Ben Dodson

Freelance iOS, macOS, Apple Watch, and Apple TV Developer

In 2006 I spent a fair amount of time playing around with writing extensions for Firefox. Since then, I've written a few more and also written extensions for Safari 5 and Google Chrome. These vary from extensions to help identify fonts to those that replace your 'stop' button with MC Hammer (downloaded over a ¼ million times and I was sued by Hammerman himself - bonus!)

Font Finder

Capture CSS information of any website text

Font Finder is designed for any web developer / designer that needs to find out the CSS information of any text on the page.

Simply highlight any text element, right-click, and choose font finder. An alert box will appear with all of the styling information you could require including font-size, font-family, color (in both hex and RGB), line-height, letter-spacing, and much more! In addition, you are not told only the CSS font stack, but exactly which font from the stack is currently being rendered.

I'll be updating this extension in the future to incorporate a lot more typographical information, particularly around the new CSS 3 properties.

Font Finder is available for Firefox, Safari 5, and Chrome and has been downloaded over 350,000 times! If you are a developer, you can fork this project on GitHub.

STOP! Hammertime!

You won't find a better way to stop your browser

The Stop! Hammertime! Firefox extension has been downloaded over a ¼ million times times since its public release and has earned cult status with mentions on blogs all over the world as well as wikipedia entries! I was also sued by MC Hammer’s record label but the extension lives on!

The extension replaces the stop button so that when pressed, the immortal words of MC Hammer are uttered – “Stop! Hammertime!”.

Recent updates have meant smaller download sizes as well as an option to choose between the standard stop button or the MC Hammer button (pictured).

To find out more and download Stop! Hammertime! for Firefox, please visit the Mozilla Addons site. Alternatively, you can download version 2.1d that introduces full Firefox 3.6 compatibility. If you are a developer, you can fork this project on GitHub.

STOP in the name of love!

The supreme browser stopping extension

Following on from the success of Stop! Hammertime!, STOP in the name of love! is another stop button replacement for Firefox that allows you to replace the stop button with the heart icon pictured.

When pressed, Diana Ross and The Supremes will sing “Stop, in the name of love” for your listening pleasure.

The latest version (only available on this website at the moment) has an easier installation, smaller download size, and the ability to switch between the regular stop button and the heart shaped icon!

If you would like to download STOP in the name of love! for Firefox, then please visit the Mozilla Addons site. Alternatively, you can download version 2.0b that introduces full Firefox 3.5 compatibility.