Firefox Archives - Marc's Musings

Testmy.net results and Google Chrome

Has anybody out there noticed that the upload speed results achieved using testmy.net are significantly depressed using Google Chrome?

My upload speed is supposed to be 3 Mbits/second. Using Comcast’s own speed test and Speakeasy’ I typically get results in this range.

But I like testmy.net’s approach and have always had great confidence in their results. But since using Google Chrome my results have been less than stellar. This has been since at least the beginning of December 2010. I’ve been using Chrome for a lot longer than that but I don’t know that I was paying particular attention to the upload speeds until recently.
I was beginning to believe Comcast was actually gaming the other two speed test results and hadn’t figured out how to mess with testmy.net’s. That does speak volumes about my opinion of Comcast. But I was inspired a few minutes ago to crack open Firefox and try the test with them and the results are consistent with those other test sites.

So it would seem that either Google Chrome or my settings for Google Chrome is at issue.

Testmy.net results with Firefox:

Testmy.net results with Chrome:

Adblock Plus Extension for Firefox

Adblock Plus is an indispensable extension for anybody who finds flashing ads distracting.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against ads in general, they pay the bills for a great number of the web sites that you and I get to enjoy for no cost to us at all. But, unfortunately, some folks feel that their ads really need to get in your face in order to be effective. You know the ones I’m talking about, you’re trying to read an article and the sidebar has a banner that is alternately flashing Red and Black and is so gaudy that you put your hand up to block the ad so you can actually see the content.

Some folks try to block all ads from showing up on their browser. I’m a moderate in this sense, I only block ads that are truly annoying. If something is flashing at me and continues to flash, I simply right click on it and chose “Adblock Image”. A customization box comes up that defaults to adblocking the exact image that is currently bothering me. This can be modified with wildcard characters if I choose to block everything from the the same domain/folder or even anything from the same domain (most ads are sourced from a domain other than the one you are visiting). I seldom will block an entire domain unless I am finding that there are a LOT of ads sourced from them that are interfering with my browsing experience.

Similarly, for flash content, I have Adblock Plus configured to show “Obj-Tabs” which show up as a little tab with the word “Adblock” in it associated with flash animations. If a flash animation is in an endless loop after I’ve seen it once or twice I will left-click on it and then click OK to remove it.

In both cases above, the area the image / flash occupied is simply blanked so that the web page formatting is not distorted. The items are blocked permanently so they won’t show up if you refresh the screen.

Again, my philosophy is that ads can be a good thing. They are a fair way for site providers to try to profit from their efforts to provide content that you obviously find useful (why else would you be surfing there?). So I don’t advocate wholesale blocking of all ads. But it is great to have a tool to get rid of tasteless and annoying ads when you get tired of them.

Now I’m looking for a way to block those “Walk-on” ads that come up and wander across the screen after the web page has loaded. My greatest issue with them is that I am never 100% confident that clicking the “Close” button will legitimate close the ad but may actually execute some other code (install software?) that I really don’t want on my computer. And, of course, they are now wandering in front of the text I am trying to read.

Firefox

I use the FireFox browser, maintained by the Mozilla Foundation.

I don’t use it because it’s any faster than the beleaguered Internet Explorer (IE), nor do I use it for its touted security features. I use it because the tabbed browsing experience is VERY appealing to me. That and the plethora of extensions available for this browser makes it a superior browsing platform. I’ll mention the various extensions that I find useful in future postings, but for those of you that fear using Firefox because you know that there are some websites that just won’t work without Internet Explorer I want to mention the “IE View” extension.

This extension adds an entry to your context menu (right-click on your web page to see your current context menu) that allows you to “View this page in IE”. If you find your web page is complaining that you are not using IE or perhaps is not acting the way you think it should, then clicking this context menu item quickly quickly launches IE using the current URL.

The vast majority of web sites work fine under Firefox. Customizing your web browsing experience so that your browser has installed only those features that you use certainly makes for a leaner browser. For myself, I’ve added enough extensions that it now takes about the same amount of time to launch Firefox as it does to launch IE. But the Firefox browser is orders of magnitude more useful to me and the way I like to surf.