Firefox is the browser of choice by the people in-the-know, but it’s best feature is that it allows a multitude of add-ons or plug-ins that can help your regular experience of the net and how useful the browser itself can be made.
Of course customisations are just that, a personal selection of changes that you, the individual might want to make so this list is by no means definitive of what you must have, but commonly, for web surfers, I expect these will be of benefit to you.
| The Features | The Functions | |
This bookmark add-on provides a great array of features for when you bookmark a site. My biggest problem is that I bookmark a site at work and then don’t have that available when I get on my computer at home, this is the solution.
It allows you to submit your bookmarks and even user/form data up to a server to synchronise across multiple machines. You could use it in an organisation to collect group bookmarks or as a personal service like myself, where I like to have my bookmarks on all my computers. Better yet, the new service even allows you to log into their web site and access them from any PC, you don’t need to install the add-on to get your information.
It adds a lot of search and tagging functions to the bookmarks as they are created making them easier to find later and it provide various levels of opt-in and security settings to keep things private.
Although this may seem a simple module I find it very useful as it removes the need for a pop-up download manager and extra screens that get in the way.
This add-on puts an easily visible status of any downloads down in the footer of the main screen of your browser showing the download rates and the overall percentage of file remaining.
Don’t underestimate it’s power, it then lets you easily double-click and activate the download or right-click open folder to go straight to the file. There are a few more option and settings this small app allows, but with a simple and default install I make it a requirement on all my setups.
I am not going to lie to you, I hate the fact that I need to have this plug-in. I don’t want it, I shouldn’t need it but the people at ye ‘ol Microsoft make it necessary.
Now this is the case both as a web developer and also just as a general web surfer. I use Hotmail (or now Live) and I also have MS Exchange used at work for web based email. You only get the full functionality when your access them with IE so this is the tool to solve those problems. You can set it to activate on sites by name (live.com) or just switch with the click of a mouse when you want to switch over allowing you to test things in both views. It’s handy and it maintains your Firefox tabs while giving you the full IE experience these ‘special’ web sites require.
This may not be for everybody, but if you do use Google services including Gmail then I recommend it.
It provides a link between your browser apps and your desktop, bringing some of the web functionality into an environment within your browser and by doing this it can increase the ability of the program and also it’s performance.
It’s a development and application environment so explaining it as more would be difficult. It has a lot of potential, like improving the performance of Gmail by having much of the functionality run in the host browser locally instead of online, while increasing functionality, like giving Google Calendar the ability to run locally and off-line entirely.
I also use it to improve the performance of Wordpress Administration and a few other sites that use it’s features. Nothing ventured, nothing gained… So if you use Google stuff then get it in your browser.
There is nothing I hate more than rebuilding a computer, setting it up with all the programs you want (or recently had before a failure) and then only to find that you have to re-customise all the programs you were using.
The solution for Firefox is FEBE, it does regular scheduled backups of your Firefox environment, including your extensions and add-ons into re-installable files. You can synchronise Firefox environments over multiple computers by installing the backups on other systems, at home and work or for colleagues and staff or after a catastrophe to get your browser back to how you had it quickly and with a minimum of fuss.
Well that is the Five Features for Firefox and should set you up to enjoy the program a little more. Each of these listed above has a link to the site that provides a ‘download’ button. When clicked in Firefox will start the install of the .xpi application, then normally under the tools menu your can select it or attend to it’s settings.
Taking this a step further, I have some extra functions that I can not leave the home without, for web development they are a necessary inclusion in the toolkit but for general network related things that you might be doing with your site, your blog or work files, you find them handy too.
Puts the ‘F’ into FTP, File Transfer Protocol was one of the first ways the Internet moved files and it’s still used today to put files into web sites, upload attachments to emails and various other file moving requirements on the net.
This does it for you in a nice GUI way, within your browser. I am always using it to upload wordpress installations to the host, set permissions on files, change configurations in text files and so much more.
All the wonderful code behind a web page can be checked and viewed and tested using Firebug. It splits your web page into parts that show you the code and style sheet information you need to see to ensure your web pages are working properly, or where they are going wrong when not.
Web pages are getting all the more complicated to present, and if you writing a blog like this one to building templates and content management systems, this tool is a must.
This is a strange one to explain, and even more so to get the most from. It’s a scripting platform that resides in the browser and acts on key commands rather than a gui interface.
The best feature I use of this is the ability to send web page content in an email.
The scenario: you see a great web page (Dilbert of course) and you want to pass it to a friend, you could;
- Paste the link in the email – boring…
- Save the picture as a file on your desktop, then insert it as an attachment in your work email – risky and too much work.
- You select the image on the web page and ‘email selection to myfriend@…’ and click send. – easy!
It’s all context sensitive and text based, and you can add to or create more scripts for the system if your into that kind of thing. CTRL-SPACE brings up the window and as your typing commands it presents answers and results.
(select content) and Map these…, email to… wiki search…, twitter, digg, tinyurl shortcuts (and more) make it easy to move web page content into functional systems directly.
Now this is more than an add-in, it’s a full program that runs on Windows, Mac or Linux but it’s well worth it. The program synchronises a folder and the files contained in it with your account on their host site.
For up to 2Gb it’s free and it’s been running like a charm for me for some months. The first benefit of course is that you have a backup folder, whatever is in your dropbox folder is also copied into your account in their cloud (internet) site so if your hard drive fails, you have a copy there.
The other benefit is that you can install the same program on your home pc as well as at work and on a linux based eepc, whatever, and you have a shared folder space all synchronised.
Put a doc into your dropbox and it will be on your pc at home ready for you to continue working on, even on your laptop on the train journey home, open, update and save and the new version is updated on your other machines.
You can pay for more space, and I may consider it soon as it’s really becoming a necessary place for me to use (and abuse) but aside from the above obvious examples use there a few more tricks this has been used for…
- It also provides a public folder space, you can share files through a URL for people to get files from your account. Put pictures, programs whatever you create and share, put a link on your web site with almost no limits to size and frequency they get downloaded and hosted for free.
- Use the FEBE program above and set your backup folder to save inside your dropbox folder, that way when FEBE does a backup of your Firefox configuration, it’s automatically copied to the cloud and you can’t loose it.
- I can’t run torrent downloaders at work, but I can search and get .torrent files, so a trick I have seen used is to save a torrent (at work) in a dropbox/torrent folder and at home your PC has a torrent program running looking at the mirrored dropbox/torrent folder for updates, as soon as your torrent is uploaded to your home machine it will start downloading the file over the peer-to-peer network. Tricky.
OK, that last one might be stretching it for you…
The above are all free and available extensions and programs at the time of writing, I hope you enjoy them as much as I rely on them daily for work and normal working on the net.
I am not affiliated with any of the programs or authors above (but I am willing to accept donations) however I am happy to provide my recommendations to programs that are useful and work well like those listed.
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