Looking for an easy way to share photos with your GMail contacts? Adding the GPhotoSpace extension to your Firefox install provides you with a solution that's just as easy as using "send to: email recipient" in Windows.

Once you've installed the addon, you can open it by clicking the status bar icon. If you're like me and your status bar is hidden, you can also customize your main toolbar and dropping the included button (which is a little lo-fi) or bookmark chrome://gps/content/gpsMain.xul to access it.

The interface is extremely simple. Create a new album, describe it, add photos, and save it. The only adjustment you can make is the size of photos to share: 320/640/1024/1536 pixels. Make sure you change this setting if you want to upload full-size digital images, as it defaults to 640 pixels.

Remember that this is a GMail hack, so "sharing" an album actually just fires off an email to your recipient that contains your photos. Still, it's a much simpler way to send multiple images than using GMail's attachment button.

If you're simply in need of a good, free way to back up your photos, sign up for a new GMail account - the 7 gigs they provide will give you room for several thousand images.

Be aware that GPS currently only supports jpeg images. That shouldn't pose a problem for most users, but I'd like to see it at least support a couple other formats like png and psd.

GPhotoSpace is free, and currently only available for Windows - a Mac version is in the works.

[ via Life Rocks 2.0 ]

To a lot of people, snobbery has negative connotations, but there are some places on the web that could use a bit more of it. The best example? YouTube comments. A lot of the commentary on YouTube videos lacks substance, proper grammar, and semblance of constructive criticism. That's where YouTube Comment Snob comes in.

YouTube Comment Snob is a Firefox extension that gets rid of a good majority of the spam and drivel by applying some simple grammatical rules. You can customize it to filter out comments by using your favorite combination of the following: too many spelling mistakes (using Firefox's spellchecker), too much capitalization, no capitalization, swearing, profanity or excessive punctuation (!!!???!). The only problem with YouTube Comment Snob is that it hasn't yet been applied to the whole Internet.

[via Daring Fireball]

If I had to pick a Firefox extension that I simply couldn't live without, Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer would be my choice. This handy little tool makes browsing from multiple machines a snap and its web-based bookmark access feature has saved my bacon more than once.

Sure, you can carry Firefox and all its bookmarks (not to mention, an entire operating system) around on your thumb drive, but when all you want to do is grab a quick peek at your Firefox bookmark folder, Foxmarks is just what you need. Also, if you'd like your bookmarks folders to look the same on all the computers you regularly use (you want things you bookmarks at work to also be available at home, for example), then Foxmarks is just the ticket.

Let's take a closer look at what makes this nifty little app so irresistible and indispensable.

We've spent a fair bit of time telling you about useful Firefox extensions. Some can help you with social bookmarking, while others improve your full screen browser experience, and some change the way you interact with Gmail.

But there's a whole other world of Firefox extensions out there. The ones that don't do anything particularly handy at all. PC Magazine's gone and profiled 10 useless Firefox extensions. Here are a few of our favorites:

• The Stop! Hammer Time! extension provides you with an M.C. Hammer icon in your toolbar. When you click on it, the page you're currently on will stop loading and you'll hear "Stop! Hammer Time!"
• Confuscator lets highlight text on a web site and then confuse it. In other words, it will pop up as a new box, but the words will be garbled. While this doesn't seem very useful, you can also use it to translate a page into pig-Latin. Now that's cool.
• Leet Key converts text into leet speak as you type. You can also highlight text on a webpage that you'd like to convert. You can also convert text to ROT13, BASE64, HEX, URL, BIN, DES, Morse code, or several other useless codes.

Useless? Yes. But still kind of fun. If you consider bogging down your web browser with tools that you'll only use once fun, that is.

Computerworld has a recent article that lists 10 Firefox extensions that they believe users should avoid, with a subtitle stating "Just because an extension is popular doesn't mean it belongs in your Web browser." Unfortunately, the criteria used to determine what should be avoided seems very loose; everything from "so you don't hurt yourself due to your own ignorance", to more self-serving interests like ensuring that readers actually see the ads on Computerworld's website.

Some inarguably essential extensions are on it, making this list pretty difficult to accept. Greasemonkey, for example, is listed as an extension to avoid. The author clarifies that at the very least if you're going to use it, be careful about which user scripts you use. While there's nothing wrong with that sentiment, it's one that goes without saying for any user that is sophisticated enough to be using an extension that exists as a way to actively modify web content locally in your browser.

Similarly, Computerworld lists AdBlock and AdBlock Plus as extensions to avoid, simply because they attempt to block all online advertising. Truthfully, these extensions aren't great for online publishers, but to be fair they do make for a significantly better web browsing experience. This recommendation doesn't appear to be made in the reader's best interests.

While an article that lists extensions that should be avoided seems like a good idea, it should be based on some sort of specific criteria, like extensions that have stability, performance or security flaws. A few recommendations on the list fall into this category, but the list is pretty inconsistent in this regard.

The list of extensions that probably shouldn't have made this list is longer than those that belong on it. If you're a computing neophyte, Computerworld's list might apply to you. For anyone that has consciously chosen to download a 3rd party browser like Firefox, you're probably more than capable of figuring out how to responsibly use these extensions if they have features you'd like to use.

Do you have a set of tabs that you leave open all the time in Firefox? I'm almost ashamed to admit I have eleven. That's right, eleven tabs that are always open in my Firefox, plus whatever else happens to be open. So the reality is that I always want to ensure those eleven tabs stay put, and don't get shut down by mistake. And I can also save some space because I use them so much that I know their favicons very well. So here's what I use:

PermaTabs - This is a Firefox extension that allows you to set a tab as a Permanent Tab, which means that it won't ever be closed. I prefer this to the Protect Tab functionality in TabMixPlus because PermaTabs simply shades the tab yellow, rather than putting an icon overlay on the favicon, which is what TabMixPlus does. If you're going to use my next extension, it makes use to install PermaTabs to make permanent tabs even if you're currently running TabMixPlus.

Faviconize - The Faviconize Firefox extension allows you to remove the text from a tab so that only the favicon is showing. As described above, this is perfect for sites you use regularly.

Together these two extensions add to the reliability and usability of Firefox, my browser of choice.

... if you use Windows and don't mind installing a third-party, standalone application.

FireTune is not a Firefox extension. It's a downloadable app - for Windows only - that "tunes" Firefox depending on your computer's speed and internet connection. You give FireTune some information about your setup, and it adjusts the browser's settings accordingly.

The big question for me, though, is why anyone would go to the trouble of installing FireTune, when the extension Fasterfox includes the same functionality and more. I have yet to uncover any features in FireTune that aren't present in Fasterfox; and Fasterfox includes other perks in addition to speed, such as blocking Flash-initiated pop-up windows. So far, the only benefit I can see to FireTune is that it apparently supports Firefox 2.0 - which, of course, still hasn't been officially released.

DiggThumbs is a Firefox extension that adds a thumbnail-sized screenshot to every listing on digg, so that you can "[k]now what you are clicking on before you click it." The screenshots are dynamically generated by WebShotsPro.com.

Here's what digg looks like before installing DiggThumbs:

And here's what it looks like after:

It's a cool idea, but the reality is that DiggThumbs serves its intended purpose only some of the time. If the linked page features a photo, image, or logo, the thumbnail can be helpful.

But if the linked page is just a screen full of mostly text, the screenshot doesn't carry any helpful information.
What would make DiggThumbs immensely more useful would be an "enlarge on hover" feature, such as Link Thumbnail. Maybe we'll see that feature in version 1-point-next?

(I feel like I should find a way to tie this to the story about Digg changing its algorithm and subsequently ticking off some of its top users, but... sorry, folks, I got nothing.)

Back when I was writing for the now-defunct CSS Insider, I made a list of Firefox extensions I couldn't live without. And I stand by that list! However, those extensions were all related to web development. Now that I'm writing for Download Squad, it's time to expand the list. Here are just a few more extensions that make my life easier:

• Fasterfox - This extension is all about letting us get that instant gratification even more quickly. In addition to allowing you to tweak network and cache settings, it also includes the handy feature of blocking pop-ups initiated by Flash plug-ins.
• Colorful Tabs - You might think this one is purely aesthetic. And for some people, maybe it is. But for me, as someone who often has lots of tabs open at once, the colors make it much easier to differentiate the tabs. Additionally, the title of the currently "active" tab is shown in bold.
• Restart Firefox - Ah, simple brilliance. It seems like such a minor thing, but having "Restart Firefox" in the File menu really does make a difference. Think of all the clicks I'm saving! Prevent repetitive stress disorder, with Restart Firefox.
• WebmailCompose - These days, I use Gmail. And until I found this extension, I would get so annoyed whenever I inadvertently clicked a mailto: link and Apple Mail launched. WebmailCompose makes mailto: links open a compose window in your webmail program.
• User Agent Switcher - Fortunately, the number of sites that just refuse to work in certain browsers is dwindling. But they're still out there - in particular, some bank sites and real estate sites. User Agent Switcher will alleviate your frustration if you encounter such a situation. (For example, it's how I was able to view Microsoft's beta site without Internet Explorer.)
• del.ico.us - The del.icio.us Firefox extension makes tagging easier than ever. As a result, my del.icio.us bookmarks have now gotten a little out of hand, but what can you do.

At this point, you're probably thinking, "Geez, she has a ton of extensions installed!" And it's true. But after coming this far, I can't imagine ever going back.

Are you a Greasemonkey addict, but wish sometimes that you could turn your favorite GM script into a full-fledged Firefox extension? Well, you're in luck. Greasemonkey Compiler can take any greasemonkey script as input, and output a completely functional Firefox extension. I can see this being very useful to allow family members to take advantage of my favorite Gmail scripts without having to explain greasemonkey to the less technical of them (okay, all of them).

I love the clean simplicity of this service, but I have to wonder; to produce standalone extensions, does all of the core logic in greasemonkey need to be contained in each extension? If I use a number of greasemonkey scripts, theoretically I could be adding a lot of overhead to my browser if I create extensions for all of them. The name "compiler" is a bit of a misnomer given that Firefox extensions are based on interpreted languages, but we can overlook that fact, given how slick this idea is.

Note that the site does not indicate what operating systems the produced extensions will work on. Windows works great - can anyone tell me if this also works for Macs and Linux PCs?