Dec 5, 2009 | blog
One of the great things about technology is the ability to customize the tools we use every day. Small, lightwieght laptops for traveling, robust quad-core systems for gaming, the gaming monitor with optimal resolution and engineering work, multiple smartphones of wonderfullly variety to choose from… we have great options to choose from when looking for the right computing experience.
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
Jun 20, 2008 | blog
My migration to Firefox 3 has been fairly painless. I specifically put off trying out most all the beta versions until the last release candidate. Since I’d embraced the plug-in feature of Firefox and installed upwards of two dozen of these spiffy enhancements to a great browser I knew a few (or many) would not be updated right away.
And I was right, many plug-ins were not updated when I installed FF3 rc3, and I had to do without a lot of functionality. The only thing that allowed me to ride it out from the release candidate to shipping code was the fact that Foxmarks was updated to work with FF3 – it’s my absolutely most needed plug-in.
But in the three weeks I’ve been running the latest versions of Firefox 3, I’ve seen updates to plug-ins on an almost daily basis! out of 21 plug-ins, I’ve only 4 that aren’t yet updated: Blog This in Windows Live Writer, coComment!, ColorZilla, and Thinger.
UPDATE: I just found the latest ColorZilla beta here that works with Firefox 3! In addition, I removed the coComment! plug-in as I see that the folks at coComment themselves will be getting their plug-in updated shortly. I’ve kind of given up waiting for any update to the Blog This in Windows Live Writer plug-in. That leaves Thinger, which I really do hope gets updated, because I really need a second (third?) bookmark toolbar.
Jun 18, 2008 | blog
Yep, upgraded to the final version yesterday. Pretty happy that I did. Performance is noticeably improved, memory usage improved, and several dozen plugins where upgraded yesterday in sync with the new release.
You can find the download for Firefox 3 here. Good stuff!
Jun 14, 2008 | blog
I’ve finally made the switch to Firefox 3 (RC3). While previous betas and release candidates didn’t feel quite finished, this one sure does. From the talk around the ‘net about it, it sounds like this may be the last RC before going gold. Yeah, I still have a number of plug-ins that are not supported yet, but in the week since I switched to RC3 there have been three plug-ins updated for compatibility!
My main plug-ins that I can’t live without are there and the stability, memory management, and feature set have made it worth the change. Kudos to the Mozilla team on the work so far – you’re real close, and I know you’ve got a longer list of things to finish up than I’m aware of.
So yep, to those who give a darn I’ve moved to FF3 and am happy with the upgrade. Good stuff.
Sep 27, 2007 | blog
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.
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
