Conductor: Container Redirector Autor: mcortt

Conductor: Dynamic URL Redirection to Firefox Containers

Conductor is a Firefox extension that allows you to automatically redirect specific URLs to designated Firefox containers. Take control of your browsing context and enhance your privacy and organization.

Features

• User-Defined Rules: Create custom rules to redirect URLs based on powerful regular expressions.
• Container Support: Seamlessly integrates with Firefox's built-in container feature.
• Automatic Redirection: Redirects matching URLs before the page even loads, ensuring you're always in the right context.
• Persistent Settings: Your redirection rules are saved and synchronized across your Firefox profile (using browser.storage.sync).
• Options Page: An easy-to-use options page allows you to manage your redirection rules.
• Lightweight and Efficient: Built with performance in mind.
• Open Source

How to Use

1. Install the Extension: Install Conductor from the Firefox Add-ons website.
2. Open Options Page: Go to about:addons (or Manage Your Extensions), find Conductor, and click "Preferences".
3. Add Rules:
   • Click the "Add Rule" button.
   • Enter a URL Pattern: This is a regular expression that will be matched against the URL. For example:
     • example\.com: Matches any URL containing "example.com".
     • ^https://www\.example\.com: Matches URLs that start with "https://www.example.com".
     • .*\.google\.com: Matches any Google domain or subdomain.
   • Select a Container Name: Choose the container you want to open matching URLs in. You must have already created the container in Firefox.
   • Click Save
4. Test: Visit a URL that matches one of your rules. It should automatically open in the specified container.

Permissions Explained

This extension requires the following permissions:

• webRequest and webRequestBlocking: These permissions are necessary to intercept network requests before they are sent, allowing the extension to redirect URLs to the appropriate container. This is the core functionality of the extension.
• tabs: This permission is used to create new tabs in the specified containers and to manage existing tabs (e.g., closing the original tab).
• cookies: This permission is required to access the cookieStoreId associated with each tab and container. This ensures that the redirection happens within the correct container context.
• contextualIdentities: This permission allows the extension to interact with Firefox's container feature, retrieving the list of available containers and creating new tabs within specific containers.
• storage: This permission is used to store your redirection rules persistently and synchronize them across your Firefox profile.
• <all_urls> (Host Permission): This permission is necessary to allow the extension to intercept all URLs. Without this, the extension would only be able to intercept URLs that you explicitly listed, which would defeat the purpose of user-defined rules. The extension uses this permission responsibly to match URLs against your user-defined rules and redirect them to the appropriate containers. It does not collect or transmit any browsing data.

Regular Expressions (Regex)

Conductor uses regular expressions for URL matching, giving you great flexibility. Here are some basic regex tips:

• . (period): Matches any single character (except a newline).
• * (asterisk): Matches the preceding character zero or more times.
• + (plus): Matches the preceding character one or more times.
• ? (question mark): Matches the preceding character zero or one time.
• ^ (caret): Matches the beginning of the string.
• $ (dollar sign): Matches the end of the string.
• \ (backslash): Escapes special characters (e.g., \. matches a literal period).
• [] (square brackets): Matches any character within the brackets (e.g., [abc] matches "a", "b", or "c").
• [^ ] : Matches anything that is NOT in the set
• ( ) : Groups sections.

Example:

To match any URL that starts with "https://www.example.com" or "https://example.com", you could use:

^https://(www\.)?example\.com