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NoSquint
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What is it?
Having a hard time reading on the web? Is that website with the ridiculously small font and hot-pink-on-slightly-darker-hot-pink text raising your blood pressure?
NoSquint is a Firefox addon that can:
- Override the default text-only and full-page (both text and images) zoom levels for all websites
- Enforce your own foreground and background colors
- Remember your zoom levels and color settings per site, automatically applying them when you return.
- Disagree with what NoSquint calls a site? A powerful exceptions mechanism lets you split up or group together sites with URL patterns.
You can view the Online Help to get a sense of the features NoSquint supports.
Where can I get it?
Download NoSquint
2.0.5 for Firefox 3.0 to 4.0b1 (63 KB)
All Major Versions
| Version |
Firefox Compatibility |
Release Notes |
| 2.0.5
| Firefox 3.0 - 4.0b1 |
Show Release Notes |
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Released on 2010-07-19.
Changes since 2.0.4:
- Support for Firefox 4.0 beta 1.
- Somewhat more reliable zooming while using Private Browsing Mode. (Probably not fully fixed; see Firefox bug #526828.)
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Use the versions below only if you have problems with 2.0.5.
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| 2.0.4 |
Firefox 3.0 - 4.0b1 |
Show Release Notes |
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Released on 2009-10-24.
Changes since 2.0.3:
- Fixed brown-paper-bag bug that prevented Site Settings dialog from working properly for newly visited sites.
Changes since 2.0.2:
- Fixed bug (regression from 2.0b6) where per-site Disable Background Images and Always Underline Links options would not stay checked
- Fixed bug where NoSquint would fail to apply zoom/color to certain sites
Changes since 2.0.1:
- Fixed bug (regression from 2.0b6) where NoSquint would not properly zoom/color a tab which was detached from the current window via "Open in a New Window"
- Fixed bug where NoSquint would fail to apply zoom/color when moving a tab from one window to another
Changes since 2.0:
- Fixed bug (regression from 2.0b6) where NoSquint would stop working properly when using multiple windows and the first window had been closed
- Fixed bug (regression from 2.0b6) affecting only Firefox 3.0 where launching Global Settings from the Site Settings dialog would fail
Changes since 2.0b6:
- NoSquint no longer interferes with ACID3 test
- Removed image zoom functionality for now due to excessive bugs
- Support for Firefox 3.6b2pre and 3.7a1pre
- Fixed bug where color styling did not work for certain sites (like gmail)
- Replaced "always use global settings" mode with a mode that will remember per-site zoom and color settings for the current session only, to be discarded when Firefox exits.
- Fixed Site Settings dialog sizing problem on Windows.
Changes since 1.93.2:
- Global and Per-site color settings
- New mode that will preserve per-site settings only for current session.
- Separate defaults for full-page and text-only zooms
- Clear private data and Private Browsing integration (3.5)
- file:// url support (exceptions start with /)
- Support for :port in exceptions
- New toolbar button for resetting zoom level to default
- Don't zoom chrome (like error pages and such)
- Only zoom for certain mimetypes (fixes inline pdf bug)
- Individual toolbar buttons for zoom in/out/reset (useful for vertical toolbar panels)
- Hidden pref to reverse mousewheel direction
- Show zoom and color settings in realtime in Site Settings
- Fixed several bugs and conflicts with other extensions, as well as minor usability and cosmetic enhancements.
Known issues:
- After upgrading from 1.93, NoSquint toolbar buttons are gone (if they had been previously added by the user), and must be re-added
- Adding an exception that matches the current site should migrate zoom/color settings to the new site name, but does not
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| 1.93.2.1 |
Firefox 3.0 only |
Show Release Notes |
- Exclusive support for Firefox 3 (now includes RC1). Firefox 2 is not supported in this release.
- Support for both Firefox 2's text zoom (text only) and Firefox 3's new full zoom (both text and images). Both text and full page zoom levels are remembered individually per site.
- Ability to specify the primary zoom method to either text or full zoom; if you want to restore Firefox 2's zoom behavior, set the primary zoom method to Text Zoom.
- Secondary zoom method can be used by pressing shift while using the usual shortcuts (ctrl+plus/minus/0, ctrl+mousewheel, toolbar buttons)
- Removed site name from NoSquint statusbar panel
- New statusbar panel tooltip that shows current zoom levels and site name
- Left-click on statusbar panel now pops up a dialog to configure site-specific settings
- New right-click context menu for quick adjustments and access to global settings
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| 1.0.1 |
Firefox 2 only |
Show Release Notes |
- Dropped support for Firefox 1.5. Sorry. If you use Firefox 1.5, download version 0.9.1.1 below.
- Significantly improved default behaviour; now has a comprehensive list of two-level TLDs (such as co.uk, on.ca, etc.)
- Integrated, detailed help.
- Fixed conflict with Tab Mix Plus (and presumably other extensions as well).
- Do not force ctrl-mousewheel to perform text zoom if the user has disabled that elsewhere.
- Fixed bug where text zoom was not being applied to reloads of pages containing frames or iframes.
- Optional status bar indication of text zoom level and current site name (enabled by default).
- Toolbar buttons for decreasing and increasing text size.
- Ability to define exceptions to control the way NoSquint determines individual sites.
- Option to forget zoom settings for rarely visited sites.
- Other miscellaneous minor bug fixes, and behavioural and performance improvements.
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| 0.9.1.1 |
Firefox 1.5 and 2 |
Show Release Notes |
- Support for Firefox 2.0
- Custom extension icon
- Apply default text zoom to file:// URLs
- Fixed bug where startup page would sometimes not get zoomed.
- Pages using frames should now be properly zoomed (might not be fully fixed)
- Per-domain zoom feature now recognizes UK second-level domains such as co.uk, ac.uk, etc.
- Ability to override zoom increment
- Can now specify zoom level for the current domain in the settings dialog
- New help text in the settings dialog to address common questions
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You can also download NoSquint from Mozilla Add-Ons.
Frequently Asked Questions
Below are answers to some common questions. If you have a question not answered here, please send me an email (and be sure to include "NoSquint" somewhere in the subject line).
| Q. |
When will NoSquint be compatible with Firefox 4? |
| A. |
Firefox 4.0 beta 1 compatibility has been added to NoSquint 2.0.5, released on July 19, 2010. It isn't terribly well tested, but you're using a beta version of Firefox so you're ok with that, right?
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| Q. |
I just installed NoSquint but don't see any toolbar buttons. How do I use it? |
| A. |
There should be a magnifying glass icon in your status bar now, which is the primary way of interacting with NoSquint by left-clicking it (for site settings), middle-clicking it (for global settings), or right-clicking it (for a popup menu). You can also access NoSquint via the View | Zoom menu, or the right-click page context menu.
The toolbar buttons aren't added automatically, mainly because people seem to get annoyed when newly installed software clutters up the UI. However, given the number of emails I get with this question, I intend to make it an option upon installation for a future version.
Meanwhile you can add the buttons yourself via the usual Firefox toolbar customization mechanism by right clicking on the toolbar, selecting Customize, and then dragging the zoom buttons onto your toolbar where you want them.
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| Q. |
Why does Firefox feel sluggish (especially scrolling) after I installed NoSquint? |
| A. |
The default settings for NoSquint set the global full page zoom level (images and text) to 120%. On some systems, Firefox's full page zoom (which NoSquint merely hooks into) is slow, especially where Flash is involved.
You can try changing the primary zoom method to Text Only, which usually performs better, and set the default full page zoom level back to 100%. This can be controlled in Global Settings by middle-clicking on the magnifying glass in your status bar.
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| Q. |
Exceptions don't work at all! |
| A. |
You're probably thinking that you set a default global zoom level, and then you need to add all the sites you don't want at the global level to the exceptions list. That's not what Exceptions are, and if you want per-site levels, you just go to the site, change the zoom level (or colors), and NoSquint remembers that for next time.
Exceptions control the way NoSquint determines what a "site" is. Is www.google.ca the same site as www.google.com? If you just look at the domain (which is the default behavior), these are separate sites. But there's a good practical reason to treat these the same, so you can add an exception like www.google.[*] to override this.
See the online help for all the gruesome details.
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| Q. |
Where does NoSquint store all its per-site settings? |
| A. |
All NoSquint settings are stored in your Firefox profile, specifically in prefs.js within keys that are prefixed with extensions.nosquint. Per-site settings are stored in the extensions.nosquint.sites key. These can be easily viewed in about:config (type it into your location bar).
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| Q. |
NoSquint sucks. How do I uninstall it? |
| A. |
NoSquint adds and removes like any other Firefox extension. Follow the instructions on uninstalling extensions on Mozilla's Knowledge Base.
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Who do I harrass about bugs?
Please send feedback or bug reports to tack@urandom.ca. My thanks to those who have emailed comments and suggestions.
If you find NoSquint useful to the point that you'd like to part with your hard earned money, please don't give any to me. The EFF needs your money far more than I do; please consider making a donation to this very worthy cause.
The nonsense written above can be blamed on Jason Tackaberry (
tack@urandom.ca).
