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Digital Life »Tips, tricks, and advice
Must-have add-ons for Firefox…and why my browser looks like Google Chrome!
beingzoe 11 months ago
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2 responses
I no longer spend a lot of time customizing my computer and applications. Sure when I first install a computer I will adjust some minor appearance items and do a few optimizations. Unlike my early computer days when I would spend hours (sometimes days of aggregate hours over the course of weeks) tweaking every little thing until no one else but me could use the computer. But over the years it actually started to feel more efficient to use as much standard with software as possible. After your 100th Windows install (that’s a whole other story), and countless other software upgrades and new applications, tweaking every menu and keyboard shortcut stops making sense.
Then, years ago now, add-ons for Firefox (back when it was still called Firebird) entered my life. The wonderfully utilitarian and functional Firefox could be tweaked and bent to my will, creating a browser beyond a browser, a browser that could wash your car, make pizza, and practically do your taxes; making everything so much easier and hassle-free. Like my first computer I tweaked and contorted Firefox until it was unrecognizable and sometimes wouldn’t even load. Over time the excitement waned and my Firefox add-ons were pared down to a minimal set of must-haves and I ceased even checking for new add-ons unless recommended by a friend or colleague.
While stumbling the internet (StumbleUpon being a must-have add-on) I came across an article that proclaimed Firefox already dead due to the release of Google’s Chrome and even IE 8’s new found stability and supposedly useful feature set. While I loved the layout and new features that Chrome offered I did not find it as marvelous and crash-proof as so many had claimed. But the real deal breaker was the lack of add-ons.
Thanks to Adblock Plus the internet is actually a pleasant useful tool and a joy to use. I often forget there is such a thing as flashing banner animations. Only recently was I reminded of how amazing Adblock Plus was when I debated a friend on why he would want to develop his own player and stream his own videos when he could just host them at YouTube and forget about the bandwidth. He argued some aesthetic and functional issues, but his primary argument were the ads. Like a noob I had no idea that YouTube and many other online video services were now serving in-video ads. Adblock is so good that it even blocks those.
If for this reason alone Firefox is far from dead. It could be threatened by Chrome if Google creates an add-on system, but I am sure they are suffering great consternation what to do about the Adblock Plus. It wouldn’t surprise me if they are ready for add-ons but don’t want anyone blocking their own ads so are debating in their awesome building what to do.
At any rate, one of the things I preferred about Chrome was it’s intelligent use of screen space. Chrome essentially kills the title bar, putting the tab bar in it’s place, and then has only one toolbar for navigation by default. With a whimsical hope that someone had created a ‘Chrome’ add-on for Firefox I headed over to the Mozilla Add-ons site. Long story short, my Firefox now basically looks like Chrome, and I have gained valuable screen real estate for the one thing that is most important in a browser: viewing web pages.
So having wasted several hours last night after again bending Firefox to my will and trying out so many add-ons (and even the new Firefox Beta 3.1b3) generally rendering my browser near useless in the futile attempt to make my online life more efficient, and then uninstalling most of them, I share with you my current list of must have add-ons (and some other add-ons I am trying out to see if they help me in anyway).
My must have add-ons for Firefox
Let me start by saying that a must-have add-on is generally utile. A must have add-on isn’t eye candy (though should look good if it has a UI beyond a context menu) and is something you pretty much need to do what you do efficiently with joy in your heart. These must-have add-ons fit fill that gaping hole in my digital life.
AdBlock Plus
As mentioned already, Adblock Plus actually makes the internet usable. Without it you might as well be walking through Times Square or downtown Tokyo with only one earbud in blaring random snippets of noise from your iPod, with a kaleidescope up to one eye with your right hand tied to your left with a very short rope while attempting to read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. And that’s just when you are trying to read a news article.
AdBlock Plus is a painless add-on once installed essentially eliminates every trace of ads from the internet. With it’s subscription service you don’t even have to spend any time configuring it. With wildcard and regular expression support you can easily customize the functionality to suit your needs.
With AdBlock Plus the internet is information and entertainment. Without it you are in the Eighth Circle of Hell for sins involving conscious fraud and treachery. Of course I suppose I might feel different as my own company expands it’s marketing, but I’ll deal with that hypocrisy and schizophrenia as it comes up.
Without AdBlock Plus there is no other browser worth using. Say what you want about speed, stability, memory leaks, security holes (IE not Firefox), but if I am offered to ‘hit the monkey’ one more time I’m headed to the bell tower.
StumbleUpon
I am a stumbler. I have been stumbling for over 2 years, stumbled 6,720 items, liked 1,723 of them, and disliked 45. Everything else were simply shades of gray that do not exist in my world. In fact I love StumbleUpon so much because it fit my pre-existing pseudo-quantum rating system: So-Good, No-Good, and everything else is probably just fine but neither great or suck.
If you are unfamiliar with StumbleUpon, it is like a social bookmarking service meets TIVO. You view a web page. You click a button to say you ‘like it’ or ‘not for me’. If you are the first person to like/dislike a page you can write a review.
But the real joy and power of StumbleUpon comes from the ‘Stumble!’ button. Click the ‘Stumble!’ button and a web page (article, video, picture, news) is randomly selected based on interests you have indicated in your profile. With each stumble and each review you make, the ‘Stumble!’ button becomes less and less random matching sites you have liked/disliked with others who have liked/disliked similar items with similar interests, until you begin to wonder if you even need a search engine at all. Then you remember you have work to do.
StumbleUpon has replaced television in my life. There is a world of information and interest that just drops into your lap when you start using it. This is not necessarily a productive tool, but StumbleUpon is a utility for the enrichment of your soul, and as such, despite the hours that will vanish while stumbling, will enrich every part of your life and continued development as a happy healthy human being.
_While it is possible to use StumbleUpon without the add-on toolbar, that implementation is crude and not nearly as fun or seamless, making it less than viable for Chrome and other browsers.
Web Developer toolbar
Endless tools indispensable tools for the web developer. Selectively disable/modify/create/test styles, scripts, images, cookies, meta redirects, referrers, pop-up blockers, and more. Form tools. Acquire path, size, meta, and structure data. Create preset browser sizes. Validate. Show and hide content on demand.
This tool is exactly what it says it is. This is the swiss army knife of web developer tools (but no toothpick to lose!). Whether you are troubleshooting an existing site or testing new development, you need the Web Developer toolbar.
Chrome offers some useful web developer tools built-in but nothing that fulfills the functionality of the Web Developer toolbar.
Firebug
Where the Web Developer toolbar is a multi-tool for testing, Firebug is a surgical medkit for web development.
Dig in deep with Firebug. Inspect the DOM. Inspect source code with visual selection of elements. View styles and block level dimensions. See not just the styles in use, but the styles that have been ignored in precedence. Check status, size, and download time of page elements. Decent javascript console. Edit styles in real-time.
There are even add-ons for this add-on. Add coding reference materials. Manage cookies. Overlay design docs to compare pixel-perfect layout. Log PHP, JSON, and XML. Get more benchmarking for javascript. Use YSlow to test your site against Yahoo rules for high performance web sites. Drupal specific debugging and logging.
While there may be more tools out there that I would find useful, between the Web Developer toolbar and Firebug almost every development and troubleshooting need I have ever had had been covered.
Chrome admittedly has an amazing developer toolset ready-to-go. The built-in inspector is fabulous offering much of Firebugs functionality. But this also would be an example of a feature that maybe should be an add-on. Trust me, most people I know will never understand what the developer menu items are for, and would likely be happier (even if they don’t know it) if that little bit of menu clutter didn’t exist in their world. So despite an excellent implementation in Chrome, it could also be considered it’s own argument for add-ons.
SEOpen toolbar
I would describe myself as only mildly obsessed with SEO. Well, I am obsessed, but temper it with a commitment of making good content over gaming the system. As such the SEOpen toolbar suits my needs at this time just fine.
With the SEOpen toolbar I can quickly check backlinks, page rank, indexed pages, Alexa information, and other quicklinks for checking keyword density, analyzing links, robots.txt, waybackmachine archives, and quick Whois lookups.
There are many sites I use for other SEO and marketing research, but this is the only toolbar.
Chrome and other browsers lacking add-ons simply can’t compete with this kind of tailor made experience. This would be a great example of how I don’t want my browser to ship bloated with features I may never use, but I honestly don’t mind bloating my applications myself, sacrificing initial app load time, and even sometimes per page load time, if the convenience factor is increased by orders of magnitude with useful tools such as these.
Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer
Yeah I’m old school, but I kinda like just having an old fashioned bookmark file, but synced between all my computers. I’ve tried del.ico.us and even just signed up for Twine on a recommendation at Twitter from Mvellandi but I just haven’t gotten any of these into my workflow. Social bookmarking (besides StumbleUpon) has generally seemed like more work than it was worth. I mean really, how will it look professionally if I accidentally publicly share my midget transvestite porn links?
Foxmarks is simple and seamless. Create a Foxmarks account, install the toolbar on any Firefox install you want to sync your bookmarks with, and you now have all your bookmarks where you want them. You can even access them online from any browser at the Foxmarks site.
I’m going to give Twine a try, but the del.ico.us toolbar was so clunky and clumsy I probably won’t go back again. And unless a social bookmarking site is so easy and useful it doesn’t need an integrated toolbar/button I just won’t work in my daily routine.
With Chrome or Safari, browsers I enjoy using for aesthetics and some functionality, it is like going back 10 years in convenience features such as syncronizing bookmarks. I am big on being able to seamlessly integrate my digital life across platforms. Only Firefox and amazing add-on developers consistantly deliver that necessity on my desktop.
Google Gears
This is more of a utilitarian plug-in than an add-on feature, but if you want to use Google Apps offline it is a necessity. Open source synchronizing tool to let web applications interact naturally with your desktop, store web data locally, and run javascript in the background (among other things I’m sure).
While not just for Google apps, if you use gmail or google docs, this is a must have.
Of course this runs in Chrome (and Safari and so many others) but is nonetheless a must-have Firefox add-on.
All-in-One Gestures
All-in-One Gestures allows you use mouse movements to control your browser. Hold down the right-click button and flick the mouse to the left and you go back a web page. Same thing but flick right and you go forward. Move the mouse up and down refreshes the page, up down up down forces a refresh from the server. So many other features, but you get the gist. Fully customizable to suit your needs.
This add-on comes and goes in my life. It so useful, but thanks to 100 button pointing devices, and generally improved website and browser navigation overall it is sometimes a superfluous feature. I only reinstalled it last night and asked myself immediately how I used the internet without it (I never remember what all 100 buttons on my mouse do).
From what I can tell there are various ways to implement mouse gestures in all the browsers, but they don’t have AdBlock Plus, so All-in-One Gestures it is! There are even many mouse gesture add-ons for Firefox alone, but All-in-One by Marc Boullet has always worked great and I believe in loyalty.
Nightly Tester Tools
As much of a Firefox evangelist as I am, I haven’t been much of a beta tester for them. While periodically checking out beta releases, I have contributed little to the project (again we’ll deal with those hypocrisy issues at a later date). Thus I really only have this add-on for the ability to override add-on compatibility between versions.
United States English Spellchecking Dictionary
It’s a dictionary. I like words. I like spell checking. Sometimes I even like prescriptive grammar. Not always do I use any of them well. Sometimes this add-on helps.
It is an open source word list created from the original word list by Keven Atkinson for Pspell and Aspell as well as the affix file modified from the original english.aff file as part of Geoff Kuenning’s Ispell.
- United States English Spellchecking Dictionary home
- Download United States English Spellchecking Dictionary from Mozilla Add-ons
New Firefox add-ons I’m already lovin’
Some of these I just installed last night, some I have been playing with a for a few months, but these are most likely going to make it to my must-have (or at least remain on the really lovin’) list.
Chromin Frame
Of course this add-on is what created this entire article. I wanted the increased screen space and tab style of Chrome with the convenience of Firefox. Chromin Frame is the only ‘Chrome-itizing’ add-on/theme that actually seemed to work and worked with my current version of Firefox (3.07).
Though I have installed the Firefox 3.1b3 to try out a new add-on theme called Chromifox Extreme which looks more like the real deal styling everything to get that Chromium look and increased viewable screen space. Even better Chromifox Extreme is already released in several colors and I can’t wait for Chromifox Extreme Carbon. I don’t really like the blue of Google Chrome. I want my apps to be some shade of gray and the content of my apps to provide the color. Anything else seems distracting.
Chromin Frame isn’t perfect but the default blue frame and tabs flow nicely with my native app color scheme. If you like the look of Chrome but want Firefox, get Chromin Frame. Oh wait, I just noticed the recommended complimentary add-ons to Chromin Frame to give Firefox near complete Google Chromiumized functionality. I just installed the Chromin Fox theme and AutoHideStatusBar. Now it is truly seamless in appearance I can finally hide the status bar without losing access to my status bar add-ons. Good golly this is a good day (geak alert).
NoScript
Honestly without javascript the internet would be a useless pile of literary and visual detritus rendering the human experience as so much non-linear balderdash. With javascript the internet is a fluid application and interactive experience of human accomplishment and universal wonders that sometimes crashes your browser and is used to steal your life by the less than scrupulous.
I installed it in part to find out how it worked and what the internet was like without javascript, but mainly, despite not being an overly paranoid person, the thought of being clickjacked terrifies me far more than the thought of someone hacking my studio router and getting on my personal computers (perhaps not rational but true). NoScript is recommended as ideal perfection for clickjacking so I thought what the heck.
Clickjacking is a malicious technique of tricking web users into revealing confidential information or taking control of their computer while clicking on seemingly innocuous web pages. A vulnerability across a variety of browsers and platforms, a clickjacking takes the form of embedded code or script that can execute without the user’s knowledge, such as clicking on a button that appears to perform another function. -Wikipedia
Since installing it last night I both hate and love it already. Unlike AdBlock Plus it is much more time consuming to configure. Even now I am looking at the wikipedia page and see the NoScript yellow alert bar across the top of my newly increased screen space requesting my attention. Yes, allow wikipedia.org. Yes, allow wikimedia.org. And now I can “forever” browse wikipedia free of NoScript warnings, and reasonably safe from a clickjack attempt (because we know so many clickjack attempts happen at the wiki-actually that would be smart, as a lot of people probably use the same username/password authorization information across all their accounts, who would suspect?).
If NoScript had more built-in features and generally-trusted-included white list functionality like AdBlock Plus this just might have wowed me to no end. Where AdBlock Plus prevents me from seeing ads, NoScript allows me to at least put a small dent in the nefarious privacy exploits many companies utilize to destroy society with their shameless marketing techniques. NoScript allows you to easily subvert and block trackers from companies you may not prefer were keeping tabs on you.
Unfortunately I’ve already noticed that some sites I use regularly that were perfectly ad-free and rendered beautifully with AdBlock Plus alone appear less perfect with both running in tandem. Dictionary.com is a good example. Where I had dictionary.com dialed in as the cleanest slickest basic reference site, now half of sidebars are randomly appearing and some content that I thought was blocked might not be, and worse, there might be content that I actually want to see being blocked.
I will continue to sue NoScript for at least the next week before passing judgment. But as a regular Stumbler, the constant popping up of the NoScript alert bar might make me crazy as I might look at dozen’s of obscure sites a night, and I’m not sure having to hand approve all of them is going to fit my quiet seamless integration practices. But if I get rid of it will I be able to sleep at night wondering if I were clickjacked logging into my midget transvestite porn sites?
The other thing working against NoScript is their logo. That banned “S” looks like a Strong Bad Drawing for a detergent or something during the 80’s. Of course I don’t require as much style from a utilitarian product. And it’s free so who am I to complain?
TwitterFox
I’ve been using this for a couple of months now, but honestly until I got my Blackberry Storm a week or so ago, my participation on my various social networks was non-existent. Since then though, I have been posting semi-regularly and managed to get Trader Dan posting as well. However, I rarely post directly to the various sites I belong to. Typically I only visit Facebook or Twitter directly when I get an alert about something that requires me to go visit. Otherwise I’ve been using various tools to track and participate on many social networks at once. Admittedly I’m still getting into the swing of things, but I’m enjoying my intermittent social butterfly status around the internet. However, I use Ping.fm for most of postings and thus only use TwitterFox as one of my tools to keep up with the haps without having to invest too much time jumping from social network to social network.
I really like TwitterFox because I follow various politicians, the UN Secretary General, and NASA among others and it is fun to see the shenanigans pop up in my status bar periodically. But because of tools like TwitterFox I am able to still get in and get personal having discussions and exchanges with folks without it being too much a time waster, while still using Ping.fm for my general posts about me and my adventures.
TwitterFox sits in you FireFox status bar always ready for you to toss off a random thought (tweet) or two into the twittersphere. And when someone you are following tweets it pops up in a little box for a few seconds for you to read if you wish and then quietly and pleasantly vanishes. But you can always click the icon and bring up the entire public timeline to catchup. Twitterfox also allows two or more accounts to be setup and followed simultaneously so you can easily watch personal and professional twitter accounts at the same time and with one click you post to either instantly. Very cool and well executed.
I would call this a must-have add-on but unfortunately I’m not sure yet if social network activity is considered a must-do activity. But we’ll see. Thanks to my Blackberry and these social networks I’ve been interacting with folks I had lost touch with ages ago. Pretty neat, so let’s call it a must-probably-have-it.
What would be really swell is the same exact functionality of TwitterFox for the Facebook wall, MySpace comments and status updates, Bright Kite, Plurk, and so on. I have friends who swear by one social network and hate another. If I had some single (or near single interface like a personally bloated browser) to actively participate in all I would be a lot more inclined to get involved.
PingFire
I’ve been using Ping.fm for a while but just discovered PingFire yesterday.
Ping.fm is a web service for updating multiple social networks and blogs in a single interface. You setup an account at Ping.fm, configure all your social networks and blogs, and from a single text box you can submit blog entries, update status, and send micro-blogs. Very convenient, very well implemented. Ingenious really. This service alone, even without browser add-on, is completely functional.
Ping.fm let’s you post through their online interface or via SMS and email, and even through various devoted apps for your desktop, laptop, and mobile devices. I have my Ping.fm account in my Blackberry address book and instead of just tweeting or updating my wall, I can update them all with the more banal aspects of my life.
Now with PingFire I have the convenience of posting tweets like TwitterFox but to my entire Social Empire!
However I recognize the possibility of such power to be exploited by the nefarious, polluting dozens of sites and thousands of accounts with useless spam-filled garbage. In fact I am so aware of it that I have questioned even using the service as it does separate you somewhat from the actual communities you are posting to. This is exactly why I continue to use TwitterFox and am seeking out more tools to respond personally across many social networks. I mean really I have a ton of friends who use MySpace, which I loathe, but I would still like to interact with them. But I’m not going to login to MySpace every hour to see what is going on. But if I could post through Ping.fm and get direct alerts on my phone and in Firefox when someone responds I will happily participate directly in those communities.
Right now I try to login at least once a week in every social service I am “participating” in to mitigate the impersonal aspects of using Ping.fm.
That said, Ping.fm and PingFire get a tentative must-probably-have-and-I-currently-love-them rating if only because of the possiblity that this service could be exploited and ruin the quality of the communities they are contributing to. So get them and check them out. Just don’t be a dirty whore spammer!
Copy Link Name
How is this not part of the Firefox build? Right-click on a link, copy the anchor text (not the link location/uri or the entire anchor tag, just the anchor text).
Of the least dramatic and most mind-numbing things I do with CoTradeCo is enter products into the online store. Because CoTradeCo is committed to a higher level of service in all things, we do our best to provide more information in our store. You can buy a lot of the products we sell at competitive prices, but most sites offer the manufacturers stock bullet list of features and one or two pictures. Trader Dan insists that go farther whenever we can, offering a ton of high quality useful information and even supplemental related resources. And let me tell you that’s not as easy or fun as it sounds (oh wait that doesn’t sound easy or fun :).
So I often have a hundred tabs open across the internet, vendor sites, distributor logins, ftp sites, and even competitors sites all to write the best most useful production description and specs possible (of course this process takes so long that only 1 in 10 products typically gets that much love ;). In all that research there is a lot of copy/paste action happening getting product names and product numbers and so on. But selecting text in links can be a pain in the ass. Click to close and you’ve gone to the link instead of selecting the text. With this simple context menu add-on, no selecting required, just right-click, copy anchor text. Love it!
This is a must-have add-on for anybody who does a lot of online research.
FoxTab
Okay, this is mostly eye candy. Strangely functional, but eye candy nonetheless.
As you might have already read above I often use a lot of tabs while browsing. So many that they often don’t fit on the screen. The scroll tabs buttons work pretty well and are only mildly annoying. The show all open tabs drop down is pretty functional, but not all website titles are created equal making choosing the exact right tab from multiple on the same domain difficult at times.
Well FoxTab might be my answer. Hit CTRL-Q and all of your tabs appear in a full screen array of visual thumbnails. See the one you want, click it, and you’ve got your tab.
The array of visual layouts include several scrolling thumbnails and a couple of grid layouts. The scrolling thumbnails are fun to just twirl your mouse scroll wheel with and just watch the pages zoom by. But the scrolling thumbnails, while visually mesmerizing, are about as functional as just using the built-in tab scroll buttons.
The grid layouts on the other hand actually make this a visual appealing (though less exciting) way of switching tabs that is still strangely functional. One of the grid layouts at least bends the thumbnail grid in a shallow concave circle making it nicer to look at than a simple grid of colorful rectangles. The background is black and it’s all glossy web 2.0 so it has a pleasant slick look that will probably look outdated in the next year.
The best part is that is shows all tabs across all open windows. This is it’s big selling point for me as I will have a browser on screen for doing research along with my text editor and another on the other screen for making immediate changes to the admin on our sites along with Photoshop and some other tools. Now I can call up FoxTab and get to one of dozens of tabs in any browser I have open. Very nice.
The only problem with apps like this for me is building the proprioception and habit of hitting CTRL-Q when I want to switch tabs. Also since it doesn’t show the page titles at all (at least I couldn’t find the option) it becomes a purely visual scan and with too many tabs open the thumbnails could get pretty small (and even most Mac users will admit that sometimes the open doc icons can be pretty useless). However, the creators obviously thought this through as you can customize all the grid layouts to control how many get shown, whether the thumbnails should be a fixed size or scale based on quantity, and many other features that allow you to make it work for you.
So FoxTab is currently in the trying-it-out-want-to-love-it-but-might-never-use-it-but-it-looks-cool-and-you-should-try-it category.
Menu Mod
When you are on the quest to eliminate every menu bar and maximize screen space it is pretty annoying that the menu bar cannot easily be hidden be default in Firefox. Menu Mod fixed all that.
Super simple: Hides the menu under a menu that reads ‘Menus’. Click it and the rest of the normal menu items (file, edit, view, etc…) flyout. Hit F2 and the whole menu appears like normal and again it is gone entirely. I have so compacted my menu with this whole Chromium obsession though that now every button and every toolbar I use are all contained within the menubar and hitting F2 actually makes my browser like a kiosk. Oh but the screen space I have gained, and it is how do I say, “Strangely functional.” I have one toolbar to rule them all!
Love it mostly. The only thing I miss is easy access to my bookmarks, but getting used to opening the bookmark sidebar has been no problem. Everything else I pretty much did through shortcuts, mouse gestures, or some other add-on already ;)
Sick of the menu eating up screen space? Get Menu Mod.
This is the one thing I love about Google Chrome and hopefully Firefox will take note and adapt some of the better features. But in the meantime I thank my lucky stars for add-ons. The creator of Chromin Frame recommended the Personal Menu add-on to accomplish something similar, but I found Menu Mod first and it’s working out just fine.
Update: I couldn’t help it and I tried the recommended Personal Menu add-on and it kicks butt. Menu Mod was utilitarian and fulfilled my minimum requirements, but Personal Menu blew me away with the ability for advanced customization with multiple menus, custom buttons with more custom menus, and so on. Besides Personal Menu has the cool icons, and cool icons win over boring text menu items any day (as long as you can tell what the icon is ;). However, Personal Menu could actually be overwhelming for the novice making Menu Mod a better choice in those instances. But now thanks to Personal Menu I actually have one toolbar with everything I need a click away (occasionally two or three but that is rare and so is my need for that damn button :).
AutoHideStatusBar
As I mentioned above I discovered this little gem of an add-on while researching this article. I wanted to maximize screen real estate, but many of my most useful add-ons run and are accessed through the status bar, so turning it off was unthinkable.
AutoHideStatusBar to the rescue. I don’t use the Windows autohide task bar feature, because, well, it blows. Try using Photoshop with autohide taskbar on and you’ll know what I mean. But I wish the autohide task bar worked as well as AutoHideStatusBar does (I love uncluttered screens if you hadn’t noticed).
AutoHideStatusBar is so simply and perfectly customizable that it appears exactly as I imagined it should within a 30 seconds a couple of minor settings changes.
In my case I want it to appear instantly any time I mouse over a link and within a split second of when my mouse gets within 30 or so pixels of the bottom of the browser. But most importantly not to pop up every time I move my mouse over, around, or near it on my way to click on something else. The best part is that it just quietly pops up without affecting the page rendering or rescrolling or any other garbage. Just up comes the informative and useful status bar and just as faithfully returns to hiding until I call upon it again.
Done, perfect. You must get this.
_I would also note and thank the developer of Chromin Frame for listing the other add-on mods, such as AutoHideStatusBar, that perfect my current Google Chromitosus addiction. _
Just installed and on the fence about
I literally installed dozens of add-ons that I immediately uninstalled. The following add-ons are getting a further try out but are currently on the short list, not because they don’t seem good but I’m questioning whether their bloat qualifies as a must-have, and in a world of so-good, no-good, there is no in between.
Colorzilla
This is fantastic. I have often wanted to use an eyedropper while I’m in Photoshop in one screen and sample a color in my browser on the other. Colorzilla offers that and a lot more (well not integrated with Photoshop or anything but still…).
Whip out the eyedropper and instantly get the RGB, HEX, HEX with the # sign, and more. Save it to a favorites palette. Heck, it will even let you open Firebug directly and take you to the element where that color was found (even if it is in a background image).
And of course you have the palette browser and color picker tool. But the coolest feature is the Web Dom Color Analyzer which searches the dom and builds a color palette of the current web page (though this does not include the option to analyze the images on the page, just the colors referenced in the DOM).
Absolutely amazing. Even playing with it while writing this I am wondering why this isn’t in my must-have list. But the fact is despite it’s amazing coolness, I may only need it a few times a month. Even I have limits on how bloated I will customize my browser. So the question will become in the next month whether this is more of a novelty than a standard tool I need? I suppose I could disable it if I don’t think I will need it for a while, but I’m not convinced that this offers too much benefit. There are online services for this kind of tool that might make more sense for my intermittent needs.
However, if you have color issues to work with everyday that even remotely involve web development, you probably must-have this. Works great, and it’s just fun as hell looking at the color palette for all sorts of websites. As for me, time will tell if Colorzilla gets a so-good AND a regularly needed vote to make it a must-have for me. A big selling point would have been if it could import and export Photoshop palettes, but those damned hippy open source people are all Gimp compatible :)
Dust-Me Selectors
Dust-Me Selectors claims to generate a list of unused CSS selectors to help with cleaning up your site and style sheets. I love the idea of this, but I question if I need it as a daily add-on. This definitely seems like a candidate for it’s own application (web or desktop doesn’t matter), maybe even a suite of tools for this kind of maintenance. CoTradeCo is barely a year old and already the site is so large, with some data coming from the database, some coming from the views, some coming from static html pages I hide where Scragz can yell at me later about (just kidding Scragz).
If this tool works it could be a godsend for cleaning up our small library of stylesheets. I have yet to actual get any conclusive evidence that this works (but more likely I haven’t figured out how it works). Though I’d kinda hoped it would be uber-intuitive and fast, but it seems like it needs some training.
However, it remains on the still-trying-it-out list.
Obtrusive Javascript Checker
My interest in this add-on is the same as the Dust-Me Selectors. Much to the chagrin of Scragz, I am guilty of lazy/hasty css throwing inline styles and javascript for the sake of moving quickly to other more serious matters. However that almost always comes back to haunt me when attempting more major stylistic or functional upgrades.
The Obtrusive Javascript Checker quickly (really is quick and it made me happy) will show you how many inline styles and javascript events you have, highlighting each one in the browser window. No complaints about this, in fact it is quite excellent in it’s presentation and functionality. But as a must-have I’m not sure. Since I don’t do regular third party design anymore, I just need this every month or so to check up on myself.
However, if Dust-Me Selectors and Obtrusive Javascript Checker ended up as a suite of web tools or a desktop application, I would be the happiest fellow ever.
If you on the other hand are working on client projects everday, this add-on probably should be on your must-have list.
Installed these add-ons but haven’t tried them yet
The following add-ons looked promising so I thought I would give them a try. But they are so specific in functionality, or involved, that I have yet to use them to give them a proper review. Though I thought I would share them in the spirit of the customizing frenzy my Chromitosus caused.
iMacros
Macros for Firefox. I’m really excited about this, though wondering if I might need a full desktop macro program once I try this out.
Every day I sit down to work I have a specific set of websites and applications I open depending on what I will be working on that day. Most commonly I open my Gmail, Google Analytics, and CoTradeCo at the bare minimum. I am hoping iMacros will enable me to create sets of pages to open and log me into so I can get straight to it. Or at least sit and marvel at my computer doing stuff without me doing anything while I drink my coffee and stare bleary eyed.
Dafizilla Table2Clipboard
In theory let’s you copy formatted tables from the browser and paste them either into a spreadsheet program or even directly into a text editor with predefined delimiters. Pretty handy if it works. I will get back to you.
Regular Expressions Tester
It’s a regular expression tester. It tests regular expressions. I am sure it will be great but unlikley this will become a must-have for me. I’m not a regular regular expression kind of guy, but it does come up. Mostly likely will stick to web based testers or the regular expression builder app I have for the desktop.
So what add-ons do you use? What do you think about the return of the browser wars? Drop a comment or visit/friend/follow/subscribe at my some of my social networks:
You might also be interested in:
I’m all of those things and more, but my Chromin Frame is working fine. Are you sure have a workable combination of Chrome theme/add-ons installed?
I use Chromifox Basic for the theme and the Chromin Frame extension to complete the Google Chrome transformation.
If you are still having problems you should check one of the many “Chrome collections”: at the Add-ons for Firefox Firefox website. Like this one or that one
And of course since I serious doubt you are using ad blocker or any other ‘useful’ extensions ;) why don’t you just use Chrome?
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8 months ago Mark Johnson said ...
I upgraded to FF 3.5 and now that Chromin Frame thing doesn’t work and my tabs are on the bottom again.