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
Oct 13, 2008 | blog
Its no secret that I’ve long been a fan of Gmail. In fact, I moved my main email domain to Google’s hosted service about two years ago. I’ve loved the flexibility, space, search, and tagging that are tightly incorporated into the service.
The only problem was a few niggling odds & ends. Not big issues mind you, but a few things that just make it hard to switch 100% to a web-only email environment. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been about 87% of the way there already. When out & about I use the web interface daily for most email tasks. When I need to find something – use the web interface for searching. I’ve used both POP and IMAP to view mail on my Windows Mobile phone since I signed up – and much more.
The few items have been enough for me to keep an email client installed, and here they are:
- Creating HTML emails
- Custom HTML Signatures
- Contact Synchronization with my phone (the real biggie)
A number of these I’ve gotten around. Early on I found that I can cut & paste an email signature from a web page to a Gmail email when composing. Simple, but not convenient. The number of specialized HTML emails that I send are small and the Gmail editor is up to 99% of the tasks. The contact thing is the hardest to get past though.
I have a Windows Mobile phone, and contacts in Outlook sync right to the phone easier than anything else that exists out there. Period. I’ve had Nokia, Samsungs, Motorolas, and BlackBerrys – and all had sync tools that worked, but none as easy as Outlook to Windows Mobile.
At any rate, the real issue with contacts is getting them synchronized between Outlook and Gmail. It’s extremely tough. With the upcoming release of the T-Mobile G1 “Google phoneâ€, it looks like all that might actually be ending. With built-in Gmail support it also has the ability to sync your phonebook with Gmail contacts. Sweet!
So I’ve been debating whether to throw down on this device or not. It may be the one, the final piece that let’s me go web-only for email management.
Oh, the signature piece – yeah I found this great Firefox plug-in called Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures which allows you to have up to four HTML signatures for each Gmail account. Highly recommended!
So is this the final piece to my text communication puzzle? It very well may be.
And 3G to boot! 😀
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.
