Archive for the 'Firefox Browser' Category

Useful Firefox Extensions

Here’s a list of extensions that another user has found useful… See the site at Everything Else

 

Lifehacker Firefox Recommentations

I’ve found this site useful for tips on good extensions for Firefox. Check it out…

Lifehacker, the Productivity and Software Guide

Firefox & Key Extensions

I recommend to all my clients that they use Firefox as their number one web browsing software.

Firefox is free, relatively secure (compared to Internet Explorer), has hundreds of fantastic “extensions” (easily installable add-ons) which bring a wide variety of new features to it should you want any of them, great support for tabbed browsing, and much more.

Using Internet Explorer is in my experience a real chore now that I am used to using Firefox. If you make regular use of the internet then I recommend trying Firefox and the various extensions that suit your needs and wants.

The most generalised Extensions I recommend in list of importance (and generalised through to more specialised) are:

  • Mr Tech Local Install
  • Tab Mix Plus
  • Spellbound (spell checker) — At this time (May 24th 2006) I recommend getting the development version
  • PDF Download
  • AdBlock — note: AdBlock Plus 0.7.0.1 causes memory leaks with Firefox 1.5.0.3 (and earlier 1.5 versions) so AdBlock (not PLUS) is recommended)
  • Resize Search Box (a simple but useful tool that fills a gap in the Firefox feature set)
  • Customize Google (if you are an avid Google user—this lets you customise that way Google behaves for you)
  • Download Manager Tweak (some handy tweaks for the way FF handles download management)
  • GoogleBar Lite (if you use Google a lot and want the Google bar I recommend getting this lite version rather than the full one)
  • FlashGot (if you download things this tools makes it easier)
  • XE Currency Converter (if you do currency conversions more than now and then. I am not sure where the development site is for this)
  • FeedYourReader (if you use a news reader application like Feedburner)
  • Gmail Manager (if you use Gmail)
  • Send by email (a useful tool if you like to send pages or selected content by email. Presently FF does not have this feature by default. Odd, but true)
  • JustBlogIt (if you write blogs but want to use the interface that comes with your blog)
  • Scrapbook (for collecting information and organising it)
  • Performancing (if you maintain one or more blogs this is a great firefox integrated desktop editor)
  • Deepest Sender (as an alternative to Performancing — try them both and decide which you prefer)
  • BlogJetThis (if you use the BlogJet desktop blogging program if comes with this nice extension)
  • Paypal Send Payment (useful if you often make paypal payments to people.

Those are the extensions I find most useful. There are many others though—get them here.

You can get Firefox from http://getfirefox.com.

Happy Firefoxing…

Spellbound and Firefox 1.5.0.x

Spellbound is a great little extension for Firefox. It gives you spell checking support in any area you might type out text into a web page (such as this blog entry I am writing). I’ve been using it for a year or so now and find it to be an excellent solution for this requirement.

If you use Firefox and Spellbound you will have noticed that it was disabled when Firefox updated to 1.5.0.1 or 1.5.0.2 or (as of today) 1.5.0.3 — assuming you allow these auto updates to go ahead. If you would like to continue using Spellbound and Firefox then try out the development version of Spellbound. It seems to work just fine and it also has new features such as spell check as you type (it will underline misspelled words as you type, much like MS Word does).

Before installing this I suggest you first uninstall the existing version and restart Firefox. Not doing this may cause complications.

You can get it from this site http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=351130&start=0 and click on Install Spellbound Dev

Or just click this link to install it now http://exchangecode.com/spellbound/downloads/spellbound-dev_20060108.xpi
(this is current as of May 5th 2005 which is approximately when Firefox 1.5.0.3 came out)

You will need to tell Firefox to TRUST this download source. You’ll see a bar appear at the top of your browser window stating a download was blocked. Just click on OPTIONS and tell it to trust the source. Then click on the download/install link again.

With the check as you go feature, you can SHIFT-Left click on the misspelled word and it will show you the suggestions. Neat.

Happy Firefoxing…
Jonathan




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