Extend me baby!

On October 20 2008 · 2 Comments · In Uncategorized

One of the main reasons, if not the main reason that Firefox is the best web browser there is is the ability to add extensions to do extra things, groovy little add-ons that are free and while not exactly being life-changing things, at least make web browsing easier. Here are the ones I use:

  • I’ve changed blogging tools and am now using ScribeFire, which rocks incredibly. Highly recommended, a great way to quickly and seamlessly update as many blogs as you like.
  • Forecastfox gives you constantly updated weather reports in the little status area at the bottom of your browser window.
  • Foxmarks synchronises your bookmarks and passwords between browsers so you can keep the same set of bookmarks on more than one computer and not have to remember your passwords wherever you go.
  • Adblock Plus blocks banner ads on web pages and can also be used to block other images or flash content that you might find irritating. It is possible to browse the web without all those irritating adverts blinking at you.
  • Google Redesigned makes Gmail and Google Calendar look seriously good.
  • IE Tab gets around any problems with not being able to view web sites in Firefox by opening up Internet Explorer within the Firefox window in a new tab.
  • Delicious Bookmarks allows for faster bookmarking and sharing of interesting content around the web (sign up with Delicious as well).
  • Cooliris turns photos into beautiful 3D galleries, and works with Flickr, Facebook and several other photo (and video) sites.
  • Remember the Milk for Gmail adds brilliant task management to Gmail (sign up with Remember the Milk).
  • Read It Later creates a temporary list of bookmarks for items that you just want to read later, not necessarily keep.
  • DownThemAll! is a great download manager and accelerator built right into Firefox.
  • Speed Dial creates a funky wall of thumbnails of your favourite sites for quick clicking when you open a new tab.
  • FoxyTunes is a brilliant remote control for your PC media player so you can skip tracks or even find lyrics and bios, all from a small toolbar in the browser.

And for web development it’s well worth having ColorZilla, TinyURL Creator, Firebug and Web Developer.

As for chat and email/Facebook notifications, it’s well worth giving Digsby a try. It rolls together checking of your Gmail, Hotmail and other accounts, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn notifications, and MSN/Yahoo/Google/AOL/ICQ/Facebook chat all in one app.


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  • http://www.lawyersweekly.com Travis S

    Nathan,
    You might find this useful as well…

    Background: the killer feature in IE-8 and Firefox is selection-based search, IMO. IE-8 cals these Accelerators. The problem with Accelerators (and the third party firefox versions) is that the user has to figure out which one to apply to his selection. It’s just unusable once you get more than two or three.

    The version of selection-based search which I love is KallOut. http://www.KallOut.com

    KallOut already works over IE (the older versions) and Firefox (my favorite) as well as all of office.

    What IE8 Beta really needs is a way for the application to automatically choose which accelerator you need to use for a given mouse-based search request. Kallout already does this with its “Best-Guess” feature.

    I downloaded the Kallout application from CNET but its main site is http://www.kallout.com

    Travis.

  • http://www.spikydog.com/ Nathan

    Thanks Travis, Kallout does look interesting. Might give it a whirl. Mozilla are developing something like this, Ubiquity (http://labs.mozilla.com/projects/ubiquity/).