Firefox Web Extension: Form Tools
Many web forms are less the friendly for the user. This addon has a number of tools to make using web forms a little easer.
The tools are:
control key behaves with Smart Quotesid for Zoom BoxPassword fields are normally disguised as bullets (•••) to foil so-called “shoulder-surfers”, people looking from behind you. However, this increases your own personal inconvenience in that you can’t see your own password.
This will temporarily display all password fields. When on, all password fields will appear as plain text. This will revert after 10 seconds. This duration can be changed in the settings.
In case it needs to be said, don’t use this option if somebody might be looking, such as on a projected screen! Normally you would use this in the privacy of your own home, or in a quite place …
As a minor benefit, old passwords remembered by the browser will also be visible. You will also be able to copy your password, such as when confirming a new one.
NB Apart from the risk of shoulder-surfing, there is nothing less secure with a plain text password than with a disguised password. The data will be sent to the server exactly the same way. If the connection is secured then the data is still secure; if the connection is not, then it was always going to be insecure.
You can change the Show Password Delay in the Settings
To instill a false sense of security, some sites disable pasting of passwords. This has the negative effect of discouraging complex passwords, since you will be forced to type in your simple passwords rather than paste a trickier one from a password manager. Go Figure …
This option will allow you to paste text into password fields by removing a proprietary onpaste attribue, which was invented just to make your life miserable by the experts in misery.
NB: There may be other methods used to frustrate your pasting of passwords, so this may not work.
Personally, I like to use the tab key to insert, well, tabs. The problem with forms is that they use the tab key to focus on the next element, which is OK if that’s what you want, but you lose the ability to enter tabs in the process.
This option allows you to enter tabs in all textareas.
By default, the tab width is set to 4.
If you have existing text with "straight" quotes, you can select this to convert all of this text using “smart” quotes.
Don’t forget to make sure that your cursor is already inside a text box or text area when you select this. Otherwise, nothing will be converted.
If you have new text, and you want to use “smart” quotes as you type, select this option.
By default, if you press the control key when entering a quote, you will get
the regular "dumb" quote instead.
By Default control keeps the "dumb" quote. In the Settings you can reverse this behaviour and use control only for “smart” quotes.
If you encounter a web site which wants you to type in a lot of information in a small box, then you can use the Zoom option.
To use this:
ctrl-shift-z (for “zoom”)OK or Cancel
In the Zoom box, you also have the option to convert to “smart” quotes or enther them as you type.
Internally, the Zoom Box has an id of zoom-box and the shades background has an id of zoom-box-background. This should be fine, but if you feel that the id competes with others on the web page, you can change these these by changing the Zoom Box Prefix from zoom-box so something else.
Options are avaialable from Firefox 48. You can either choose the settings item in the menu, or from the addons screen.
Settings are described in the tools above.
For more information on why being able to passwords is so important, see:
Troy Hunt: The “Cobra Effect” that is disabling paste on password fields
For information on why “smart” quotes are important, see:
This addon does what it does, and doesn’t do what it doesn’t do. Share & Enjoy.