
Add
+to show only matches in bookmarks you’ve tagged. -
Add
%to show only matches in your currently open tabs. -
Add
#to show only matches where every search term is part of the title or part of a tag. -
Add
$to show only matches where every search term is part of the web address (URL). The text “https://” or “http://” in the URL is ignored, but not “file:///”. -
Add
?to show only search suggestions.
Screenshot Tool
Firefox has a built in screenshot tool which I wrote about here.
Process Manager
Firefox has a built in process manager that allows me to see the CPU and Memory usage of every tab that I have open. With the browser acting as application platform, this is quite useful.
The process manager gives me the ability to unload tabs and kill the process for a specific website. When I want to do something memory intensive on my computer, I can unload a bunch of expensive browser applications.
The process manager can be opened with shift+escape
Developer Tools
Firefox has a suite of web developer tools. There’s way more than I know how to use, but I use some of the tools often:
Mobile View
Firefox has a responsive design mode, which allows me to see what my website would look like at different resolutions. I use the response design mode to see what my website would look and act like on a mobile screen. My sidenotes wouldn’t work unchanged on a mobile screen, so they turn into expandable notes.
Inspector
I often use the inspector tool to see how a specific element of a screen was formatted or styled. What HTML did they use? What CSS styles are active on that component?
Developer Tool Keyboard shortcuts
Pinned Tabs
I like to pin tabs that I refer to frequently, typically social mediaMastodon, etc. and chat applicationsCommunity Slacks, etc. that I use from the browser.I tend to use the browser clients for these chat applications because of how easy it is to find them with the pinned tab feature.
A pinned tab shows only an icon instead of a title, stays to the left of the browser window it’s pinned to, and does not get closed when using ctrl+f4 or ctrl+w to close a tab.A pinned tab must be unpinned before it can be closed by keyboard shortcuts. Right clicking the tab and selecting “Close Tab” will still work.
I can pin a tab by right clicking that tab, and selecting “Pin Tab” from the menu.
Always Show Scroll Bars
By default, Firefox will autohide scroll bars after a short while. There is a setting to have scrollbars always show. I wrote an article about that here.
Tab Settings
I have Firefox set to “Open previous windows and tabs” on startup. This restore makes it easier to close Firefox when I need to reboot or free up the memory firefox uses for something else.
I also turn off the setting for “Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently used order”. I want my tab cycling to be predictable.Both of these tab settings are found under Settings -> General.Learn more about restoring sessions here.
Extensions
The extensions I use are:
uBlock Origin
uBlock Origin is a memory efficient ad blocker. It works, no complaints.It works so well that I forget how many ads there are the internet, only to be rudely reminded when I use other computers or browsers without uBlock Origin.
ClearURLs and Privacy Badger
ClearURLs automatically removes tracking elements from URLs. When I click links that have tracking components, this extension will automatically strip them out.
Privacy Badger detects any remaining third-party trackers that follow me from site to site, and stops them.
Both of these extensions work to improve my privacy, but when they’re working correctly I don’t notice them.
DF YouTube (Distraction Free)
DF Youtube strips nearly everything from the YouTube UI. No comments. No sidebar. No recommended videos.
I’m left with a search bar and the playing video and description, and my focus.
I use DF YouTube to view videos on YouTube without getting distracted or stuck in a YouTube rabbit hole.
OneTab
OneTab will compress open tabs into a simple list with much smaller memory usage. It allows me to archive what I was working on without using all of my computer’s memory.
All tabs get saved to the same list, separated into groups based on when they were added to the “One Tab”. This list format is convenient for text search.
Previously, I would “archive” things I wanted to read by bookmarking them to come back to later, now I use OneTab for this purpose.Like my bookmarks, I tend to add things to the list much quicker than I remove things. At time of writing, I have 11,000+ “tabs” listed in OneTab.
Block Site
Block Site allows me to restrict access to specific domains. When navigating to a blocked domain, instead of seeing that site, I see a specific “Restricted Access” screen created by the extension.
I use this to circuit break websites that I check compulsively. I can temporarily disable the extension at any time to navigate to those websites, but having the restricted screen is enough of a mental block that I usually stop checking those websites as often.
about:robots
Firefox has a hidden about:robots page with references to pop culture.Thanks to someone in the Gleam discord for sharing this with me.