Software Wishlist September 2025

On that note, here's a bunch of other things I wish various software I use often would introduce

Summary:

1) Firefox - "Private Browsing Container Tab Type

2) Desktop Window Managers - Project-Based Application Window Grouping + Complete Window State Restoration on Restart  

 

[Firefox Tip] Useful Shortcut for Checking on What's Going Bad (Memory / CPU Usage)

Just learned of a useful tip for current versions of Firefox to bring up the "about:processes" page (that shows memory + CPU usage of various pages + extensions)

It turns out you can use the "Shift-Esc" hotkey to quickly activate it 

Noting this here so I can find it more easily for myself in the future

Thanks @carey@mastodon.nz for the tip!

[Web Browser UX Proposal] Bookmarks 2.0 - Load / Save "Page Snapshots" Instead of "Bookmarks"

It's been a while since I last posted anything here. Since then, the Blogger editor UX has changed a bit (and I'd say, quite detrimentally in a few key areas) making it a pain to write + post anything here. At some point, I'll likely end up converting this blog to a statically generated format, so I'll have full control over the longevity + setup of it, as that's been a recurring issue with Google properties for a while now.

Speaking of UX issues, here's a proposal for a way to solve one of the bigger issues we have with web browsers currently. Specifically, it aims to improve the usability of bookmarks, reduce the reliance on having to keep so many tabs open for certain reasons, and may also help the Internet Archive in its valiant efforts to keep on top of the endless churn of the web.

Note: While writing this, I've been considered setting up a web browser dev env to tinker with doing this myself (and probably fix several dozen other annoyances in the process) - but that's probably just holiday-mode brain trying to take on too many side projects that will have to get dropped as soon as the daily work-year grind starts up again.

Anyway, just thought I'd post this here to get a bit of visibility onto it.

First Firefox Addon - "Toggle Autoplay"

This evening, I spent some time hacking together an addon for Firefox (and the first one I've built). Over the past week or so, I'd gotten increasingly annoyed by how certain video players (notably Vimeo's) were having some random playback issues when I've got autoplay disabled globally across the whole browser. The workaround for those cases is to turn autoplay back on while dealing with that page, and then disable again once done (so that the next page doesn't get any wrong ideas about causing a ruckus).

"Autoplay Toggle" in action

https://github.com/Aligorith/fx_autoplay_toggle

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/autoplay-toggle/ 

However, that's a PITA right now, as you have to open a new page, navigate to the user preferences page, navigate to the property, and only then can you change its setting. With no obvious way to just "pin" a setting to the toolbar, I was only left with the option of hacking together a simple addon to do so instead!

Firefox Tip: Easier navigation when browsing the source code for pages

One of the things which has annoyed me about Firefox's "View Source" feature for a while is the lack of a back button (and perhaps an addressbar for good measure). This is most noticeable when you've jumped into one of the stylesheets or scripts linked into the page, and you now want to go back and check exactly how that gets used in the main page.

Sometime over the last year or two, I eventually stumbled across a way involving the use of the Backspace key, which apparently does do this. I suppose it's ok in a pinch, but there's got to be a nicer way (or at least some addons which do this!)

After a brief search tonight, I found the answer here. Apparently, if you just append "view-source:" in front of the URL for the page you're trying to check on, this will display the source code for that page within the browser window itself, allowing you to use all the standard controls you're used to. Sweet!

RIP Beautiful Firefox Logo

Argh! This evening, Firefox finally ended up updating to the latest version (23 IIRC). Even though this had officially been released for almost a week now, I'd somehow managed to "dodge" getting the update until tonight.

 RIP - The beautiful Firefox logo/icon used since 3.5 or so...

Eeekadoodle - Firefox 7.0 out already?!

An Open Letter to the Firefox Developers

Dear Firefox Developers,

While I've been a Firefox user for the past few years, I'm not a fan of Firefox's new "rapid release" strategy, where we're getting major release numbers nearly every month but with hardly any of the "major release gloss" (or seemingly significant features warranting a major release number).

For the nth time today, I booted up my computer looking to quickly check my email before heading off, and boom! I get a prompt that Firefox wants to update itself. Now, unless I'm mistaken, the last time I last had that happen was less than a month ago (for a minor bugfix release), and just over a month since the last version came bursting out.

Unfortunately, the problem with such frequent releases though is that apart from enduring the 10 seconds it takes for the updater to check that all of my addons still work (it seems to make a habit of slowly killing off a few everytime and/or silently breaking a few others), I have to click through a combination of 5-6 UAC prompts in addition to a certain "password bank" software prompts I've never used or found a way to disable, each of which duly takes its ~3 seconds to show up before ~2 seconds of locking up computer and 1 second to dismiss and wait for the next one. Now, if you have to go through this every few weeks when trying to just quickly check on things at the start of a day, then this is a huge annoyance.

While as a software developer, I am slightly predisposed to being interested in new software, this is simply getting excessive. In a way, this smells like the latest space race, except this time, for who can reach the highest version number in the shortest period of time (at last check, Opera was at 11, IE at 9, and Chrome at 15...); hrm.... version number envy...

If you're going to keep pushing out incremental releases like this, please consider one or more of the following things in the immediate future:

• Make the updating process more invisible - if your main aim is to ensure that everyone gets to use a recent version, do what Chrome does and just install it for them!
• Make some adaptations to your update processes which allow delta upgrades instead of wholesale reinstalls  - perhaps not truly relevant anymore, but the recent releases have muddled the lines between what the update process does anymore
• Use smaller version numbers - point releases for the monthly increments you release, and bump major numbers once a year. You're basically doing minor tweaks during these monthly increments anyway, so there's no point for a major bump which signals potential radical UI changes...

Cheers,
Aligorith