Manage Firefox proxies easily with FoxyProxy
Posted on November 26, 2008 at 5:23 am
With more and more users having multiple Internet service providers, managing multiple proxies has become a common task. Usually we will need to go to the connection settings and then manually type in the proxy servers for each protocol:
If you have multiple proxy servers, switching between them would be a great hassle since you will need to type in the server names every time you change it. These server names are not persistently saved on a drop down list so there is no other way but to type them in. If your HTTP proxy is different from your FTP proxy or other protocols, it could get messier and harder to maintain.
FoxyProxy, from http://foxyproxy.mozdev.org/, let’s you solve this problem by providing you a quick way to make a list of proxies and then easily change your proxy by a selecting an item from a list. Below is an actual example of a FoxyProxy setup:
The list of proxies are editable by the user and you can also make smart rules on which specific proxy to use for a URL pattern. For example, you can set your workplace’s proxy server for all URLs ending on your workplace domain.
The tool is also integrated on the anonymity proxy service called “Tor”. To learn more about Tor, visit it’s website here: http://www.torproject.org
FoxyProxy’s interface consists of a dropdown list of all available modes and a proxy list editor:
You can set the priority of which proxy servers to use using the Move Up/Down button:
To get more control, you can set a URL pattern to allow or block any website with that pattern. This is a good way to make sure you will not visit a website that you don’t want your proxy server to track. On the example below I want to block anything with an “idol.com” in the URL:
As you can see FoxyProxy is an excellent FireFox plugin to manage your proxies. Instead of having to edit individual proxy servers for each Internet service provider or website, this tool lets you automatically activate a proxy setting depending on its priority level and URL pattern. If changing proxies on the fly makes you lose time and patience, give FoxyProxy a try.
Ben Carigtan shows you how it’s done.
» Filed Under Free Software Downloads
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This add-on does not remember a list of proxies for Firefox. I add them, but when I re-open Firefox, the proxies are gone. What is wrong?