Akkam’s Razor

If you can't think of anything to write, you can always write about your Firefox Extensions.

So what's Firefox?  Firefox is a browser alternative to Internet Explorer and Safari - and amongst those that know, a far superior product. Furthermore, there's a gazillion extensions that you can add on to customize it to suit your needs.

Based on the observed statistics, the overwhelming majority of you use the browser that came with your PC or MAC. Some of you have switched, but for the rest who haven't, I'll go over what I have installed in my Firefox.

So, what else can I do with Firefox? Here's what's on my portable (thumbdrive) install (which is also mirrored at home):

DownThemAll: Ran across a webpage with a whole bunch of audio or video you want to save? This extension lets you filter the files by type and download them all to a specific directory.

ForecastFox: Let's you specify a zip code and provides live web weather updates inside your browser on the status bar.

PDFDownload: Ever click on a link to find it's a humoungous PDF (Adobe Acrobat fil)? This extension prompts you to see if you'd like to view it in the browser, as an html file, or save it to disk.

Gmail Notifier: This little extension will regularly check your gmail account to see if you've gotten any new messages.

Reveal: Reveal will display all of your open tabs as thumbnails.

StumbleUpon: Users add their favorite "cool" websites to SU…which then gives you a toolbar and button - when you're bored, hit the button, and you'll see "the best of the web".

del.icio.us: This extension gives you right-click access to your del.icio.us account (del.icio.us is a social bookmarking service).

ImageZoom: A triple-click pops a small window that you can zoom in and out of to examine web pages.

WebDeveloper: Has a lot of, um, web developer functions.

Colorful Tabs: Assigns each of your open tabs a different color.

Performancing: Gives you a blog web editor that you can access from one click from inside your browser.

GooglePreview: (Also works for yahoo). When searching, this extension will give you a thumbnail of each webpage that comes up in the search results.

Greasemonkey: Firefox lets you install userscripts that can customize a web page. Use at your own risk.

RestartFirefox: If Firefox gets buggy or if you install new extensions, this gives you one click shutdown and restart.

ImageToolbar: Gives you an Internet Explorer-like toolbar when mousing-over an image.

EditCSS: CSS files, or cascading style sheets tell your browser how to display a web page with things like color, font, layout, dimensions, and so on. This extension lets you edit a styleshhet "live" on your PC, affecting the web page your looking at. Useful when tweaking a site layout.

ScreenGrab: A GREAT utility - requires JAVA. You can right-click inside your browser, and you will get a context menu allowing you to capture the entire window's active document, the particular view inside the browser, or the entire window as an image file.

MinimizetoTray: When not using Firefox, it will sit in your system tray for easy access.

SessionSaver: If you frequently go to the same sites when getting online, this extension remembers them. Also useful if your browser crashes - it takes you back to the same sites after restarting.