You should be using Firefox right now
Jan. 6th, 2009 03:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
azuriteAs some of you may or may not know, I'm a huge Firefox advocate. Even before I switched to the Mac, Firefox was my browser of choice, dating all the way back to version 1. I'm so happy with it, I've never looked back. It has a ton of features that make it a breeze to use, and it's not difficult to transition from your previous browser.
For starters, it's:
* More secure
* More customizable/personalizable
* More stable (rarely crashes, and when it does, you can find out WHY by asking to be emailed about updates regarding the crash)
* Gets updated more regularly (like, every month or so! You can read the changelogs to figure out just what the team is doing to help you have a better browser experience!)
* Easy to use
* Intuitive-- learns from your browsing habits (without sending that info anywhere)
* Allows you to open up multiple "home pages" in multiple tabs (!!!)
I could go on. So Get Firefox already! And then after that, grab some cool add-ons to make your browsing experience that much more fun/safe/interesting/colorful/whatever.
Here's a list of all the add-ons I use. Keep in mind that some of these are only compatible with the latest version of Firefox, or some are compatible with older versions and haven't been updated yet. Also, some might make more sense (or only be compatible) with a Mac instead of a PC. When you go to the site, check and see what it says before downloading it.
Adblock Plus - Ads? What ads? A lot of people stubbornly keep on using IE because they think it's simpler, but if I told them that they would RARELY SEE AN AD AGAIN if they switched to Firefox, I think a whole host of them would switch in an instant. That's possible with Adblock Plus and its related add-ons, the Filterset.G Updater and the Element Hiding Helper. You can hide everything from subtle-looking small images like on Facebook to the annoying flashing ads you see everywhere else. You can also block text ads! What's to say no to?
All-in-One Sidebar - If you're at all like me, you don't want to have to remember four or five different menus where all your options are. The AiOS allows a Firefox user to look at their:
* Add-Ons (install, disable, uninstall)
* Plugins (necessary to make sure you have all the right ones to view most modern web sites, e.g. Flash, Java, Silverlight, etc.)
* Themes (for restyling the look of Firefox)
* History
* Bookmarks
* Downloads
* Page Info (view detailed information about the site you're looking at)
* Page Source
Error Console (in case something doesn't look right and you want to know exactly what's causing it)
All with one click! Plus, the sidebar vanishes to a thin "grippy" bar on the left-side of the window. Of course, you have the option of it being a slim (about 50 px wide) bar with buttons on it for the most common menus, too.
Colorful Tabs - I don't know about you, but I have a LOT of tabs open at once. As a result, sometimes I forget "where" that tab I had open was. But it's a lot easier to find a tab if it's COLORED. This simple little extension allows for just that-- coloring randomly or by domain. You can set a pattern (like clouds or bubbles or whatever image you've got handy) to appear in the background, too.
ColorZilla - Ever see a color on a webpage and you just wanna know WHAT IS IT!? If you want to know the RGB or Hex code, then ColorZilla is the tool for you. It's a small, handy little eyedropper that sits in the lower left of your screen. Just click on it and you get a crosshair that you can use to narrow down the specific area that you want to pick the color from. Click on it once you see it in the background of the eyedropper box, and then next to the box (or if you hover over it, if you've got too many lower-toolbar add-ons) to see the RGB values and hex code! It even gives you the property (img, span, etc.) that has that color!
CoolIris (formerly PicLens) - If you regularly browse sites like DeviantART, YouTube, Hulu, or Google Images, you might want to view the images in a nicer viewer than the default provided. CoolIris does just that. An image with CoolIris enabled will have a small icon over the lower left corner. It looks like two squares overlapping each other with a white arrow pointing toward the upper right of the top square; when you hover, one square turns green and the other turns blue. If you click, the background becomes a deep gray and you get a crystal-clear, zoomed-in look at the picture, along with thumbnails of any others on the page (for example, the deviations of Deviants you may have on your Watch list). You can also view additional information about each information, depending on what the website supplies. Just hit "escape" to leave CoolIris.
Custom Buttons - Create custom buttons! If you think having text buttons makes your browser too cumbersome, why not create some cute buttons that do what YOU want? You can do that with custom buttons! I should use this a lot more often, actually....
Customize Google - Do your Google seach results leave you a bit wanting? With this handy extension, you can now get one-click access to the top other search engines-- without having to re-type your search or visit another website. Plus, it's got a ton of options (all of which are optional):
* Remove ads
* Add links to other web search websites
* Use Google Suggest (suggest words while you're typing)
* Give the search box focus
* Add position counter
* Enable filters (get rid of sites whose results you might not want to see; it displays the link grayed out, but not all the details)
* Add links to WayBackMachine for webpage history
AND MORE! Super helpful!
CuteMenus2 - Are you more of a visual person than a text person? I know I can be, especially when it comes to menus. When I want to go back, I look for an arrow facing left, not a word saying "Back" on my toolbar. Enter Cute Menus! It adds a cute little icon (and there are a ton to choose from) next to your menu options so you always know what you're clicking, even if you aren't reading the text!
Del.icio.us Bookmarks - If you use del.icio.us to share, rate, and manage your bookmarks, then this is a pretty nifty tool. I actually had it disabled for a while because the del.icio.us folks didn't have it fully compatible with Firefox 3, but that's been remedied, and now I can easily add any bookmark to del.icio.us, tag it, add notes for sharing with others-- all so I can easily find my bookmarks later. I don't really like the new Tags Bundle or a lot of the other options for the new version, but they do let you "roll back" to a simpler version of this extension, so it works great!
Download Statusbar - If you're a multi-tasker like me, you don't want to have to keep an eye on your Download window (or sidebar, if you're using AiOS). Easily know how fast your downloads are progressing, how big they are, and whether or not they're done with the Download Statusbar! It shows a progress bar within the box with your download name on it, along with the size and time left (based on the transfer rate). When the download is done, just double-click to open the file and have the "bar" disappear from the Firefox toolbar. You can also delete files from the system, saving you the trouble of going to the Desktop and deleting it manually. You can also remove stopped or incomplete downloads with just one click, or resume broken downloads if the browser crashes or your Internet connection dies and restarts!
Download Helper - Want that YouTube video to watch when you're offline? How about that background music file? Download it easy with Download Helper-- it grabs just about any media and allows you to save it as easily as if you were right-clicking and Saving As! The cute little button (three balls in a triangle shape, one yellow, one blue, and one red) will move to let you know when there's media on the page that can be downloaded and saved.
DownThemAll! - I have a ton of download managers, but this is the one that I'll turn to first for fast, reliable downloading. If you've ever been to a webpage and just had a joygasm with all the stuff you want to download, then you've GOT to get DownThemAll! With one simple click, you can download ALL of the content of your choosing on a particular site-- no repetitive right-clicking necessary! All kinds of preferences to set so you don't throttle domains, and you can also resume broken downloads!
eBay Toolbar - This is for people that actively shop and sell on eBay. Even if you do only rarely (like I do), this is a handy extension to have around. Once you have it enabled, you can easily keep track of all your actions: buying, selling, etc. You can also take eBay's results and spiff them up: add price comparisons, reviews, shipping info, and items in the search results (even if the user didn't pay for it)! So now no more sifting through loads of useless auction listings-- one click, one look, and you know if it's the item you want!
FAYT - No, this isn't a sly reference to the Star Ocean: Till The End of Time hero; it's an acronym for "Find As You Type." If you find yourself pressing Ctrl-F (or Cmd-F for my fellow Mac users) and needing to sift through a whole lot of text to find one particular word or phrase, then use this! Find just the right instance of a word or phrase; highlight all instances of that word or phrase-- go next or previous to find just the one you need! Plus, if you already have the Find toolbar enabled (because you pressed Ctrl/Cmd-F and didn't close it), you can find as you type-- finding partial matches of a word, too! Super handy!
FfChrome - When you right-click, do you spend more time searching for your desired option than you do actually doing whatever it is you're right-clicking for? Enter CuteMenus2-- it compacts your right-click menu into a minimized menu that learns what options you use the most often. If you ever need to access any "extra" menu options, just click on "Show All," and there you go-- everything as it normally would appear in your usual right-click menu. (MADE BY THE SAME AWESOME GUY AS COLORFULTABS AND CUTEMENUS2!)
Firebug - A *MUST* if you're a web developer. My cousin Mike introduced me to this one, and it is SO helpful for when I'm bug testing a web page I've made or I want to know "How did they do that?" for someone else's page. View complete information about a site-- code broken down into easy-to-see, organized elements (complete with indentation, even if the original coder didn't do that!), CSS, and more! Just click on the little "bug" in your lower toolbar and be given a world of info!
FlashGot - Another Download manager, this time from the guys that make NoScript (see below). Like DownThemAll!, this one lets you download everything on a site, but it also integrates with external download managers like SpeedDownloader. You can also use it for downloading everything in a set of tabs, a particular link, or a selection. Especially helpful if you've got links that are changed from http:// to something else, or don't have it at all.....
Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer - I use Firefox (Windows) at work (that is, the IT Help Desk), and at home/on my laptop. If I ever find myself wanting to visit a site I KNOW I have bookmarked, but I don't remember the URL off the top of my head and don't want to waste time searching... I use Foxmarks! Foxmarks lets me synchronize my bookmarks (and passwords, but I don't use this utility because I have the 1Password application for my Mac) to any computer with this cute little extension on it. Not for use on public computers (assuming you could install it on one anyway), but if you have a household PC with multiple users, then install this extension on your user's account. Then, set up a Foxmarks account to synchronize your bookmarks however you want! You can set one computer as a "master" computer, so that its bookmarks will overwrite the other's, or you can combine them! Never lose a bookmark again! I find this easier than using del.icio.us, because I don't need to go a site or click anything to enable the synchronization or to know where my bookmarks are!
FoxyTunes - Browse in silence!? Are you kidding me? I listen to iTunes every time I browse. With FoxyTunes, I can easily pause, play, skip the track, rewind to the track's beginning, find out the track info, and much more. You can also compress this from a small form with just the buttons to a larger one that displays the track info. You can even "post" your current music choice to online forms like LiveJournal posts, BB posts, and more! I don't use this as much because I have Synergy for my Mac OS X toolbar, but it's very handy in case Synergy craps out on me (which so far has only been once).
Google Toolbar for Firefox - Take the most powerful toolbar with you in Firefox! You can easily search, view your last searches in Google (even if you made that search with a keyword in the Address Bar, using the Google.com webpage, or the search bar in Firefox, rather than the Google Toolbar), search specific Google sites with one click, check your Google bookmarks, view the current page's Page Rank, and use a multitude of handy buttons such as Auto-link (look for postal addresses, shipping numbers and the like), Auto-fill (handy for filling out repetitive forms), and more!
Greasemonkey - If you want customization, this is your extension! Download scripts from Userscripts.org and modify your entire web browsing experience! There are scripts for almost every site you visit, including LiveJournal, YouTube, popular downloading sites like MegaUpload, and more! Check out Userscripts.org and see what's offered, then grab Greasemonkey to take advantage of them! Use it with Greasefire to find new scripts as they're added to Userscripts.org!
Link Fixer Thing* - Unfortunately not compatible with the latest version of Firefox (3.0.5 as of this writing), but still, a handy extension. It fixes a lot of link problems-- like Hotmail's typical reaction to links with ampersands in them. It can also strip Javascript from links so you can immediately right-click and open them in a new tab, or save the URL, bookmark it, etc. A user name Pirate Andy has an updated version for FF3+! (For that updated version, go to the MediaFire site, save the download to your desktop, and then go into Firefox's Add-Ons menu and click "Install." Then point to the *.xpi file on your Desktop, let Firefox install it, restart Firefox, and voila!)
Livejournal Addons - Madonna had it right: "You only see what your eyes want to see...." Well, why shouldn't I? Especially when checking out LiveJournal? This amazing add-on lets me expand all comments in a LiveJournal post's comment thread with a single click, or just view individual ones if I feel so inclined. It lets me stay abreast of updates on my Friends' page with a customizable toolbar at the bottom of my screen, notifies me of birthdays and new inbox messages, and tons more!
Livejournal Quote* - No longer compatible with the latest version of Firefox, and unfortunately it doesn't look popular enough with coders that are LJ users for anyone to take it up on their own. The creator didn't leave a website or other way of contacting him.... alas! It was a pretty nifty way of using the "quote" feature of LJ comments and actually making it stand out, rather than just... sticking it in quotes. It converted BBcode-like tags to customizable DIV tags with CSS that you could edit. Not very helpful for those that don't know CSS, but a cool concept for commenting. I wish this could be updated!
McAfee Site Advisor - I don't normally like the bloated suites of McAfee and Norton, but this is a pretty handy little extension that's free and makes browsing safer. It sticks a bubble next to your search results depending on McAfee's assessment if the site is "safe," and if you hover over that bubble (it can be green with a check, white with a question mark, yellow with an exclamation mark, or red with an X), it'll tell you just WHY the site received the mark it did. Helpful before visiting a site you've never been to before. With the new version, they also installed a Secure Search bar, but it's easily disabled by clicking on the small down arrow next to the McAfee Site Advisor button in the bottom toolbar.
MegaFix** - Only for Mac users. MegaUpload has its toolbar which works fine in Windows, but in OS X, what are you supposed to do? Use Megafix, which emulates the MegaUpload toolbar without all that ugliness. On top of it, you can still take advantage of the Happy Hour Premium (during the usual hours) with only two clicks! (An experimental add-on, but I've used it and it's worked great! To download it, you need to have a Mozilla.org login and be signed in.)
NoScript - My absolute favorite add-on, but probably one of the hardest for IE users to get used to. Nowadays, almost all the garbage that can potentially damage your computer (or at least annoy you) comes at you through Javascript, Java, and other plugins. By disabling them by default, you can selectively choose which sites should be allowed to display or download content to your computer. Creating the "whitelist" of allowed sites is as easy as clicking: the little NoScript icon in the bottom right of your toolbar has a "No" sign over it for disallowed sites, is white with a blue S in it for allowed sites, and has an option for allowing scripts dangerously if something's weird and it's not because of a disabled Javascript. There are tons of options for preventing cross site linking (XSS), where you click one link but it takes you to someplace completely different, dealing with Silverlight, and more. THIS MAKES YOUR BROWSING SUPER-SECURE. Once you get used to "whitelisting" the sites you visit most, using this as part of Firefox is a breeze! (And if you don't believe me, check the over 1 MILLION weekly downloads!)
PDF Download Who has time to wait for Adobe Reader/Acrobat or Preview to open? Why not just view your PDF file right there in Firefox? Now you can, with PDF Download. You can also view PDFs as HTML!
Rikaichan + Japanese - English Dictionary and Names Dictionary - If you visit Japanese websites like I do, or simply want to check a kanji or two (for example, to see if the transliterator on AnimeLyrics.com got it right), then you NEED this extension! Easily translate Japanese to English, whether you're looking at a word or a name! Also works with German, French, and Russian!
Sage - If you know what RSS and Atom are, this is a good extension. It hasn't been updated since June '08, so you might want to keep your eye on Sage-Too instead. But if your RSS solution is to use a separate program, consider Sage: it's lightweight, but has a ton of options for viewing RSS feeds or Atom feeds. Easily check your Friends' page to see if there's anything new worth reading, peruse Facebook updates, or see if your favorite author has updated their fanfic! Any site with RSS or Atom can be tracked with Sage!
Stylish - Ever wanted to change the look of a website? I mean "Geez, that site is godawful ugly!" Enter Stylish. Redo the style of a site (yours or one you're just looking at) using the simple management of user styles (stylesheets, CSS). You can also customize the look of your browser, mail client, and more! There are a ton of styles to choose from at userstyles.org! As the description says, Stylish is to CSS what Greasemonkey is to Javascript, so have at it! Some sites worth restyling:
* DeviantART (break away from that gloomy gray!)
* Wikipedia (Make it cleaner, simpler, and free of giant obtrusive ads begging for money!)
* Facebook
* Google
* LiveJournal (!!REMOVE ADS WHEN VIEWING JOURNALS EVEN IF YOU'RE NOT LOGGED IN/IF YOU'RE PLUS/IF THE JOURNAL IS PLUS!!)
AND MORE!
Tab Mix Plus - the ultimate tab manager. Sure, Firefox has improved its tab management and session restore feature over the years, but Tab Mix Plus helped it get there, and still adds a ton of features that have yet to be made basic Firefox options. For example:
* Duplicate tabs
* Undo a tab closing (SUPER USEFUL!)
* Control tab focus
UnMHT - Only useful for a select few. In my case, my BIOL 100 teacher put up a few lectures that were MHT format, meaning they could only be opened in IE. Not Safari, not Firefox with a User Agent Switch: ONLY IE. That's pretty lame, so I got this nifty extension that lets me view and save MHT files just like IE does. (Truth be told, Firefox wouldn't need this extension if stupid formats proprietary to IE didn't exist in the first place, but Microsoft seems to want to have their name stamped over a ton of things.)
Update Notifier - Okay, if you're really going to get any/all of these extensions, wouldn't it be nice to know when a new version comes out? That way, you're ALWAYS up to date! This add-on lets you do just that, and stay abreast of all the changes to your add-ons!
User Agent Switcher - Web page looking a bit funny? Change the User Agent! Just as IE Tab does for Firefox users on Windows, User Agent Switcher does the same-- and a bit more. You can change the "user agent" that displays a webpage-- that is, the browser that the site thinks you're looking at it with. Choose from IE6, Netscape, or Opera! You can add more user agents, or delete the ones you never use. They all emulate the environment (e.g. Windows XP, Windows Vista) that you choose, so you should always be able to see webpages the right way! Admittedly, I rarely use this (because Firefox almost always does everything perfect on its own :P) but it's a very handy tool to have!
Web Developer - As the name implies, it's a handy, almost essential extension for anyone that develops websites. You can disable the CSS of a site, display the CSS by media type, and more! Check forms, see images outlined-- help you figure out a bug or find out how a web developer created a cool trick, all with this one nifty toolbar extension!
XHTML Ruby Support - If you've ever wanted to read a kanji character without having to copy-paste it into a translator, or know what an acronym means without having to look it up, then you'll need this. This adds support for Ruby text, that cute little text that appears above things like kanji and acronyms across the web, allowing you to read it and know what it says!
Xoopit for Gmail -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fountainthe showed me this nifty little add-on for GMail, and it seems to be fairly cool. I'm not sure if it's the reason why GMail had a mysterious new labeling system in place, but judging by the description of the add-on and its settings, I don't think so. What it does is peruse your GMail account for pictures, videos, documents, etc-- anything you'd want quick and easy access to, except you just can't remember who sent it, when, what the subject line was, or whether you labeled it/starred it/put it in a folder. Problem solved! Sure, you do need to give the extension your GMail account info, but it's only so it can dig through your emails. It seems pretty safe.
* Not for the latest version of Firefox
** For Macs only
I hope that was helpful! Let me know if you've found any of these add-ons helpful, if you have tips/tricks for any of them, or if you have others to recommend!
Listen To Your Heart (Hardstyle Mix) by DHT from Listen To Your Heart Vinyl (Rating: 0)
For starters, it's:
* More secure
* More customizable/personalizable
* More stable (rarely crashes, and when it does, you can find out WHY by asking to be emailed about updates regarding the crash)
* Gets updated more regularly (like, every month or so! You can read the changelogs to figure out just what the team is doing to help you have a better browser experience!)
* Easy to use
* Intuitive-- learns from your browsing habits (without sending that info anywhere)
* Allows you to open up multiple "home pages" in multiple tabs (!!!)
I could go on. So Get Firefox already! And then after that, grab some cool add-ons to make your browsing experience that much more fun/safe/interesting/colorful/whatever.
Here's a list of all the add-ons I use. Keep in mind that some of these are only compatible with the latest version of Firefox, or some are compatible with older versions and haven't been updated yet. Also, some might make more sense (or only be compatible) with a Mac instead of a PC. When you go to the site, check and see what it says before downloading it.
Adblock Plus - Ads? What ads? A lot of people stubbornly keep on using IE because they think it's simpler, but if I told them that they would RARELY SEE AN AD AGAIN if they switched to Firefox, I think a whole host of them would switch in an instant. That's possible with Adblock Plus and its related add-ons, the Filterset.G Updater and the Element Hiding Helper. You can hide everything from subtle-looking small images like on Facebook to the annoying flashing ads you see everywhere else. You can also block text ads! What's to say no to?
All-in-One Sidebar - If you're at all like me, you don't want to have to remember four or five different menus where all your options are. The AiOS allows a Firefox user to look at their:
* Add-Ons (install, disable, uninstall)
* Plugins (necessary to make sure you have all the right ones to view most modern web sites, e.g. Flash, Java, Silverlight, etc.)
* Themes (for restyling the look of Firefox)
* History
* Bookmarks
* Downloads
* Page Info (view detailed information about the site you're looking at)
* Page Source
Error Console (in case something doesn't look right and you want to know exactly what's causing it)
All with one click! Plus, the sidebar vanishes to a thin "grippy" bar on the left-side of the window. Of course, you have the option of it being a slim (about 50 px wide) bar with buttons on it for the most common menus, too.
Colorful Tabs - I don't know about you, but I have a LOT of tabs open at once. As a result, sometimes I forget "where" that tab I had open was. But it's a lot easier to find a tab if it's COLORED. This simple little extension allows for just that-- coloring randomly or by domain. You can set a pattern (like clouds or bubbles or whatever image you've got handy) to appear in the background, too.
ColorZilla - Ever see a color on a webpage and you just wanna know WHAT IS IT!? If you want to know the RGB or Hex code, then ColorZilla is the tool for you. It's a small, handy little eyedropper that sits in the lower left of your screen. Just click on it and you get a crosshair that you can use to narrow down the specific area that you want to pick the color from. Click on it once you see it in the background of the eyedropper box, and then next to the box (or if you hover over it, if you've got too many lower-toolbar add-ons) to see the RGB values and hex code! It even gives you the property (img, span, etc.) that has that color!
CoolIris (formerly PicLens) - If you regularly browse sites like DeviantART, YouTube, Hulu, or Google Images, you might want to view the images in a nicer viewer than the default provided. CoolIris does just that. An image with CoolIris enabled will have a small icon over the lower left corner. It looks like two squares overlapping each other with a white arrow pointing toward the upper right of the top square; when you hover, one square turns green and the other turns blue. If you click, the background becomes a deep gray and you get a crystal-clear, zoomed-in look at the picture, along with thumbnails of any others on the page (for example, the deviations of Deviants you may have on your Watch list). You can also view additional information about each information, depending on what the website supplies. Just hit "escape" to leave CoolIris.
Custom Buttons - Create custom buttons! If you think having text buttons makes your browser too cumbersome, why not create some cute buttons that do what YOU want? You can do that with custom buttons! I should use this a lot more often, actually....
Customize Google - Do your Google seach results leave you a bit wanting? With this handy extension, you can now get one-click access to the top other search engines-- without having to re-type your search or visit another website. Plus, it's got a ton of options (all of which are optional):
* Remove ads
* Add links to other web search websites
* Use Google Suggest (suggest words while you're typing)
* Give the search box focus
* Add position counter
* Enable filters (get rid of sites whose results you might not want to see; it displays the link grayed out, but not all the details)
* Add links to WayBackMachine for webpage history
AND MORE! Super helpful!
CuteMenus2 - Are you more of a visual person than a text person? I know I can be, especially when it comes to menus. When I want to go back, I look for an arrow facing left, not a word saying "Back" on my toolbar. Enter Cute Menus! It adds a cute little icon (and there are a ton to choose from) next to your menu options so you always know what you're clicking, even if you aren't reading the text!
Del.icio.us Bookmarks - If you use del.icio.us to share, rate, and manage your bookmarks, then this is a pretty nifty tool. I actually had it disabled for a while because the del.icio.us folks didn't have it fully compatible with Firefox 3, but that's been remedied, and now I can easily add any bookmark to del.icio.us, tag it, add notes for sharing with others-- all so I can easily find my bookmarks later. I don't really like the new Tags Bundle or a lot of the other options for the new version, but they do let you "roll back" to a simpler version of this extension, so it works great!
Download Statusbar - If you're a multi-tasker like me, you don't want to have to keep an eye on your Download window (or sidebar, if you're using AiOS). Easily know how fast your downloads are progressing, how big they are, and whether or not they're done with the Download Statusbar! It shows a progress bar within the box with your download name on it, along with the size and time left (based on the transfer rate). When the download is done, just double-click to open the file and have the "bar" disappear from the Firefox toolbar. You can also delete files from the system, saving you the trouble of going to the Desktop and deleting it manually. You can also remove stopped or incomplete downloads with just one click, or resume broken downloads if the browser crashes or your Internet connection dies and restarts!
Download Helper - Want that YouTube video to watch when you're offline? How about that background music file? Download it easy with Download Helper-- it grabs just about any media and allows you to save it as easily as if you were right-clicking and Saving As! The cute little button (three balls in a triangle shape, one yellow, one blue, and one red) will move to let you know when there's media on the page that can be downloaded and saved.
DownThemAll! - I have a ton of download managers, but this is the one that I'll turn to first for fast, reliable downloading. If you've ever been to a webpage and just had a joygasm with all the stuff you want to download, then you've GOT to get DownThemAll! With one simple click, you can download ALL of the content of your choosing on a particular site-- no repetitive right-clicking necessary! All kinds of preferences to set so you don't throttle domains, and you can also resume broken downloads!
eBay Toolbar - This is for people that actively shop and sell on eBay. Even if you do only rarely (like I do), this is a handy extension to have around. Once you have it enabled, you can easily keep track of all your actions: buying, selling, etc. You can also take eBay's results and spiff them up: add price comparisons, reviews, shipping info, and items in the search results (even if the user didn't pay for it)! So now no more sifting through loads of useless auction listings-- one click, one look, and you know if it's the item you want!
FAYT - No, this isn't a sly reference to the Star Ocean: Till The End of Time hero; it's an acronym for "Find As You Type." If you find yourself pressing Ctrl-F (or Cmd-F for my fellow Mac users) and needing to sift through a whole lot of text to find one particular word or phrase, then use this! Find just the right instance of a word or phrase; highlight all instances of that word or phrase-- go next or previous to find just the one you need! Plus, if you already have the Find toolbar enabled (because you pressed Ctrl/Cmd-F and didn't close it), you can find as you type-- finding partial matches of a word, too! Super handy!
FfChrome - When you right-click, do you spend more time searching for your desired option than you do actually doing whatever it is you're right-clicking for? Enter CuteMenus2-- it compacts your right-click menu into a minimized menu that learns what options you use the most often. If you ever need to access any "extra" menu options, just click on "Show All," and there you go-- everything as it normally would appear in your usual right-click menu. (MADE BY THE SAME AWESOME GUY AS COLORFULTABS AND CUTEMENUS2!)
Firebug - A *MUST* if you're a web developer. My cousin Mike introduced me to this one, and it is SO helpful for when I'm bug testing a web page I've made or I want to know "How did they do that?" for someone else's page. View complete information about a site-- code broken down into easy-to-see, organized elements (complete with indentation, even if the original coder didn't do that!), CSS, and more! Just click on the little "bug" in your lower toolbar and be given a world of info!
FlashGot - Another Download manager, this time from the guys that make NoScript (see below). Like DownThemAll!, this one lets you download everything on a site, but it also integrates with external download managers like SpeedDownloader. You can also use it for downloading everything in a set of tabs, a particular link, or a selection. Especially helpful if you've got links that are changed from http:// to something else, or don't have it at all.....
Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer - I use Firefox (Windows) at work (that is, the IT Help Desk), and at home/on my laptop. If I ever find myself wanting to visit a site I KNOW I have bookmarked, but I don't remember the URL off the top of my head and don't want to waste time searching... I use Foxmarks! Foxmarks lets me synchronize my bookmarks (and passwords, but I don't use this utility because I have the 1Password application for my Mac) to any computer with this cute little extension on it. Not for use on public computers (assuming you could install it on one anyway), but if you have a household PC with multiple users, then install this extension on your user's account. Then, set up a Foxmarks account to synchronize your bookmarks however you want! You can set one computer as a "master" computer, so that its bookmarks will overwrite the other's, or you can combine them! Never lose a bookmark again! I find this easier than using del.icio.us, because I don't need to go a site or click anything to enable the synchronization or to know where my bookmarks are!
FoxyTunes - Browse in silence!? Are you kidding me? I listen to iTunes every time I browse. With FoxyTunes, I can easily pause, play, skip the track, rewind to the track's beginning, find out the track info, and much more. You can also compress this from a small form with just the buttons to a larger one that displays the track info. You can even "post" your current music choice to online forms like LiveJournal posts, BB posts, and more! I don't use this as much because I have Synergy for my Mac OS X toolbar, but it's very handy in case Synergy craps out on me (which so far has only been once).
Google Toolbar for Firefox - Take the most powerful toolbar with you in Firefox! You can easily search, view your last searches in Google (even if you made that search with a keyword in the Address Bar, using the Google.com webpage, or the search bar in Firefox, rather than the Google Toolbar), search specific Google sites with one click, check your Google bookmarks, view the current page's Page Rank, and use a multitude of handy buttons such as Auto-link (look for postal addresses, shipping numbers and the like), Auto-fill (handy for filling out repetitive forms), and more!
Greasemonkey - If you want customization, this is your extension! Download scripts from Userscripts.org and modify your entire web browsing experience! There are scripts for almost every site you visit, including LiveJournal, YouTube, popular downloading sites like MegaUpload, and more! Check out Userscripts.org and see what's offered, then grab Greasemonkey to take advantage of them! Use it with Greasefire to find new scripts as they're added to Userscripts.org!
Link Fixer Thing* - Unfortunately not compatible with the latest version of Firefox (3.0.5 as of this writing), but still, a handy extension. It fixes a lot of link problems-- like Hotmail's typical reaction to links with ampersands in them. It can also strip Javascript from links so you can immediately right-click and open them in a new tab, or save the URL, bookmark it, etc. A user name Pirate Andy has an updated version for FF3+! (For that updated version, go to the MediaFire site, save the download to your desktop, and then go into Firefox's Add-Ons menu and click "Install." Then point to the *.xpi file on your Desktop, let Firefox install it, restart Firefox, and voila!)
Livejournal Addons - Madonna had it right: "You only see what your eyes want to see...." Well, why shouldn't I? Especially when checking out LiveJournal? This amazing add-on lets me expand all comments in a LiveJournal post's comment thread with a single click, or just view individual ones if I feel so inclined. It lets me stay abreast of updates on my Friends' page with a customizable toolbar at the bottom of my screen, notifies me of birthdays and new inbox messages, and tons more!
Livejournal Quote* - No longer compatible with the latest version of Firefox, and unfortunately it doesn't look popular enough with coders that are LJ users for anyone to take it up on their own. The creator didn't leave a website or other way of contacting him.... alas! It was a pretty nifty way of using the "quote" feature of LJ comments and actually making it stand out, rather than just... sticking it in quotes. It converted BBcode-like tags to customizable DIV tags with CSS that you could edit. Not very helpful for those that don't know CSS, but a cool concept for commenting. I wish this could be updated!
McAfee Site Advisor - I don't normally like the bloated suites of McAfee and Norton, but this is a pretty handy little extension that's free and makes browsing safer. It sticks a bubble next to your search results depending on McAfee's assessment if the site is "safe," and if you hover over that bubble (it can be green with a check, white with a question mark, yellow with an exclamation mark, or red with an X), it'll tell you just WHY the site received the mark it did. Helpful before visiting a site you've never been to before. With the new version, they also installed a Secure Search bar, but it's easily disabled by clicking on the small down arrow next to the McAfee Site Advisor button in the bottom toolbar.
MegaFix** - Only for Mac users. MegaUpload has its toolbar which works fine in Windows, but in OS X, what are you supposed to do? Use Megafix, which emulates the MegaUpload toolbar without all that ugliness. On top of it, you can still take advantage of the Happy Hour Premium (during the usual hours) with only two clicks! (An experimental add-on, but I've used it and it's worked great! To download it, you need to have a Mozilla.org login and be signed in.)
NoScript - My absolute favorite add-on, but probably one of the hardest for IE users to get used to. Nowadays, almost all the garbage that can potentially damage your computer (or at least annoy you) comes at you through Javascript, Java, and other plugins. By disabling them by default, you can selectively choose which sites should be allowed to display or download content to your computer. Creating the "whitelist" of allowed sites is as easy as clicking: the little NoScript icon in the bottom right of your toolbar has a "No" sign over it for disallowed sites, is white with a blue S in it for allowed sites, and has an option for allowing scripts dangerously if something's weird and it's not because of a disabled Javascript. There are tons of options for preventing cross site linking (XSS), where you click one link but it takes you to someplace completely different, dealing with Silverlight, and more. THIS MAKES YOUR BROWSING SUPER-SECURE. Once you get used to "whitelisting" the sites you visit most, using this as part of Firefox is a breeze! (And if you don't believe me, check the over 1 MILLION weekly downloads!)
PDF Download Who has time to wait for Adobe Reader/Acrobat or Preview to open? Why not just view your PDF file right there in Firefox? Now you can, with PDF Download. You can also view PDFs as HTML!
Rikaichan + Japanese - English Dictionary and Names Dictionary - If you visit Japanese websites like I do, or simply want to check a kanji or two (for example, to see if the transliterator on AnimeLyrics.com got it right), then you NEED this extension! Easily translate Japanese to English, whether you're looking at a word or a name! Also works with German, French, and Russian!
Sage - If you know what RSS and Atom are, this is a good extension. It hasn't been updated since June '08, so you might want to keep your eye on Sage-Too instead. But if your RSS solution is to use a separate program, consider Sage: it's lightweight, but has a ton of options for viewing RSS feeds or Atom feeds. Easily check your Friends' page to see if there's anything new worth reading, peruse Facebook updates, or see if your favorite author has updated their fanfic! Any site with RSS or Atom can be tracked with Sage!
Stylish - Ever wanted to change the look of a website? I mean "Geez, that site is godawful ugly!" Enter Stylish. Redo the style of a site (yours or one you're just looking at) using the simple management of user styles (stylesheets, CSS). You can also customize the look of your browser, mail client, and more! There are a ton of styles to choose from at userstyles.org! As the description says, Stylish is to CSS what Greasemonkey is to Javascript, so have at it! Some sites worth restyling:
* DeviantART (break away from that gloomy gray!)
* Wikipedia (Make it cleaner, simpler, and free of giant obtrusive ads begging for money!)
* LiveJournal (!!REMOVE ADS WHEN VIEWING JOURNALS EVEN IF YOU'RE NOT LOGGED IN/IF YOU'RE PLUS/IF THE JOURNAL IS PLUS!!)
AND MORE!
Tab Mix Plus - the ultimate tab manager. Sure, Firefox has improved its tab management and session restore feature over the years, but Tab Mix Plus helped it get there, and still adds a ton of features that have yet to be made basic Firefox options. For example:
* Duplicate tabs
* Undo a tab closing (SUPER USEFUL!)
* Control tab focus
UnMHT - Only useful for a select few. In my case, my BIOL 100 teacher put up a few lectures that were MHT format, meaning they could only be opened in IE. Not Safari, not Firefox with a User Agent Switch: ONLY IE. That's pretty lame, so I got this nifty extension that lets me view and save MHT files just like IE does. (Truth be told, Firefox wouldn't need this extension if stupid formats proprietary to IE didn't exist in the first place, but Microsoft seems to want to have their name stamped over a ton of things.)
Update Notifier - Okay, if you're really going to get any/all of these extensions, wouldn't it be nice to know when a new version comes out? That way, you're ALWAYS up to date! This add-on lets you do just that, and stay abreast of all the changes to your add-ons!
User Agent Switcher - Web page looking a bit funny? Change the User Agent! Just as IE Tab does for Firefox users on Windows, User Agent Switcher does the same-- and a bit more. You can change the "user agent" that displays a webpage-- that is, the browser that the site thinks you're looking at it with. Choose from IE6, Netscape, or Opera! You can add more user agents, or delete the ones you never use. They all emulate the environment (e.g. Windows XP, Windows Vista) that you choose, so you should always be able to see webpages the right way! Admittedly, I rarely use this (because Firefox almost always does everything perfect on its own :P) but it's a very handy tool to have!
Web Developer - As the name implies, it's a handy, almost essential extension for anyone that develops websites. You can disable the CSS of a site, display the CSS by media type, and more! Check forms, see images outlined-- help you figure out a bug or find out how a web developer created a cool trick, all with this one nifty toolbar extension!
XHTML Ruby Support - If you've ever wanted to read a kanji character without having to copy-paste it into a translator, or know what an acronym means without having to look it up, then you'll need this. This adds support for Ruby text, that cute little text that appears above things like kanji and acronyms across the web, allowing you to read it and know what it says!
Xoopit for Gmail -
fountainthe showed me this nifty little add-on for GMail, and it seems to be fairly cool. I'm not sure if it's the reason why GMail had a mysterious new labeling system in place, but judging by the description of the add-on and its settings, I don't think so. What it does is peruse your GMail account for pictures, videos, documents, etc-- anything you'd want quick and easy access to, except you just can't remember who sent it, when, what the subject line was, or whether you labeled it/starred it/put it in a folder. Problem solved! Sure, you do need to give the extension your GMail account info, but it's only so it can dig through your emails. It seems pretty safe.* Not for the latest version of Firefox
** For Macs only
I hope that was helpful! Let me know if you've found any of these add-ons helpful, if you have tips/tricks for any of them, or if you have others to recommend!
Listen To Your Heart (Hardstyle Mix) by DHT from Listen To Your Heart Vinyl (Rating: 0)
