Rebuilding my browser

I’ve been a longtime Firefox user, using many of the excellent plug-ins to extend the experience as I find more services that I use online.  Like many people, I’ve let myself get a bit overloaded with added features, and yes there were several that I no longer use.

So tonight I went through my entire browser, bookmarks, organization, toolbars, plug-ins – the whole works.  I’ve stripped down to the bare essentials and gotten rid of ALL the toolbars I had loaded.  I never used them.  Only the bookmark toolbar is left, and that went from about 50 buttons down to 14 buttons – it may loose even more, we’ll see.

The idea being that I put only the sites, services, and tools that I use every darn day on the bookmark toolbar.  The rest of my bookmarks have been reorganized into one of (up to) ten categories – and yes I numbered them.  When I click on Bookmarks now, I only see 10 categories.  My apologies to Chris Brogan, I borrowed the term "rockstars" for the blogs I actually visit instead of reading their feeds.

I’ll be doing more work on the organization, but I had over 70 folders under my Bookmarks to begin with.  Yeah, I’ll still have a hard time finding everything, but I believe that I can weed out feeds over time.  This was to get the initial Bookmark menu so I didn’t have to scroll through it to find a folder.

So, I’ve got a ways to go before it’s fully organized to weed out the dead links and make it easier to find things but it’s a start.  Wondering what add-ons I left in place?  here’s a rundown that I use almost every day.

• Blog This in Windows Live Writer (Toolbar button to launch WLW with selections from currently displayed page.)
• coComment (Be able to add comments to my coComment account)
• ColorZilla (Color picker for on-screen, plus other tools)
• del.icio.us (Bookmark, add, and share links directly to del.icio.us.  Yes there is a newer version, but I don’t like how it handles everything.)
• Download Statusbar (View and manage downloads in status bar)
• FireFTP (FTP Client runs in a browser tab)
• Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer (Synchronize bookmarks across multiple machines)
• Google Notebook (Quickly let’s me add things to my Google Notebook)
• GUtil! (Adds a quick link to all Google utilities and apps in one toolbar button)
• MeasureIt (On-screen ruler, use it to figure out how many pixels something is/should be)
• Twitbin (Twitter client for the Firefox sidebar)

Well, that about does it for my browsing environment.  Firefox is my main browser, but I do keep Internet Explorer, Opera, and Flock loaded for testing purposes.  I’m thinking of adding Safari, but it’ll have to wait for a little while.

Now, what is your browsing environment like?  What tools, add-ins, and programs do you use?  Let me know.  🙂

Technorati tags: Firefox, Browser Add Ons, coComment, FireFTP, Google Notebook, GUtil, MeasureIt, Twitbin, Twitter, del.icio.us, ColorZilla, Windows Live Writer, Download Statusbar, Foxmarks