So yeah, Sophie and cklarock inspired me to do a little Firefox writeup, so here ya go:
My computer is my home. Now, this may sound odd to some people, but I've lived and breathed by the lifeline at my desk for so many years now, its become more of an extension of myself, rather than a tool to use. I'm always connected somewhere, always reachable in some means, and irreversibly integrated in to the techno-lifestyle. Because of this, and much like my real house, I accumulate a lot of ... stuff. I end up with programs I've only used once, and forgotten about, thousands of random images, videos, music, games, and assorted errata. For a while, I thought that the key to the PC world was specialization. I found a different program designed specifically to do a certain job, for almost any job you could think of. As time went on, I realized that I didn't need all this. I really only used certain core applications on a regular basis. The rest were just taking up space. So, in came the great consolidation. A cleansing, if you will. I tried to find multi-purpose or customizable programs to suit my everyday needs. Trillian was the first program to the plate. Since I use AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN and IRC extensively, the idea of a program to consolidate all those services was a blessing. So elegant, so useful, so FUNCTIONAL. With that, I was hooked. Hundreds of programs were cut out of my cycle, start up times optimized, functionality and usability increased. Then, someone got me hooked on Firefox. Tabbed browsing was a godsend to someone, like me, who has anywhere from 5-50 web pages open at once. Then I discovered extensions. I quickly built a solid set of extensions that I use every day So, lately, I've been contemplating these FireFox extensions and wondering what other people use, why they use them, and what the benefits are. I'll start.
Disable XPI delay: When you mess with extensions as much as I do, that 3 second delay on an installation can get annoying. This extension disables that delay. Small, but nice, definitely recommended for anyone that toys around with extensions.
Gmail Notifier: I love the fact that Gmail has a little applet to notify about mail. However, this went against my drive to downsize the number of applications running on my system. Since I always have a browser window open, this allows all the functionality I would like out of the gmail notifier, without the excess program running.
Download Manager Tweak: This changes some basic functionality of the download manager. I use it to launch the window in a tab, that shows percentage and number of items downloading. I HATE when anything opens a new window, so I redirect everything to tabs. This keeps my OCD at bay.
Focus Last Selected Tab (FLST): This is a nifty little tool that focuses the last tab when closing or clicking on the current one. If you juggle a lot of tabs, like me, this helps keep continuity.
IE view and IE Tab: Some web pages just don't work in FireFox, its the sad truth. With these two handy extensions, IE is embedded, or loaded with ease, and without the hassle of trying to navigate to the current page from a new IE window. Very helpful if you're sick of juggling browsers just to see a certain page.
BBcodeXtra: This handy little tool is one of my favorite extensions. It formats text, quotes and links, as well as pastes text as any of these in several common formats for message board and blogging use. Once you get the hang of it, creating selection URLs in a body of text is only two mouse clicks away.
Google Toolbar: Hey, I need a spellchecker. The rest of the stuff is pretty useful too, I guess ;P
Adblock Plus and Filterset G: The ultimate combo in ad free surfing. Using the internet without these extensions just wastes time and bandwidth.
Fasterfox: This extension does a lot of things. Silent loading of links in the background using idle bandwidth, on top of other performance increasing tweaks. In the end, if you can't understand, that's OK, just know that it makes your browsing a bit faster.
Tabbrowser Preferences: Tons of tweaks for tabbed browsing. I use this to force all windows, searches, bookmarks, etc in to new tabs. Lots of little goodies for one and all.
Duplicate Tab: One of the features I missed from IE, when migrating to FF, was the ability to clone a browser window, preserving all its history, essentially giving me a duplicate copy of the window I was in. This extension does this, but with tabs.
Greasemonkey: This extension is a whole beast of its own. What it does, is allow you to change, remove, and add elements to web pages, using small JavaScript applets. Check out http://userscripts.org for some of the stuff it can do.
So, what about you?
My computer is my home. Now, this may sound odd to some people, but I've lived and breathed by the lifeline at my desk for so many years now, its become more of an extension of myself, rather than a tool to use. I'm always connected somewhere, always reachable in some means, and irreversibly integrated in to the techno-lifestyle. Because of this, and much like my real house, I accumulate a lot of ... stuff. I end up with programs I've only used once, and forgotten about, thousands of random images, videos, music, games, and assorted errata. For a while, I thought that the key to the PC world was specialization. I found a different program designed specifically to do a certain job, for almost any job you could think of. As time went on, I realized that I didn't need all this. I really only used certain core applications on a regular basis. The rest were just taking up space. So, in came the great consolidation. A cleansing, if you will. I tried to find multi-purpose or customizable programs to suit my everyday needs. Trillian was the first program to the plate. Since I use AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN and IRC extensively, the idea of a program to consolidate all those services was a blessing. So elegant, so useful, so FUNCTIONAL. With that, I was hooked. Hundreds of programs were cut out of my cycle, start up times optimized, functionality and usability increased. Then, someone got me hooked on Firefox. Tabbed browsing was a godsend to someone, like me, who has anywhere from 5-50 web pages open at once. Then I discovered extensions. I quickly built a solid set of extensions that I use every day So, lately, I've been contemplating these FireFox extensions and wondering what other people use, why they use them, and what the benefits are. I'll start.
Disable XPI delay: When you mess with extensions as much as I do, that 3 second delay on an installation can get annoying. This extension disables that delay. Small, but nice, definitely recommended for anyone that toys around with extensions.
Gmail Notifier: I love the fact that Gmail has a little applet to notify about mail. However, this went against my drive to downsize the number of applications running on my system. Since I always have a browser window open, this allows all the functionality I would like out of the gmail notifier, without the excess program running.
Download Manager Tweak: This changes some basic functionality of the download manager. I use it to launch the window in a tab, that shows percentage and number of items downloading. I HATE when anything opens a new window, so I redirect everything to tabs. This keeps my OCD at bay.
Focus Last Selected Tab (FLST): This is a nifty little tool that focuses the last tab when closing or clicking on the current one. If you juggle a lot of tabs, like me, this helps keep continuity.
IE view and IE Tab: Some web pages just don't work in FireFox, its the sad truth. With these two handy extensions, IE is embedded, or loaded with ease, and without the hassle of trying to navigate to the current page from a new IE window. Very helpful if you're sick of juggling browsers just to see a certain page.
BBcodeXtra: This handy little tool is one of my favorite extensions. It formats text, quotes and links, as well as pastes text as any of these in several common formats for message board and blogging use. Once you get the hang of it, creating selection URLs in a body of text is only two mouse clicks away.
Google Toolbar: Hey, I need a spellchecker. The rest of the stuff is pretty useful too, I guess ;P
Adblock Plus and Filterset G: The ultimate combo in ad free surfing. Using the internet without these extensions just wastes time and bandwidth.
Fasterfox: This extension does a lot of things. Silent loading of links in the background using idle bandwidth, on top of other performance increasing tweaks. In the end, if you can't understand, that's OK, just know that it makes your browsing a bit faster.
Tabbrowser Preferences: Tons of tweaks for tabbed browsing. I use this to force all windows, searches, bookmarks, etc in to new tabs. Lots of little goodies for one and all.
Duplicate Tab: One of the features I missed from IE, when migrating to FF, was the ability to clone a browser window, preserving all its history, essentially giving me a duplicate copy of the window I was in. This extension does this, but with tabs.
Greasemonkey: This extension is a whole beast of its own. What it does, is allow you to change, remove, and add elements to web pages, using small JavaScript applets. Check out http://userscripts.org for some of the stuff it can do.
So, what about you?
VIEW 7 of 7 COMMENTS
^^^ Just realized that I probably sounded a little pointed in that "is this something you're happy with?" comment. Totally not intended that way - just trying to get a better understanding of the journal.
[Edited on Jan 29, 2006 10:12PM]