This is an open call out there for a skilled (or not-so-skilled as I'm not so sure how complicated this is) Firefox extension programmer who'd be interested in doing the world some good.
I'd love to see a really simple Firefox extension that recognizes special link types and at the very least gives a warning "Do you want to continue?" dialogue before the link takes action. A more sophisticated extension might change my cursor when I hover over a special link to indicate what will happen, but the simple option works fine for me too. I'm particularly thinking that this would be useful for links to PDFs and mailto links that open a new email message. It's incredibly frustrating when you click on a blind link and all of the sudden your computer freezes for thirty seconds while loading the behemoth that it is Acrobat Reader.
If it needs some interface elements, I'd be glad to help out. Any suggestions? Any takers?
Comments
Jake - February 23, 2005 6:40 pm
How about TargetAlert?
Daniel Burka - February 23, 2005 8:57 pm
Thanks for the link Jake. I can't believe I haven't seen that before. That's a pretty good extension and is very close to what I was hoping to find. Something that's not invasive on the website's UI would be nice though. This is still awfully close to what I was looking for. Nice.
David Schontzler - February 24, 2005 1:51 am
You should be able to just change your userContent.css file in the /profile/chrome directory. I don't remember the CSS selectors exactly, but it's something like:
:link[href~=.pdf], :visited[href~=.pdf], etc etc {
cursor : crosshair !important;
}
Adam Bramwell - February 24, 2005 3:14 am
There's plenty of articles on hacking Acrobat Reader down to the bare essentials, which really helps on load time. Worth doing regardless.