Now that you know how to import and export your Firefox extensions, you can easily configure Firefox on a new computer to work exactly like Firefox on your old computer. Well, almost exactly. OPIE can take care of your add-ons, but it doesn't export the passwords you've saved in Firefox for the dozen or so sites that you log onto every day. It turns out there's a Firefox add-on for that too.
Password Exporter adds the ability to view all of your saved passwords, and to export them in an encrypted or unencrypted file CSV or XML file. When you want to import those passwords to a different Firefox installation, just install Password Exporter again, find your file, and click the import button.
Once you install Password Exporter, you might not see it right away. It's hidden in your security settings, which you can access by clicking Tools>Options>Security. Once you're at the security screen, you should see the import/export passwords option.
OPIE is a Firefox add-on that lets you backup your other Firefox add-ons. While that might sound a lot like FEBE, another popular Firefox extension, there's at least one major difference: OPIE works with Firefox 3. Actually, make that two major differences, because OPIE also gives you the option of saving multiple extensions in one file, while FEBE users will need to install a separate application called CLEO.
You can use OPIE to choose from your list of installed plugins, selecting just the ones you want to backup, and where you want to save them. The result is a file which you can use to load your favorite plugins into Firefox on another machine.
While the Firefox 3 web browser is still in beta, it offers a ton of features that you won't find in Firefox 2. There's full page zoom, full history search, and vastly improved speed and performance with many web services. But there's a downside: many add-ons designed for earlier versions of Firefox will not work with Firefox 3 beta. This week that list got a tiny bit shorter as social bookmarking service del.icio.us released a beta version of a Firefox 3 plugin.
For the most part, the plugin works just like the Firefox 2 plugin, allowing users to quickly tag pages or open a sortable list of bookmarks and tabs in their Firefox sidebar. But there are a few new features includng a new layout for saving bookmarks, a status bar showing network activity, and the ability to jump to tags by pressing F2.
If you've ever installed a Firefox add-on, you've probably encountered a pop-up window like the one pictured here, which tells you to wait a few second before hitting the install button. For a long time, we thought the delay was because Firefox was busy downloading the file, but you know what? Most Firefox extensions are tiny. It doesn't take very long to download them.
All you have to do is type "about:config" into your address bar to bring up the advanced configuration screen, and search for the security.dialog_enable_delay setting. Then change the value to 0.
Again, keep in mind that Firefox implemented that delay to keep your computer safe. But if you're too busy to wait three seconds, this trick will help you regain a tiny fraction of your day.
Firefox might not always be the first web browser to get cool new features. But pretty much any time a competitor launches something cool you'll find a Firefox plugin with the same features thanks to the open-source web browser's plugin system and enthusiastic developer base. When Opera launched a "speed dial" system for accessing your most frequently used web pages, Firefox developers released a plugin. And now that Microsoft has launched Internet Explorer 8 beta 1, Firefox developers have released a series of plugins that emulate IE8's coolest features.
Activities is an IE8 feature that lets you select web services to add to your right-click context menu. Just select a snippet of text and you can search for it on eBay, plot it on a map, or translate it with Windows Live Translator. Developer Michael Kaply has created a Firefox version of Activities that works exactly the same way. In fact, in order to add services, you download them directly from Microsoft's web page.
Meanwhile Daniel Glazman has created WebChunks, a port of IE8's WebSlices feature. When you add a WebSlice to your browser toolbar, you can essentially see up to date information from a web site without clicking through to the site. For example, weather updates, movie showtimes, or article headlines. WebChunks is designed for Firefox 3 beta, and will not work with Firefox 2.
BookmarkPreviews is an awesome, but kind of useless plugin for Firefox that lets you scroll through thumbnails of bookmarked web pages using an Apple Cover Flow-style browser. When you install the add-on, BookmarkPreviews will create a snapshot every time you visit a page you've already bookmarked. Then when you open your bookmark manager you can scroll through them in graphical form.
The only problem is that we can't imagine a circumstance where it would be faster to scroll through your bookmarks this way than to just click on the one you're looking for. Plus most folks we know use online bookmarking services like del.icio.us to store their bookmarks anyway.
It pains us to say it, but sometimes tabs are a waste of time. We hate when we're on a site, and see a story with an accompanying link that promises to be the epiphany we've been waiting for all our lives. We eagerly click the link, and feverishly switch to the new tab. Our hopes and dreams are tragically dashed to pieces when we find the link is to a parked domain that has nary a thing to do with the subject at hand.
Interclue is a Firefox extension that allows for previewing web pages before you click the link. It gets a little less buzz than the similar Cooliris extension, but we think it's just as worthy. Cooliris doesn't require clicking on the preview icon to pop up a preview window, a simple mouse over will do. It's amazing how often we mouse over the icon, not meaning to, and get the preview.
Interclue gives the option to click on the preview icon, which might give us carpal tunnel in the long run, but is much easier on our psyche than having preview windows seemingly appear at random. From the Interclue preview window, we see the contents of the page in question, as well as some optional vital stats for the site we're viewing (called metaclues). We can bookmark, email, open in tabs, and paste the site link to the clipboard. We can easily resize the preview window and change our settings to not recognize certain links or certain pages.
Interclue 1.5.1.4896 was released January 2nd, and works in Firefox 1.5 and up. Despite its impossible version number, its simple interface and unobtrusive application is a breath of fresh air for those poor souls traumatized by dead end links and madly popping preview windows. We highly recommend it for those wanting link previews who have been less than happy with other applications' execution.
There's good new and bad news in the fact that Google is rolling out an updated version of Gmail. On the one hand, pages load quicker and there's an advanced contact manager. On the other hand, many of your favorite Firefox extensions for tweaking Gmail may have stopped working.
For a while now, personal productivity site Lifehacker has been rolling up some of the best Greasemonkey scripts for Gmail into a package called Better Gmail. And Google went ahead and broke pretty much every single one of those scripts with its new version.
Now Lifehacker has released the initial version of Better Gmail 2. It doesn't have all the features of Better Gmail 1. In fact, right now there are only about 6 options, compared with more than 25 in the old version of Better Gmail. But considering the fact that most users are just starting to see the new Gmail interface, we suspect it will take a little while before the Greasemonkey coders get around to making all of their hacks "newer version" compatible. In the meantime, Lifehacker promises to continue updating both the Better Gmail 1 and Better Gmail 2 packages until Google eliminates the "older version" option. Then all development will be on Better Gmail 2.
What happens when power shoppers demand more from the eBay experience? Why, Firefox add-on developers pick up the slack, of course! Nathan Willis at Linux.com has posted a good writeup of three key Firefox add-ons that help you find better bargains, view the total cost of items and run a quick, fine-toothed search of eBay from any selected text.
The most interesting of these add-ons, and the one Nathan spends the most time on, is Biet-O-Zilla, an über-eBay add-on that offers a plethora of options like managing multiple accounts, viewing currency rates and - perhaps most importantly: scheduling bids in advance to help land those late-night deals that no one seems to catch.
If you've been looking for a way to save even more cash while trying to flex your eBay muscles, the add-ons Nathan explores might just be the ticket you need.
Firefox profiles are a seemingly hidden feature that brings a lot of power and flexibility to the browser. Users can create separate profiles that have different add-ons installed, preferences, bookmarks - you name it. Each profile is like a new, clean slate for the browser, but accessing the profile tool isn't exactly straightforward. Other Mozilla efforts like Thunderbird and the Mozilla Suite offer better access to profile tools, but for Firefox users, Mozilla maintains this Profiles support page that offers step-by-step processes for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux on how to access the profile manager (however, this page is also handy for copy/paste-able command line code). With this manager you can create and delete all the profiles you need, as well as toggle whether the profile manager appears when you start Firefox (this setting, as you might imagine, is turned off by default).
If you aren't a chronic nut for Firefox profiles however, this tip can also be handy for another reason: troubleshooting. If Firefox is misbehaving or crashing a lot lately, chances are an add-on or Greasemonkey script is the culprit, and not Firefox itself. Setting up a clean profile to test things might just be the trick you need to get back to trouble-free browsing.
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.
We're big fans of Backpack, the online PIM organizer with a pioneering KISS philosophy from the wildly successful 37signals. At times, however, Backpack can appear too simple, making it seem like the only way to interact with the service is through its pleasantly minimal web interface. Fortunately, this is entirely not so, and we just stumbled across two handy Firefox add-ons that bring quick navigation and easy clipping to this increasingly useful online info organizer.
First up is Backpack Pages, a simple toolbar button that acts as a simple drop-down bookmark menu for all your pages. As usually with any external Backpack tool, simply enter your username and private API key to get the ball rolling.
Second is a really useful add-on especially for users of Google Notebook or any other web clipping tool out there: Backpack Publish (pictured). Setup is again pretty standard, and now you can select text on any webpage and use this add-on's menu to create a List Item or Note to add to any of your pages without breaking your workflow.
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.
Migrating to Thunderbird and want to customize it to the way you like? One thing that lots of people really like about Outlook is the option to close the original message window when you hit reply or forward. It helped keep the amount of windows open to a minimum, the same way that Firefox does with tabbed browsing. Thunderbird, however, does not have a similar option.
All this can be fixed with Buttons. With "Buttons!" you have a handful of new buttons to add to your toolbars. Three that you Outlook fiends might immediately want to add were "Reply!", "Reply All!" and "Forward!" to the message composition window. The exclamation points are to help you decipher between the add-on's buttons and the default Thunderbird buttons. The version of Buttons we've tried is on Thunderbird 2.0 Beta build 2; Far superior to 1.5. The interface is so much better and really close to the latest version of Firefox. This version of Buttons also has some great options as well as an archiving feature.
I'm the kind of guy that likes his viewing space. That's why I have a big monitor, so I can see more of what I'm looking at without having to scroll all over the place. So when I found out about the latest Firefox add-on Toolbar Buttons (TB), I just had to have it.
TB is a great add-on that is all about new buttons for your Firefox, Sunbird or Thunderbird toolbar(s). It comes with a large handful of great ones, and there is also a developer site where even more are being created for the different Mozilla products.
TB, by default, will give you a new toolbar. But, like I said, I like my viewing space, so that toolbar had to go. That's the great part about TB, you don't need that toolbar to get what you want. All you need to do is right-click on your existing toolbar and select customize. From this dialog box you can select fantastic new buttons to add to your default Firefox toolbar. Things like:
About:config- to be taken to your settings page in a new tab with just one single click
Bottom/Top- to go directly to the bottom or top of the current site you are viewing
What happens when power shoppers demand more from the eBay experience? Why, Firefox add-on developers pick up the slack, of course! Nathan Willis at 
Firefox profiles are a seemingly hidden feature that brings a lot of power and flexibility to the browser. Users can create separate profiles that have different add-ons installed, preferences, bookmarks - you name it. Each profile is like a new, clean slate for the browser, but accessing the profile tool isn't exactly straightforward. Other Mozilla efforts like Thunderbird and the Mozilla Suite offer better access to profile tools, but for Firefox users, Mozilla maintains this 
Computerworld has a recent article that lists 
