The History Submenus extension for Firefox is here to make thumbing through the browser’s history easier.

The browsing history in Firefox is one of the most taken for granted features, that can sometimes produce amazing results.  Say you check out a web page today, never think about it again – and then tomorrow you say, “what did that article say again?”.  Just browse through your Firefox history, and you can find the answer. 

What the History Submenus add-on does different, is it places each day’s entire browsing history in a submenu of the history’s menu from the menu bar in Firefox.   Simply put, it makes the History menu much more usable. 

You can pick up the History Submenus add-on on the Firefox Add-on’s web site.

It all comes down to quantity over quality.  Some of these backgrounds just are not any good.  The same could be said for many Firefox themes too, but with Personas – there are a few simple things that could go a long way before you submit it for the public, that would be so easy to check into.

For example, look at this:

I am not going to use a Persona where I can’t read anything inside of the browser. 

Other annoyances would be having text in the background, having the background be too busy, and general “why the heck did you think that would make a good background” questions of designing competence.

So you tell me, what makes for a better Firefox Persona or have you been turned off my many of the ugly background out there? Post your feedback and thoughts in the comments.

Once installed, you get your own WYSIWYG editor to create and edit your own signature collection.  You can add links via RSS, instant messenger service or social profiles from around the Web too.

Still need more information?  Check out this awesome video tutorial demonstrating what all you can do with this amazing add-on for Firefox.

WiseStamp has gotten praise from all around the Web, from Lifehacker to Mashable – so it is well worth checking out if you need to micro-manage a lot of e-mail signatures, or rotate the one you use around a ‘bit depending on your mood.

It has built in support for these webmail services:

• Gmail
• Yahoo! Mail
• AOL Mail
• Hotmail

As far as social profiles and services you can plug with it, there are almost 50 to choose from, including:  Netflicks, Youtube, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Friendfeed, Digg, Google, Blogger, Tumbler, Twitter and many more.

You can pick up the WiseStamp extension for Firefox on the Firefox Add-ons site, and learn more about the amazing tool on their official web site, WiseStamp.com.

With that in mind, I thought it might be handy to guide you through the process when it comes to adding a new Persona theme to your browser, removing a Persona theme from your browser, and how to chance through Persona themes – once you have several saved to your system.

How Do You Install a Firefox Persona?

If you are using Firefox 3.6 or above, the options for Personas should be built into the browser.  Here is how you can grab your own Firefox Persona to use in Firefox.

Go to the Personas page on the Firefox Add-ons web site or the Personas Gallery.

Next, browser around the web site until you find a Persona you would like to use in your own Firefox browser.  Notice that as you hover over the thumbnail previews, your Firefox browser will change to show you what that Persona would look like.

Click on the Persona you would like to use, and go check out the official page for that specific Persona.  For example, here is the page for the Superman logo Persona shown above:

• Superman Logo Firefox Persona

To install that specific Persona for Firefox, click the orange, “Wear this Persona” button.

Once you do so, the Persona will be installed – and you will get a message come up in the browser telling you it has been installed, and giving you the option to undo or go to your manage themes settings.

You are now done.  Your new Persona for Firefox has been installed and is ready to decorate your browser till you change it again.

How Can You Uninstall a Firefox Persona?

Uninstalling Firefox Personas is as easy as installing them.  From Firefox’s Menu Bar, select Tools and then Add-ons.  Once that comes up, you want to go to the “Themes” tab. Both Firefox themes and Personas will now be displayed here.

Click on the Firefox Persona you wish to uninstall, and click the “Uninstall” button. You will be asked to verify the uninstall, and then it will be gone for good.  You can also switch to a different Persona you have downloaded by clicking on that Persona from this screen, and selecting “Use Theme”. 

Get More Personas Help: Other Personas Tips, Articles and Tutorials!

Browsing space is important; especially for smaller netbook PCs out there.  So, why have the menu bar, bookmark bar and navigation bar shown if you don’t need them?  The Hide GUI bars extension for Firefox will let you hide all three, or bring them back with one single keyboard combination.

Once the Hide GUI bars add-on is installed, customizing it to fit your needs is pretty self explanatory.  In the options you can choose which toolbars get hidden:

• Menu Bar
• Navigation Bar
• Tab Bar
• Bookmarks Bar
• Status Bar

Next, you just choose the keyboard combination you wish to use to hide or show all the Firefox toolbars.

How to Hide Toolbars Manually in Firefox

Can you do this without the use of the Hide GUI bars add-on? Yes, but it is a little more complicated.  One of the new features in Firefox 3.6 is the ability to hide the menu bar.  The navigation bar and bookmarks bar were already hide-able before this most recent release. To hide them, just right-click one of the toolbars, and uncheck the one you wish to hide:

You can pick up the Hide GUI bars add-on for Firefox on the Firefox add-ons web site.

This is the best way to add Amazon search suggestions to the search box in your browser.  Having the suggestions in hand, you will really be able to speed up your shopping.  This is much better than the default Amazon search, for one obvious reason – the suggestions you get.  Not only does this provide you with a quicker way to search.  It also helps with catching spelling mistakes and saving keystrokes.

You can pick up this addition to the Firefox browser over at the Firefox Add-ons web site. 

Oh undo function, what would I do without you? 

Well, I would probably be forced to do it again – but that is beside the point.  I love being able to reopen a closed tab or window in Firefox.  It has saved my rear end many times.  This is just one of those Firefox tips you really should memorize.

Tab Restore Shortcuts

If you accidently close a tab, you can bring it back by pressing the following keyboard combination:

Ctrl + Shift + T

The great thing about it, is the newly restored tab keeps all the surfing history too.  You can can keep doing it to, to browse backwards through all the tabs you have closed in your current browsing session.

You can also bring back closed Firefox tabs or windows by clicking on “History” in the menu bar.  At the very bottom, you should see selectable menus for:

• Recently Closed Tabs
• Recently Closed Windows

There you have it.  This tab and window restore tip will help you get out of a pinch more than a few times, so it is a good one to memorize.  This is one of my favorite keyboard shortcuts and Firefox browsing tips, second only to Ctrl + T to open a new Firefox tab.

There are a lot of Firefox features that don’t get much press, or are quickly forgotten about.  For example, did you know that you could switch to using Gmail or Yahoo! Mail as your default mail client (to handle those mailto links)?

To chance your settings, go to Tools, Options and then click on the Applications tab.  From there, type “mail” into the text box to go to the default mail handler settings.  From the drop down box, you should get several choices, Yahoo! Mail and Gmail being two of them.  Choose the webmail application of your choice, hit the button labeled, “OK” and you are all set.

Now you are ready to use the webmail provider of your choice as your default e-mail application, as far as Firefox knows.

How often do you still use bookmarks? 

Generally speaking, I find there are two types of browsing people.  You have those who still bookmark everything they find interesting, and then those who only bookmark what they need, and Google everything else.  A lot of the time, typing something into the search box might be a faster way to launch a web page, rather than searching through a bucket-full of saved links.

Take a stand, and leave you thoughts in the comments.  Are you pro-bookmark, anti-bookmark, or somewhere in between the two?

Do you remember Jetpack?

It is the Mozilla Labs project that makes the add-on building process easier, mixing elements of HTML, CSS and JavaScript.  Mozilla has released an awesome Jetpack Gallery, which serves as a community for Jetpack developers and add-on users.

Much like the Firefox Add-ons site, you have featured add-ons for Jetpack, ratings, and user reviews.  It does a good job at giving you a summary of what each add-on is all about and looks like.

Here are some of my favorite Jetpack add-ons I have found:

• Thumbtabs – This jetpack displays your tabs and theirs thumbnails in Jetpack’s Slidebar.
• Jetstatus – Jetstatus is a Twitter client for Jetpack. It polls the service for new updates and displays popup notifications for every entry in the friends timeline.
• GTranslatifier – To translate a web page into your language, just click on the Google Translate icon in your status bar.
• Image Editor – Let’s you use the Pixlr image editor to edit any image you find on the web. Simply right-click an image, select “Edit Image”, and you’re editing away.

Here are a couple of other places to get Jetpacks:

• Jetpacks in the Wild – Mozilla Wiki
• Recent Jetpacks – UserScripts.org

I am happy to see that Jetpack development is alive and well.  It really brings new and interesting ways to change your own Firefox installation or interact with your favorite web sites. The Jetpack Gallery is well worth diving into.