Perpetual Thursday: Extending Firefox Part 1

Perpetual Thursday Ramblings, Rantings, Nonsense, and Bunk

Extending Firefox Part 1
Sunday, June 18, 2006

I use Firefox. If you don't know what Firefox is, you need to find out, right now. If you know, but don't use it yet, then you need to get it.

If you do know, and do use it, than this post applies to you. As you're very likely aware, Firefox allows extensions. As you're also probably aware, there are a lot of extensions out there. Huge discussions and even whole blogs exist just to talk about which extensions are the best ones.

I have a few (*cough* 44+ *cough*)extensions, and I thought I might as well share which ones I use and enjoy the most. The list isn't in any real order, but they are all worth getting, in my opinion, so just download all of them. *wink*

Beacuse I've got so many, I plan to do this over the course of two posts.

First off, there is ColorZilla. ColorZilla is an eyedropper/page-zoomer tool that allows you to zoom in on web pages and to use an eyedropper (such as found in popular image editing programs) to select a color right out of a webpage and get both its hex code and RGB code for your use. Being into both web design and image editing, I love ColorZilla, as I can pull colors I see on the web right up for use in my own images and web pages.

Following in line comes MeasureIt, which, as its name suggests, enables you to use a ruler tool to measure the width and height of anywhere in your browser in pixles. Again, handy for web design.

Then there is one of my favorites: IE Tab. This handy extension displays a page as it would appear in Internet Explorer, in a special tab, so you never have to leave Firefox. This is good not only for web design, but for viewing all those pesky pages that don't work correctly in Firefox.

For internet shoppers there is BetterShopper, the most cash-saving extension I've seen. BetterShopper alters Amazon.com's product pages to include links to the product on international Amazon.com sites, as well as other similar shopping sites (Amazon UK, US, DE, and FR, Bole.de, Buch.de, Half.com, Abebooks UK, US, DE, and FR, and Thalia.de). It also converts currencies (US$, CDN$, EUR, GBP and JPY) for your shopping convienence.

I use FTP, and for a wile I used FileZilla, which is a great program. However, I switched when I found FireFTP, a full featured FTP tool that runs right in a FireFox tab. It couldn't get any more convienient than that, and it works like a charm.

I like to keep up with what is going on in the world. In other words, I read RSS and Atom Feeds. For a while I did this via FeedReader, which is an awsome program. But as with FileZilla, I found something I liked even more: Sage. Sage is by far by most used FireFox extension. I use it almost daily to read my newsfeeds. It works beautifully, and ants interface is fantastic - clean and easy. Having my newsfeeds in a sidebar is probably my favorite part, but there isn't a thing I dislike about Sage.

Another one of my favorite extensions, and one which I use just as much (if not more) than Sage, only, without realizing it, is Adblock Plus. Whereas Firefox blocks all pop-ups, Adblcok takes it futher and blocks just about everything else. From images to frames to flash, Adblock does it all.
However, Adblock alone doesn't quite cut it, beacuse Adblock blocks ads from sources you specify in its filterset. Thus, you have Filterset.G and the Filterset.G Updater. Filterset.G is a set of filters for Adblock designed to block most of the ads on the internet, and it does. the updater makes sure you always have the latest version ready to go in Adblock, so you are worry and advertisement free.

If you use eBay, or any other site you reload frequently, ReloadEvery is a fantastic extension. ReloadEvery ads a drop down menu to your reload button that lets you set a page to reload every 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 minutes, or whatever, using either a pre-set time or a custom one.

If you need to know your IP address, then Live IP Address is great. It allows you to see your IP address in the statusbar, which is rather convienient.

For people who use Google a lot, CustomizeGoogle is a blast. It removes ads, adds links to other search, weather, news, product, and so on sites, adds Wayback machine links, adds bookmark links, and more, and its all customizible, so you only use the features you want.

The last one for this post is Download Statusbar. Download Statusbar is an awsome extension, expecially for people who download a lot of extensions. It creates an extra statusbar (at the bottom of your browser, right above the regular statusbar) when you're downloading, and shows all your downloads and their progress there, instead of in the usual download window. This is espically handy when downloading lots of images, which I am prone to do.

That's all for this post, so until the next one...

Labels: Tech/Internet

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Comments:
Firefox definitely sounds pretty good. My family uses IE. I should talk to my parents sometime to see if they're interested in Firefox.
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Anonymous at 9:18 PM

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