Matt’s Cuppa List of Essential Firefox Extensions

I’ve decided to compile a list of the Firefox browser extensions that I currently use. It’s not a list of the best or most promising or guaranteed-to-increase-your-productivity extensions, it’s just the ones that make my life easier at the moment.

Over the past few years, Firefox has become an indispensable application on any machine I spend a fair amount of time at. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer can’t match the flexibility and security and Opera’s web browser, which I believe is actually a better browser, doesn’t support browser extensions in the same way that Firefox does.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve found myself needing the same Firefox browser extensions on three different machines. In the past, I’ve gotten around this by running PortableFirefox, a part of the equally-indispensable PortableApps.com Suite, from a USB drive. This time around I’m not allowed to connect my USB drive. So, since I have to take stock of my extensions anyway, it looked like a great time to post an article. And, since it was by reading articles like this one that I found  many of these extensions, it seemed like a good time to give back. Feel free to add comments or contact me.

ColorZilla

by Alex Sirota

Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies…

I use the eyedropper most. Great designing themes. I hate having a million little applications installed on my machine when I can get the same functionality from a Firefox extension.

Diigo: Web Highlighter and Sticky Notes

by Diigo Inc.

** Add persistent highlights and sticky notes to anywhere on any webpage…

I do a lot with Diigo. I am four Diigo bookmarks short of 1000. I use Diigo to create short blog posts and to manage my Daily auto-posts. And it’s all done through this extension.

Googlepedia

by James Hall

Shows
you a relevant Wikipedia article along with your search results.
Clicking links in the article will trigger new Google searches, making
it a very useful research tool…

I love this one! Search Wikipedia and Google at the same time. Do a Google search and on one side are your search results and on the other side is a Wikipedia article, if one’s available. If it can’t find a Wikipedia article for your search it comes up with some pretty strange stuff though.

Greasemonkey

by Aaron Boodman

Allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript. …

I only use this for a few sites. This is a massively useful and flexible tool though. Libraries upon libraries of scripts to use with it as well.

Hyperwords

by The Hyperwords Company

The
quickest and easiest way to get things done on the Web: Search,
References, Conversion, Translation , Shopping, Blogging, Tagging,
Email & more in a single click. Over 200 quick commands available.

I wasn’t originally going to put this one on the list. I use it for only a handful of the apparently 200 some commands.

Annotate Any Webpage

by JumpKnowledge Team

Have
you ever wished you could add your two cents to a site—anywhere
you wanted—not just in the itty bitty blog area?
Have you ever wished you could email a web page with your comments
inside it?

This is a really great tool for commenting on long articles and blog posts. You comment inline so it’s always relevant. Any page you comment on has a permalink that you can post or email.

ScribeFire

by Christopher Finke

ScribeFire
(previously Performancing for Firefox) is a full-featured blog editor
that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog.

ScribeFire is like an app inside an app. I use this extension for nearly all of my blog posts. It opens at the bottom of your browser screen and support drag and drop from the browser window to the ScribeFire pane.

TinyUrl Creator

by Jeremy Gillick

TinyUrl
brings the http://tinyurl.com functionality into your browser. It takes
a long URL as input, and gives you a short URL to use in it’s…

A must have to Twitter, Facebook, etc. It eats big ugly URLs and spits out little short ones. Right mouse click on an URL and it can copy it’s TinyUrl into your clipboard.

Twitterbar

by tones

Post to Twitter from your address bar

Twitterbar has a neat feature where if you Twitterbar hit the icon on the right side of your address bar, it’ll post “Currently browsing <whatever site you’re browsing>.

Google Gears (BETA)

Google Gears is an open source browser extension that lets developers create web applications that can run offline.

The reason I use this extension is so that I can view my Remember the Milk tasks offline.

Zoho Notebook plugin

I’m just getting started with Zoho Notebook. I love the Zoho products, but there’s just so many of them that it’s hard to actually use all of them. Zoho Notebook is like the Adobe Photoshop of online note taking apps. It does pretty much everything, which means it can be almost overwhelming. This extension makes it easier to manage though.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Google Shared Stuff = Instant Link Blog

Shared Stuff from telecommatt

The very first thing I read when I opened Google Reader this morning was this post by Demo Girl about Google’s new Shared Stuff feature. As you know, I’m all about link blogging, and Shared Stuff is all about instant link blog. I’m currently link blogging in two different places. I share RSS items of interest on another Google page. And web pages that are of interest I share on my Diigo home page.

That said, it will take a lot to make me change the way I’m doing things now, but I’m still going to give Shared Stuff a test ride. I’ll be sharing things I find throughout the next few days on my own Shared Stuff page. You can view my page here or subscribe via RSS here.

As always, Molly’s screencast does an excellent job of laying things out, so I encourage you to give it a watch. A few things I’ve noticed so far:

• It’s slow. The Share button brings up a new window, which takes a few more seconds to load than I’d like. Not so good  if you want to tag and move on.
• Too many new windows. The Share button opens a new window, and then if you want to preview your view your Shared page, that, too, opens in a new window. I’m using Firefox so I don’t have to deal with dozens of open windows.
• Can’t change the page titles. There doesn’t seem to be a way to change the way Google displays the title of a Shared item. For example, Molly’s demo page shows up on my Shared Stuff as “Created by Camtasia Studio 4”. That’s not going to help me remember what I saved. I’d like to be able to change that to something more meaningful.
• I’d like to see this combined with the Shared Items on my Google Reader. Seems a waste to have to maintain two Google pages, one for RSS items and one for web items. Not to mention, I’m going to have a terrible time remembering which Google page I used to share something if I’m trying to find it again.

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Categorizing the Uncategorized

As a quick search of my blog will tell you, I make extensive use of Diigo’s social bookmarking service and tools. My Daily Diigo Post entries allow me to share my bookmarks and my thoughts in “mini posts” through out my day without breaking my working momentum. It’s a great way to dump thoughts and bits of info into you inbox for later sorting. (<- GTD ALERT)

I have to admit that I find the Daily Post feature a little underdeveloped. I would like to be able to filter it to post, or not post, by certain tags. It cannot. Nor can it assign tags to my posts. As a result, every one of my Daily Diigo posts is “Uncategorized.” This is completely bad form on my part, and certainly hurts my search engine rankings. Not to mention, it’s annoying for my readers. So, now I’m in the process of going back and assigning categories to all of my “Uncategorized” posts. It’s going to take a while, but bear with me. As I do this, you might check some of your favorite tags from the left-hand sidebar of my site to see of there are any posts added.

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Diigo and the Social Web

I just noticed that there has been no Diigo Auo-Post since, oh, Feb, 4th! Sorry about that all! For some reason the job I set up has stopped jobbing. I think I’ve corrected it. Also, I made some changes to my sidebar. You can quicky view my last 10 Diigo bookmarks or subscribe directly to a feed of my Diigomarks using the sidebar to the right of the page. Feedback on this is appreciated!

You can see, I use Diigo A LOT. I’ve posted previously about Diigo’s bookmarking and annotation service, but I must say, again, that I feel it’s truly a gem of the social internet! I love the toolbar, (alas, I’m, using Opera at the moment, so I must settle for the bookmarklet) the annotation features are killer, and the “blog this” option has been a huge time-saver for me. I’ve had a few issues, as with the Auto-Post, but I think it’s great that when I need help and cannot find an answer in the forums, I get a personal response from the Diigo crew. I can handle growing pains If I know I’m being helped. My only suggestion for them would be to take care of the lag on their server. The load times off their site can be extruciating.

I believe that this is what the social internet should be: customizable web applications + community + live people behind the app. Despite a few minor annoyances, Diigo embodies all of these. Great job guys!