Information technology news and advice
Firefox Add-ons (Extensions)
Firefox is a modern stable web browser. Its most important feature is the so-called tabbed browsing when a link opens not in a separate window but in the same window creating an individual tab to open it. A user may have several dozens of tabs conveniently open in the same window. The tabbed browsing was first introduced in Opera browser then accepted for Mozilla and Netscape browsers and will be implemented in the future version 7 of Microsoft Internet Explorer. To open a new tab, you should normally do the combination CTRL/click or click the mouse wheel.
- When the tabbed browsing is the most useful
After you have run a web search, you have a screen with numerous links some of which are relevant and some are simply the informational noise. While you are reading through this list mentally selecting the relevant links, you may right-click on the links you would like to download and read - and while you are still reading the original list - these selected links will be downloaded in the background. When you have finished reading the original hit list, you already have all selected relevant llinks - with zero wait time!
Firefox provides some basic tabbed browsing and other features going far beyond Microsoft Internet Explorer that has stopped its evolution having become a virtual monopolist in the Web eight years ago. Being an open source project, Firefox makes it possible for project participants to develop add-ons (extensions) that allow for many other additional functions.
- How you can get extensions
To get extensions, you should select Tools in the main menu and then select Add-ons and click Get More Extensions in the lower right corner. There you may read the hot list if the most wanted and the newest extensions. You may also run a search for titles of extensions. After the installation, the extensions would be automatically updated.
The recommended extensions
1. Tab Mix Plus is a powerfull tab display manager, places close button on each tab, creates closed tabs restore bin, full-featured session manager with crash recovery that can save and restore combinations of opened tabs and windows - like Opera, and more. You may use the default values but I recommend to import the settings that I tested and use. These setting force Firefox operation in a single window, place the close X button on each tab, creates a restore bin for closed tabs, automatically restores all open tabs when you restart Firefox. Then you may further modify my settings or return to the default values.
You may want to drag-and-drop on your toolbar the icons "Closed Tabs" for restoring closed tabs and "Open New Tab" to open a new empty tab.
To customize a toolbar, you should right-click on the toolbar and select "Customize" from the drop-down menu. Then drag-and-drop the icon you wish to the needed place on a toolbar.
To import the recommended settings, right-click on this link and Save Link As the file, say on your desktop. Then in Firefox open Tools | Tab Mix Plus Options, open the tab Links, click on Settings, select Import and point to the downloaded file - Desktop\TMPpref.txt.
2. IETab - creates a button on the bottom tool bar that allows switching between Firefox and IE engines in the same tab window for badly designed web pages. You may set some of these IE-only but trusted websites like certain pages of MCVH to be always viewed in IE automatically.
To do this, right click on the Firefox/IE button on the lower toolbar and add this site to IE Only exclusions.
Having IETab lets you forget about the stand-alone Internet Explorer and will allow you using IE with added Firefox functionality (do not forget that you still will have all IE vulnerabilities!)
You may also want to add the IETab icon to the Navigation (upper) toolbar.
3. Scrapbook - an addition to bookmarks that conveniently saves pages locally instead of bookmarks that are simply links to pages that perhasps do not exist anymore. With Scrapbook you will always have your favorite pages available even if they actually died.
You may also want to add the Scrapbook icon to the Navigation (upper) toolbar.
4. Forecastfox - a great weather report in the status bar. Users frequently are tricked into installing various weater bars on their computers. Many of these "freebies" actually download commercial pop-ups and may even be spying on you reporting to somebody what you are doing on the computer. The Forecastfox extension installs a secure weather forecast tool showing in the lower toolbar. When you hover one of the four icons, it shows a miniature weather map, the current weather, today's weather and the weather for tomorrow. You may watch weather in several selected locations.
To customaze, right-click in the lower toolbar.
5. Fasterfox - changes the defaults to operate faster setting it in the turbo-charge mode. You may also customize the settings changing the number of simultaneous connections, managing simultaneous download, better caching the pages, etc.
To customaze, right-click in the lower toolbar.
6. Flashblock. Many websites display animated images or video clips that are either unneeded or commercial ads. Flashblock blocks unwanted flash SWF displays showing a toggle instead. If you are interested in the flash clip, you simply click the toggle and the animation plays.
7. Adblock - an extended popup and image blocker. In Firefox without extensions you may right-click on an unwanted an annoying image and tell - Do not show images from this server! But you still may want to see some images form that server! Adblock allows you to ban selected images from selectes servers individually, and provides much more ads and commercials suppression.
To customaze Adblock, right-click it in the lower toolbar.
8. Extended Statusbar - shows the download progress like Opera: how many images are loaded, how many kilobytes are loaded, what is the speed of connection, how much time the loading of page took.
9. ImgLikeOpera - allows to immediately turn off image display for a tab.
To customaze, right-click in the lower toolbar.
10. Gmail Manager - Allows you to manage multiple Gmail accounts and receive new mail notifications. Displays your account details including unread messages, saved drafts, spam messages, labels with new mail, space used, and new mail snippets.
11. DownThemAll! - a powerful download manager that allows downloading many files in several streams, pause and continue downloading. May replace commercial download managers like ReGet, etc.
- You should also install more search engines through clicking in the Search window pop-down menu on Get More Engines.
There are AOL, MSN, Merriam-Webster, movie database IMDB and many others - with Firefox you do not need to install any "freebie" search bars, just select the engine in the Search window pop-down menu and type in your search words.
