YouTube Comment Snob is an extension for the Firefox Web browser that allows you to filter YouTube comments based on spelling, capitalization, and punctuation usage.

I've updated YouTube Comment Snob to work with YouTube's latest redesign, as well as to add compatibility for Firefox 3. It's available for download from the Mozilla Add-ons sandbox until it is approved by an AMO editor for mass consumption.

I'm sure that I'm not the only one who has noticed that the discussion threads at YouTube typically contain a low percentage of quality comments. Earlier this week, I remarked to a co-worker that it wouldn't be a bad idea to be able to filter the comments based on the number of spelling mistakes made by the author. Inspired by that thought, I've written a Firefox extension that makes that kind of filtering possible.

With the YouTube Comment Snob Firefox extension, you can hide comments that meet any of these criteria:

• More than # spelling mistakes: The number of mistakes is customizable, and the extension uses Firefox's built-in spell checker.
• All capital letters
• No capital letters
• Doesn't start with a capital letter
• Excessive punctuation (!!!! ????)
• Excessive capitalization

For example, here's part of a typical YouTube comment thread:

And here's how that same section looks when using YouTube Comment Snob:

(You'll notice how foreign languages are categorized as spelling mistakes; if you speak a different language and have that dictionary installed for Firefox's spellchecker, you can choose to have YouTube Comment Snob use that dictionary instead.)

You can install YouTube Comment Snob from its homepage. It is compatible with Firefox 1.5 through 3.0a7, Netscape Navigator 9, and Flock.

The TubeStop Firefox extension that I wrote in order to stop YouTube videos from auto-playing also has the serendipitous side-effect of removing ads from YouTube videos. Since YouTube is only serving ads through the player on their main site, and not on the embeddable/syndicated player, and TubeStop works by replacing YouTube's native player with the embeddable version, you won't see any ads when you're using TubeStop.

Try it out by first viewing this video without TubeStop: Rock Yo Hips. (I recommend muting your speakers; the content of the video is terrible, but it was the first video I could find with ads.) You'll see around the 15-second mark an ad pops up over the bottom 15% of the video.

Now install TubeStop, restart Firefox, and view the video again. You'll notice that while the video still sucks, there are no ads layered on it. I don't know how long this will be the case, but it works for now.

Update: It looks like Google has removed all video ads for now. I'll update this post if I come across a video that still has them. Maybe I should rename this post to "TubeStop also stops YouTube ads... FOREVER".

If you like TubeStop, check out my other YouTube-specific Firefox extension: YouTube Comment Snob. It adds powerful filtering controls to YouTube comment threads.

I've updated the TubeStop Firefox extension to work with YouTube videos that have embedding disabled (like this one of Ben Folds covering Elton John). Since TubeStop replaces the auto-playing video with the non-auto-playing embeddable version, these videos were not being properly replaced.

You can install TubeStop from the TubeStop homepage.

What is TubeStop? It's an extension for Firefox that prevents YouTube videos from automatically playing when you open the page.

Check out my brother Jacob's home-brewed Simpsons Movie trailer.

If YouTube (and home computers capable of producing video) had been around when I was 13, I think this is very similar to something I would have done. Instead, my sister Gina and I made fake radio shows using the WAV recorder that comes with Windows and a sound-effects CD we got from the library.

TubeStop was mentioned today on the the Global Geek Podcast, and the main drawback discussed was that it doesn't disable the autoplay on YouTube videos embedded on other sites. I've added this feature and subsequently released TubeStop 1.1.

You can install TubeStop 1.1 from the TubeStop homepage.

TubeStop is a browser extension that stops YouTube videos from automatically beginning playback when the page is loaded.

My latest browser extension, TubeStop, is an extension for Mozilla-based Web browsers that disables the autoplay on YouTube.com videos. This means that you can open YouTube videos in multiple tabs without them all starting to play at once.

Currently, this extension only works on videos at YouTube.com, not on YouTube videos embedded on non-YouTube.com websites with autoplay enabled.

TubeStop is compatible with Firefox 1.5 - 2.0.0.*, the latest Flock builds, and Netscape Navigator 9.0. If you're having trouble using the extension, you can either e-mail me at cfinke@gmail.com or leave a comment below.

You can install TubeStop 1.0 from the TubeStop homepage.