Google firefox plugins for the ten fingered beings

Some people call me reactionary, but I don't believe in accepting progress just for the sake of it and I must say, the almighty oracle's layout and way of working used to work better for me a couple of years ago. I finally got annoyed enough by it, that i searched out a couple of plugins. I should add that i use pentadactyl, which may cause peculiar semantics, but is too good to give up.

• The most important one is google link fixer if you just want the real URLs. I see why google wants to track, what you clicked on, but not being able to copy the link is really freaking me out.
• Also useful in this context may be the google url shortener, since most of the time i just want to copy it into irc where the goo.gl short url is even more helpful in anyway.
• I found bread crumb navigation to really help with the URL not fully showing on the google result page. If you are also using pentadactyl you should combine this with the less chrome add on, since you likely don't have a navigation bar. Please note that in this case you need to reenable the bar and let less chrome hide it!
• I find google customizer quite helpful, but at least at the moment you need to fudge the compatibility and disable updates for it to install and work after the first restart.This also provides a way to disable the link foo google does, if you are willing to put up with an unsupported plugin, that is partially broken or outdated, but otherwise has lots of useful features.
• To enable mac'ish (among others of course) "Don't close window on closing last tab"(d), use
  :set! browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab=false
• In order to get back the old cache functionality without the bar use gcache+, it seems to be the most convenient plugin for this purpose albeit still annoying.

Removing the searchya pest completely

My mother, despite being competent enough to reinstall her operating system, is quite prone to catch these nasty firefox toolbars. I am unsure if they are malware of some kind, though it's not unlikely given how much they resist being deactivated.

I found several hints on the internet regarding how to get rid of that crap:

• Uninstall via Control Panel>Software
• Deactivate the firefox addon
• Edit the registry (don't you love administering windows?)

This still didn't get rid of the searchya completely because it had registered its useless url with the default for a new tab.
So i ended up solving it

• Opening about:config and setting browser.newtab.url to something sensible.

Good Riddance Pest.