Advice Request Does installing add-ons to try, legimate ones, make firefox to cluttered or bloated ?

[ng4ever]

Does it even matter ?

 

[rndmblk]

Typical advice here on MT seems to be that the less extensions you use the better, at least from a security perspective. Each additional extension has the, admittedly probably quite small, chance of having a vulnerability/being compromised. The less extensions you use overall the smaller your brower 'attack surface'.

I am paraphrasing comments from more experience members so hope I'm using the terms correctly. However, I believe the general advice is fewer = better from the security side of things.

 

[ng4ever]

Typical advice here on MT seems to be that the less extensions you use the better, at least from a security perspective. Each additional extension has the, admittedly probably quite small, chance of having a vulnerability/being compromised. The less extensions you use overall the smaller your brower 'attack surface'.

I am paraphrasing comments from more experience members so hope I'm using the terms correctly. However, I believe the general advice is fewer = better from the security side of things.

Thank you makes sense!

 

[Back3]

If you don't want your browsing experience to slow down, you have to keep your add-ons to a minimum. I only have 5 extensions on Chrome and one on Edge. Startup speed and load times are very important for me. I want my browsers to open nearly instantly...no lag... When testing new add-ons, performance is always on my mind!

 

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

Typical advice here on MT seems to be that the less extensions you use the better, at least from a security perspective. Each additional extension has the, admittedly probably quite small, chance of having a vulnerability/being compromised. The less extensions you use overall the smaller your brower 'attack surface'.

I am paraphrasing comments from more experience members so hope I'm using the terms correctly. However, I believe the general advice is fewer = better from the security side of things.

And choose your extensions wisely. Go only for a few trusted well-known ones. Like we saw with Nano adblocker in the past, a trustworthy extension can go bad when sold.

 

[Arequire]

Like we saw with Nano adblocker in the past, a trustworthy extension can go bad when sold.

Or MEGA's extension, where an attacker hacked into MEGA's web store account and uploaded a trojanized version of their extension that stole user credentials for at least 4 hours before being remedied.

 

[Stopspying]

I feel that a few factors in deciding on the number of extensions you install on a browser -

the capabilities of the device - speed of processor etc, your internet speed,

how bothered you are by page loading times that are measured in fractions of a second

how useful the add-on is.

I've got more than the suggested minimalist approach, they are predominantly security and privacy related ones for Firefox- UBO, NS, BitWarden. ClearURLs, LocalCDN etc. I can't see any significant slowing of page loading if I add a few more to try out when using a fairly recent, decent speced PC with a reasonable Fibre connection. I've got a few older boxes which do notice additional add-ons.

Remember the adage that the more extensions you have the more unique your browser becomes and therefore you will start to stand out from the crowd to anyone who is monitoring that.

 

[The_King]

Unless you are running windows on a toaster, the amount of extension you have installed should not slow things down.
except in the case they are bad or poorly coded extension along with not being updated regularly.

I am running 12 extension In FF and I would actually call my browsing experience in regards to page load time extremely fast,
using a 4th gen Intel Xeon quad core cpu that's 7 years old.

 

[Stopspying]

Unless you are running windows on a toaster, the amount of extension you have installed should not slow things down.
except in the case they are bad or poorly coded extension along with not being updated regularly.

I am running 12 extension In FF and I would actually call my browsing experience in regards to page load time extremely fast,
using a 4th gen Intel Xeon quad core cpu that's 7 years old.

Preventing ads etc from loading can speed up page load time in my experience so I'm in favour of blocking this unwanted use of my bandwidth.