Extension – A Blog by Franklin Pettit

8 FireFox Extensions That Are New To Me

firefox

With a new job came a new computer, new work OS, new Screen resolution, and a new number of screens. So a new computer and OS includes a fresh Firefox install.

In this post I will describe my current Firefox extensions. In my new job I am currently doing web development primarily.

Some of these addons are very new to me. A new Firefox install is a good opportunity to find out which extensions you can not live without. I will always install Tab Mix Plus. It is the first extension I install. The very first one.

Please do not forget about other gems like Ad-Block plus, Copy Plain Text, and Feedly. First here is my list of new extensions to me. These are new ones that I have personally used only in the last couple of months. My total list of installed addons totals 24. As always the lists are easily generated with InfoLister.

New To Me Extensions

All-in-One Sidebar (Gives the sidebar power. It has made me use the sidebar more and not neglect its power.)
ColorZilla (For Web Dev – Very popular. Makes It easy to view colors on any page.)
FaviconizeTab (Tab customization. Shrink tab to favicon width only.)
Firebug (For Web Dev – Very popular. I now know why.)
MeasureIt (For Web Dev – Measure anything on your screen in pixels. Cool.)
Searchbar Autosizer (Puts the Searchbar very small out of the way and then auto-expands as needed.)
Split Browser (Great for a wide screen monitor like I now have. Gives you the ability to see 2 tabs at once.)
Web Developer (For Web Dev – Very popular. More web dev functions. Try it you will like.)

Other Addons Installed

What am I missing? These are just some tools I have been using. Help me out!

What tools make life in Windows Vista on a wide screen monitor complete?

What other important web developer extensions am I missing?

Firefox How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count My Add-Ons

Mozilla annouced today that FireFox 3 Download day was a success. A world record was set with 8,002,530 downloads in a 24 hour period.

The much hyped download day was not without its problems as we remember. But the record was set and FireFox 3 is great.

If you do not use FireFox click the button above and download it now. I will admit I was a little late to the FireFox party. Although probably still qualifying as an early adopter I did hesitate switching from IE.

The reason to switch is addons. The FireFox wealth of browser extensions make it the must use browser for Windows.

The following is my everyday list of addons that I run. If I had to pick one and only one it would be Tab Mix Plus. I can not run FireFox without it. Tab Mix Plus gives you total control over your Tab behavior.

Here is my list of the current addons I am running. Info Lister does a great job of listing the extensions and plugins you have installed. As a result it was very easy to produce this list.

I love FireFox 3 but unfortunately some of my favorite extensions from the list have not been updated yet. FireFox without the extensions is still a great browser but the addons make it the only one I ever use.

Better Google Reader

Better GReader is a Firefox extension by Gina Trapani of Lifehacker. This Firefox extension combines many Google Reader Greasemonkey extensions into one easy installable package.

I updated to the newest version 0.2.5 that includes a Greasemonkey script with enhancement to the feed icons.

The addon uses each sites favicon as the feed icon. Pretty cool. You can download the Greasemonkey script only here.

Finally here is a link to the Lifehacker post about Better GReader.

Firefox Extension Spotlight: Copy Plain Text

Firefox is my browser of choice. Why? There are many great things about Firefox but my No. 1- Extensions. Extensions do just what you think they extend the abilities of the web browser. There are many I can not live without. There are hundreds if not thousands to choose from.

The one I am featuring today is Copy Plain Text. It is very simple but very good. It does just what it says it gives you the ability to highlight any text on a web page and copy it as plain old text. For anyone that does research or writing from the web knows that when you copy from a site you often get rich text instead of plain text. I often kept a Notepad window open and copied to Notepad first and then copied again from Notepad to my Word doc. Otherwise when pasting into Word or whatever office app you use you would end up with poorly formatted rich text. The days of double copy and paste are over. Simply install this Firefox extension and your right click menu will now have an option that says “Copy Plain Text.” This is a small extension that you may just find you can not live without. The author’s description is as follows…

Have you ever copied text from a website and pasted it into an email program, such as Thunderbird, but been frustrated that the text formatting (bold, italic, font, etc.) were copied with it? This extension copies the text without all the formatting.

Try it out and let me know what you think. Do you have any Firefox extensions you can’t live without?