Luckily the same is true in most areas of technology. One of them being the killer app of the decade: the web browser. Today I happen to be a Firefox user, and the most important feature for me is the extension and plug-in architecture that allows 3rd part developers to add new unanticipated functionality to the browser. At first, I went overboard (who doesn’t) and added all the coolest plug-ins that I ran across.
Soon, however, I figured out the functionality that really enhanced my usability and quickly pared down what I needed to a select group of plug-ins that I install on computer I run Firefox on – including Linux boxes. The ability to have the same customized environment on both my Windows and Linux boxes is a huge productivity boon for me. I found that my eyes stress less on the best monitors for gaming, I’m glad they serve the dual purpose of work and play with the added benefit of being easier/healthier on my eyes.
Anyway, here’s the list of Firefox Plug-Ins that I run at the moment:
- Scribefire Blog Editor – Blog post creating/editing tool accessible right from the browser.
- XMarks Bookmarks and Password Sync – The best bookmark and password sync tool you can find
- Multirow Bookmarks Toolbar – Allows me to have more than one row of bookmarks on the toolbar
- Smart Bookmarks Bar – This tool allows me to remove the text labels and control the space between icons
- Read It Later – Great tool to bookmark interesting one-off pages and articles that creates my daily reading list
- ColorZilla – A nifty tool that let’s me identify the exact RGB and hexidecimal color codes on any site
- MeasureIt – Another great tool for measuring the exact size of on-screen components down to the pixel level
- ShareAHolic – For a social media guy, this one is great because I can share a web page to any service I want to include
- WiseStamp Emial Signature – Ever wanted to have an HTML signature in Gmail.com, Hotmail, Yahoo, and other web-based email? Here you go
- Prism – Allows for creating of isolated web-apps similar to what Google Chrome allows you to do. Facebook in its own simplified, minimal UI browser? Yes please.
- Download Status Bar – This one is great to get rid of the download window that Firefox uses and puts all that functionality into the statusbar area.
So that’s what I use right now. These tools help me in my daily browsing, monitoring, reading and writing routine. Will it change – undoubtedly. As new services and tools come about, I’ll adapt as the tools change. They always do.
Photo Credit: Lordcolus
