Random Blatherings

I use Firefox as my web browser. I love the functionality I can get out of it by adding various extensions. I love it so much, I have 2 profiles - one for my normal web browsing, and another for use with Entrecard. I always reciprocate drops, so I make full use of the Drops Inbox, which displays the last 56 people to leave their card, on each page. Those 56 cards mean a lot of pages to load. Firefox is capable of handling tabs, though, which makes life much easier. I can just select each card, and open it in a new tab, ready to drop my card on it. While waiting for some pages to load the other day, I got to thinking that it’s not actually dropping the card that takes the time, it’s the waiting for the page to load that’s the bottleneck. So, I’ve set up “EntreFox” to load pages as quickly as possible, and help me drop my cards as quickly as possible. In this guide, I’ll show you how I’ve done that. I use the following extensions:

• AdBlockPlus. This extension allows you to block certain page elements from loading. It can handle images, flash adverts, etc. Most Firefox user’s use it to block adverts from loading, but I use it to block all images, flash animations, scripts & spam sites from loading, apart from those related to Entrecard. This has a double bonus; when I visit a page it loads really quickly (because the html doesn’t take long to download, it’s all the other stuff like pictures and Blogcatalog widgets that take the time), and the Entrecard image is the only image on the page, so it stands out more.
• Linky. This extension will allow you to open multiple links with only a couple of clicks. I find it invaluable, because I can go into the Drops Inbox, highlight all the adverts, and then open all 56 of them in one go, each in it’s own tab. There’s even the option to not open pages you’ve already visited, which means you don’t waste time visiting the same page repeatedly.
• Keyconfig. This extension allows you to create keyboard shortcuts that will let you manipulate the browser. I use it to make Alt+X close the current tab. I drop, Alt+X, drop, Alt+X. I don’t have to move the mouse so far to close the tab, which means it’s closer to the next advert. This lets me speed through pages, and enables me to drop faster.

As I mentioned before, I have 2 profiles, which makes life much much easier, because it keeps the various extensions separate. This really helps with AdBlock, because removing all the pictures from most websites renders them unreadable. I use the following filters to block pictures and active content:

• http://*.gif
• http://*.jpg
• http://*.png
• http://*.swf

The following two block all Google adverts. They can be customised to block Yahoo, etc, adverts too.

• http://www.google.com*
• http://*.googlesyndication.com*

Those filters go in the section marked Advertisement filters. The following goes in the section marked Exception rules.

• http://*entrecard*.com*

This means that anything related to Entrecard gets loaded. You might need to fiddle with the exception rules a bit. It’s also worth disabling Adblock on Entrecard.com. To do this, visit the site, then right click the Red ABP circle, and choose disable on www.entrecard.com. If you do this in your main Firefox profile, you’ll get some very strange results when viewing websites.

The other trick I use is to have 2 copies of Firefox running simultaneously. This means that I can visit the Drops Inbox page in Entrefox, start the pages loading, and then straight away go back to my normal browsing. A minute or two later, I can switch back to Entrefox, which will have all the tabs loaded and ready to be dropped on. There’s no sitting staring at the screen, trying to guess which page is going to load the fastest, which means the overall time spent working on dropping your Entrecards is much less. Ordinarily, you can’t load 2 different Firefox profiles simultaneously, but by adding the code -no-remote to the shortcut target that you use to load the other Firefox profile, you can versions running at the same time. See this Lifehacker post for more information. By following this method, I’ve just dropped over 50 cards in 2 minutes 46 seconds. By my reckoning, that’s just over 15 minutes to drop 300 cards. Imagine being able to drop 300 cards in 15 minutes. What blog’s would you be able to afford to advertise on, with 300 credits arriving every day? How many pairs of eyes would you be able to put your advert in front of?

———- If you’ve enjoyed this article, you might find some of the other’s I’ve written on the same subject enjoyable too. Please consider rating this article with Buzzfuse. Just click the widget above, and then click on a star. It will only take a moment. I’d also really appreciate you dropping your card below, or even linking back to this page - http://www.randomblatherings.com/blog/how-to-use-firefox-to-drop-entrecards-faster-than-ever/. If you have any comments, feedback or questions, please leave a comment on this post.