Since switching to Firefox, there's one Internet Explorer function I've been wanting to duplicate: copying my browsing history when opening a new tab or window. Developer Twanno has created an extension that adds that missing functionality, and another that I find particularly useful.
The Duplicate Tab extension does exactly that, creating a second instance of your selected tab in a new one (or in its own window). It can also perform two other useful functions. First, it will "detach," a tab - close it in your current window and open a new window with the same URL and your browsing history.
Second, you can use it to merge different windows - combining their tabs and history in a single window.
Tab Clicking Options gives you the ability to control your tabs through different mouse click actions. It's compatible with other tab extensions, so I've set mine up to duplicate a tab when I double-click on it. A host of action are supported, including reloading, bookmarking, closing, and even switching to IE view (if you have the extension installed).
These are two great, small extensions for Firefox users looking for more control over their tabs and windows.
While surfing with Firefox's status bar hidden gives you a little more viewing area, it can cause you grief sometimes. For example, when you think you're about to download a file directly and instead have three pop-up windows shoved in your face.
I was glad to find Linkalert, a handy little Firefox extension that gives you visual feedback about links you hover over. While it's not going to blow you away with advanced functionality the way some addons do, it's a decent way to keep yourself informed about the links you might click.
Park your pointer on a link, and Linkalert will display an icon indicating what the destination contains. It supports office files, email links, rss, zip, pdf, Javascript, new windows, and more. The new window and Javascript alerts alone can keep you out of a lot of trouble.
It'll also present you with a lock when linking to a secure site, and will open the lock icon when you're about to click out of it. Useful!
Firefox is already pretty amazing, but we're always looking for another add-on to make it even more kick-ass. Enter CyberSearch, an update of AwesomeSearch which adds tons of search functionality to your browser. It even displays results right in the Awesome Bar's drop-down.
Search results without Adsense ads? Oh, it's possible.
CyberSearch also lets you set up keyword or letter patterns that tell it to restrict sites to specific URLs - preface your search with 'techy' and you'll only get results from Lifehacker, CyberNetNews(go figure), and Download Squad (we had nothing to do with that, we swear!).
Since it's built on Google's API, you're still getting the same results you'd get if you went to Google first anyways. Hello, efficiency!
Anyone that blogs about websites and has tried before knows that getting a decent screencap of a web page can be tricky. Enter FireShot, a Firefox extension that makes quality captures child's play.
Install the add-on and you're given FireShot creates a tiny menu on your navigation toolbar that gives quick access to full-page and visible area capture functions. It does a great job at rendering pages, even those with Flash animations. Support for saving as PNG, JPEG, GIF, and BMP is built-in, as well as exporting to just about any editor.
What really sets FireShot apart, though, is the integrated upload feature. Select it, and you can resize your image on-the-fly and post it to FireShot's free image hosting repository with minimal effort. If there's one feature that helps sell a piece of software to us, it's how much time and effort we can save by using. FireShot makes putting browser screencap online so easy we almost feel lazy doing it. Almost.
While Greasemonkey, the popular extension for changing the way websites display, might not be currently available via the Firefox 3 addons manager or the Mozilla addons website, you can indeed install a working version from the developer's site. We installed the greasemonkey-0.8.20080609.0.xpi into Firefox 3 RC2 on Mac OS 10.5, and our scripts worked like a charm.
In case you're new to the Greasemonkey realm, here are three scripts to get you going:
Gmail 2.0 Multiple HTML Signatures - allows you to maintain a set of HTML signatures for Gmail that are automatically changed when you select different "From" addresses in your compose mail window. Alternatively, you could use a bookmarklet.
Digg Add Mirrors - adds links to Coral Cache, Duggmirror, Duggback, and Google Cache to Digg stories.
Image Host Redirector - redirects image links directly to image instead of intermediate image host page.
The world of web browsers is a very unfair place. Internet Explorer isn't the best, yet everyone's using it, and it seems like Firefox gets all the cool add-ons and customizations. The Opera web browser is popular, but primarily with the mobile crowd, and as for Safari, well, it's nice. Safari add-ons aren't exactly the latest craze, but the few that exist are fairly useful.
Introducing: Safari AdBlock, the open source way to avoid internet ads. It's free and (like someone we know on too much rum) easy. To install, simply point your browser to the Safari AdBlock page at SourceForge and hit "Download." The rest is pretty self explanatory. Safari AdBlock should successfully block most ads, although one may get through on occasion. Theoretically, this should decrease a page's load time since you'll no longer have to load ads, but there's a lot that goes into load times so you may not see any increase in performance at all.
Safari AdBlock works with Safari 3 and runs on Leopard (not Tiger and Windows). Those looking for a paid option should check out Pith Helmet, which costs $10 and works with both Tiger and Leopard. If you'd like to further customize your Safari, check out Pimp My Safari.
Gmail could very well be one of the most hackable web services of all time. One only needs to check our Gmail tag to see what tools are available for enhancing one's experience, and now we have a slick new cross-platform Firefox add-on to link to from our friends at Lifehacker: Better Gmail. As its name suggests, Better Gmail rounds up a number of popular Greasemonkey scripts and other extras into a handy management UI, complete with links to homepages if you need to find out more about any of the included extras. As you can see, this add-on packs a wallop, including many of our old (and new) favorites such as the Macros script (for many more keyboard shortcuts Gmail should really have in the first place), an Unlabelled label hack and a Filter Assistant which brings that handy email client functionality of building filters from a currently selected message. Of course, one could run out and find all these scripts on their own, but Better Gmail takes the clicking out of that process and wraps all this great stuff into one handy extension, complete with the ability to disable it all in one fell swoop in case you need to get back to Gmail's basics.
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.
Gmail offers a lot of flexibility when it comes to the way you manage your email. Innovative features like labels, a dedicated mobile phone client and rich script-ability via Firefox's Greasemonkey plugin create a unique appeal for users from nearly all walks of life.
Since you can do so much with and to Gmail, I thought I would round up my favorite tips and hacks for users both old and new. Some of these are simple ideas for thinking about labels in a different way, while others add more powerful functionality for the most dedicated of Gmail ninjas. Of course, this list is by no means complete, so have at it in the comments with your own tips, scripts and workflows. For now, here are mine:
Greasemonkey repository at Google Code: Started by Mihai Parparita, a Google employee (though unaffiliated with Gmail), this Google Code repository has some of the coolest and most functional Gmail scripts for Greasemonkey, an add-on for Firefox. Scripts for adding colors to labels, saving searches and even integrating Gmail + Google Reader can all be found here.
The Macros script: Found at that Google Code repository, I firmly believe this is *the* essential Gmail trick to end all Gmail tricks. It adds a serious dose of productivity that can make Gmail more functional than any desktop email client on the block. This script has shortcuts for label navigation, simultaneously marking as read + archiving, labeling messages on the fly and much more - all from the keyboard. Once you get this script installed, pressing 'h' should display a slick overlay of all available shortcuts.
Trick your labels: Using unique characters to prefix label names brings them to the top of the alphabetized list of labels. The @ symbol, numbers and even underscores are all useful for bringing important labels out of their standard organization, and they make labels more accessible to other hacks like the Macros script.
Join the Power Users group: The Gmail Power Users Google Group attracts many users just like you, looking for ways to extend and bend Gmail to their will. If you find yourself getting as hooked on Greasemonkey scripts as I have, this is a great place to find other people who are customizing them to their specific interests.
Quicker Contacts: Gmail includes a built-in chat feature with a clever pop-up window for easy access to some of the contacts with whom you communicate the most, but why limit this handy functionality to the tiny chat area? Quicker Contacts is another fantastic Greasemonkey script that adds this pop-up window to every message in Gmail. One catch, however, is that you need to be using Gmail's standard + chat mode in order for this script to work. If you don't like chatting inside of Gmail though, the good news is that you can simply sign out of chat and collapse the panel to avoid being bothered with it.
Bookmark any label, folder or message type: Another apparently undocumented Gmail trick is the ability to bookmark a label, a standard folder or even a message type such as 'read' or 'unread.' It isn't quite as easy as bookmarking a website, but it's useful: simply copy and paste this link into your address bar: https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1: and then add any label name, folder or message type after the colon (examples: fs=1:todo, fs=1:Drafts and fs=1:unread). Press enter, and then bookmark that page once Gmail loads.
Backup Gmail offline: Some Gmail users can occasionally find themselves needing access to their email when they're offline somewhere, or - worst case scenario - their account might have accidentally disappeared. No matter what the reason is, it's always a good idea to have a backup of your data, and email from an online service is no exception. Gmail offers instructions for accessing and downloading your email to a desktop client, with a ton of customized instructions for nearly every client in the book. As an added bonus, it seems Gmail has recently introduced a "recent" mode just in case you want to download your email with more than one client.
Manage multiple Gmail accounts: For one reason or another, many Gmail users find themselves opening multiple accounts. Throw the ability to run Gmail on your own domain with Google Apps for Your Domain, and things can get complicated. Gmail Manager is an add-on for Firefox that untangles your Gmail web by allowing you to manage, swap between and receive new message alerts from multiple Gmail accounts, including those run on Google Apps.
Fetch your other mail: A recent and quietly introduced Gmail feature is Mail Fetcher, which can check up to five other email accounts and download all that mail into your Gmail. To help keep things organized, Mail Fetcher can automatically label and archive all this incoming mail.
Bookmarklets: These are typically javascript-enabled bookmarks that do something instead of simply 'mark something. To make Gmail more functional, there are two bookmarklets which the Gmail community have cooked up to make the web service feel more like a desktop app. The first is Compose (drag that link to your browser's bookmark toolbar or 'mark as you see fit), which skips directly to opening a compose window in Gmail (sidenote: To save my life I can neither find nor hack this one to open a new window; if any readers were more successful, I would join many others in thanking you if you shared in the comments). The second bookmarklet is really handy for sharing whatever page you're viewing: Gmail This opens a new, smaller composition window with the title of the front-most webpage in the subject and a link to the page in the body of the email. If you selected any text on the page, this will be added to the message body as well.
[Update: Download Squad reader bcnewman hacked the Gmail This bookmarklet to create a new, blank compose window in a popup, just like the Gmail This 'marklet. Get the javascript from bcnewman's comment here, or simply drag this link to your toolbar to create the bookmarklet. Thanks a lot bcnewman!
Like I said, this list is by no means complete. There are plenty of runner-ups in my book, such as the dragdropupload Firefox add-on which allows you to (amongst other things) drag and drop files you want to attach directly onto the "Attach a file" link, so be sure to (try and) trump me with your own perfect Gmail setup.
If nothing else, we humans are good at pushing the limits of common sense just to see what will happen. Installing a ridiculous number of add-ons (and taking pictures, of course) has long been a tradition for Internet Explorer, uh, "enthusiasts," and now the Firefox fans are carrying the torch: Inspired by a 100-extension test back in February, the fine folks at CyberNotes doubled their pleasure and installed 200 add-ons in Firefox 2. The result? Well, it isn't pretty. Predictably, the screen is almost totally overwhelmed by toolbars, leaving but a few square inches for actually navigating the web. Perhaps more impressive is the Tools menu which takes up almost two full screen heights. What's impressive, though, is even after two hundred add-ons are installed, CyberNotes finds that Firefox still, essentially, works, and takes up a hefty but not outlandish 200MB of RAM.
Okay, okay, the "essential Firefox addons" list has been done to death, but if everyone else can beat a dead horse, why can't I? Having just freshened up my system I had the unique opportunity to take a fresh look at which Firefox addons I have installed and which ones I can't live without. As it turns out, there's quite a lot of them, so without further ado, here's my 15 essential Firefox add-ons:
Adblock Plus: I don't like red-and-green flashing YOU ARE A WINNER!! ads any more than you.
BugMeNot: I don't like giving my e-mail address, much less taking the time to fill out yet another form and click on another e-mail confirmation link, any more than you.
DownThemAll!: DownThemAll! isn't just useful for downloading a ton of files at once (though that's most certainly its best feature)--it also makes a great general-purpose download manager for when Firefox's built-in options aren't enough.
ErrorZilla: Firefox's standard the-site-could-not-be-reached error message is so passé. ErrorZilla augments the lowly "Try Again" button with six more: Google Cache, Coral Cache, Internet Archive Wayback Machine, Ping, Trace Route, and Whois.
With every new release of Firefox--like yesterday's release of Firefox 2 Beta 2--comes the question, "How do I make my old extensions work with the new version?" Some extensions--which Mozilla is now calling Add-ons--made for older versions of Firefox really don't work with the newer features and can cause problems, but for the majority of add-ons, all that's needed is basically the flip of a switch. Of course, that switch is hidden deep in the add-on's code, but Nightly Tester Tools makes it possible to flip that switch with just a couple clicks. To that end, I've put together a short tutorial video showing how to use Nightly Tester Tools to make most of your old add-ons work with the latest version of Firefox. It was recorded in Windows, but should work basically the same on OS X and Linux:
In case you have any trouble with the video, or if anything's not clear, you can find complete instructions after the jump. Also, this is my first-ever screencast, so if you have any comments on the video itself, please voice them in the comments.
Gmail offers a lot of flexibility when it comes to the way you manage your email. Innovative features like labels, a dedicated mobile phone client and rich script-ability via Firefox's Greasemonkey plugin create a unique appeal for users from nearly all walks of life.
DownThemAll!
