Extended Family
As time has gone by I’ve become very dependent on my browser as not just a web development tool, but as a hub for portions of my digital lifestyle. I personally use Firefox as my everyday browser because of its extensibility. There’s so much available for the Mozilla platform via third-party groups that I have a hard time even being on other agents (other than for site testing) because it feels like my arms and legs are missing.
In lieu of anything more interesting to write about today, I thought I would give a sampling of my current Firefox add-ons. The following can be found on the Firefox Add-ons page with a little bit of hunting.
Here we go:
Development:
The Web Developer Toolbar: This should be the most obvious given my involvement with web design and development. This is an all around great toolbar that gives you unfettered access to nearly every part of a web page. If you’re a developer and you don’t know about this it’s time to open the shades, put down your custom Halo 3 controller and get current. It’s a must have.
Firebug: An expandable, windowed application that allows a user to look at the underlying code of a page by element and section. It displays them with code folding and syntax coloring to help you know what you are looking at. What I really love about Firebug is that it highlights the section of the page when you hover over its name, which makes backward engineering a page a snap if you are looking to see how something is done.
Blogging:
Wizz RSS Reader: I’ve looked high and low and tried numerous aggregators before settling on Wizz. This reader does not offer a whole lot that’s out of the ordinary when it comes to tracking your RSS feeds, but I really liked the fact that it was integrated into Firefox. This meant one less application to open up, and since my browser is almost always open I get notifications of new articles all day instead of trying to remember to open my aggregator to update my feeds.
ScribeFire: This is my newest add-on and might just turn out to be one of the most important in my arsenal. ScribeFire is an in browser publishing system for weblogs. It took me all of 30 seconds to download SF and hook it up to my site. Once in, I posted a quick “test” draft to my site, logged in and there it was just waiting for me to push the “publish” button. ScribeFire has all the tools provided by most WYSIWYG weblog editors and truly features one-stop, push-button publishing. The application is so low-key that it actually took me about two minutes to find out where it was (lower right hand corner of the browser) in Firefox.
Surfing:
Stumble Upon: Critical, critical, critical for the person who needs non-stop input and a variety of new stuff to look at at any given time. Stumble Upon lets the user select broad categories of interest, which in turn yield a nauseating amount of random sites from those areas by clicking the “Stumble!” button. Each click of the button provides a new site to look at based of how you’ve scored previous stumbles. I cannot even begin to calculate the number of sites I have come across because of this application. This is also one of those that if you’ve never heard of this add-on chances are you’re living under a rock.
Yoono: Provides a wonderful referral system (via a NASDAQ scrolling bar) to other sites based off the current page you are on. I use this mainly as a way to enrich my use of Stumble Upon because it can get me to related sites that I might not have known about any other way. The wonderful thing about Yoono is that it also provides a built in clipping service, allowing you to grab images and text and upload them for other Yoono users to view, for e-mailing or just to save for later reference. It also provides links to other users’ shared links. It’s a very social network.
Ma.gnolia Page Marker: I moved from del.icio.us to Ma.gnolia not too long ago and needed an easy way to drop in bookmarks without having to hit the site each time. Enter the Ma.gnolia page marker. This little gem allows you to create a bookmark with tags and save it to your account without accessing the site. It will even check your account to see if it’s a repeated bookmark. It’s so very handy.
Misc.
Clipmarks: Another clipping program that allows you to save clips from the web. My only complaint on this program is that it has a threshold for how much it will allow you to clip. It’s great for short, quick clips though.
Linked In: I use linked in to find like minded designers / studio owners to network with and to follow job leads. This is completely non-critical, but it allows me another avenue for networking.
Session Manager: Perhaps one of the most important add-ons I have is Session Manager. This alone is probably the biggest reason I use Firefox over Safari or another agent. I hate (repeat HATE) losing my browsing sessions. I’m very much a pick up where you left off type of web navigator. I generally have about 25 tabs open at any given time to sites I’ve stumbled to, or that I am reading on, and the thought of having to back track all of that info is painful. Session Saver lets me save my sessions, so I can return to them when I need to.
So, why is any of this important? The truth is… it’s not, but sharing is what the web does best and these are the main tools I currently use to fuel the flames of my Firefox love affair. Some of these may be new to you and some are probably not, but now you know.
Am I missing something? Perhaps I am. Let me know if there are other add-ons out there that will help me to waste even more time than I already do. If they’re cool I’ll install them and we can waste time (err… be productive) together.